When I woke my surroundings had changed. Gone was the Rachel's extra bedroom. Gone was the Corner Market where I snoozed for an hour days before. Even the barracks I fell asleep in were no longer around me.

Instead, there was a dimly lit room. Between me and the heavy iron door were bars. They resembled the set that had boxed in the White Lady. That single simple similarity sent me into a panic.

I looked around the room then swept it with my normal sight and other vision. No creature in here with me. That calmed me some. Nothing on the walls. The walls were bare and a light fixture hung opposite where the other one had. The real question remained. Where the hell was I now? Besides trapped in a cage.

The door didn't budge. Metal rattled, shook, vibrated, but never once showed any signs of weakness. Unlike me, I had fallen asleep in an entirely unprotected place. This barracks couldn’t be safe like my apartment or Rachel’s guest room.

Physically I felt fantastic and rested. That word still annoyed me, but now the reason was clear. Boss Wylde's clicking heels somehow irritated me so much that even memory suppression couldn’t wipe away the annoyance. She and Muni were the last people I saw prior to having my mind messed with.

At least the jail cell was quiet. This time would be used to try and understand the situation better instead of blindly rushing to a new objective.

Rachel was someone I knew from my old life. She knew how to say my name according to Roy. His explanation implied my true name was more complicated than Jay. That helped clear up why it was so easy to shuffle my first name around. Jay, James, Jeff, John, they were all pseudonyms. I had been replacing one lie with another.

I established that Muni's trinket helped people forget who I was by changing the name around. Did it also work on me? Was I activating its powers to an extent by thinking of myself as Jay? Would taking it off again help me recover the things lost?

Taking off the memory messer had woken something in me last time. Tired, exhausted, and powerful. I recalled the sensation of burning heat and that powerful backward leap along with anger.

That could be my trump card to escape. If things went to shit and there was no way out, I would pull off the trinket myself. It was on my arm somewhere. My eyes refused to remember exactly where, but with enough concentration, I could feel the edges of scratchy ribbon mixed with threads. It was a hand woven charm of some sort.

I would eventually have to pull hard on the bindings that drew to home, or to Evan. They were far away so the perception was hard to activate. Trying to connect to Kahina was out completely out. She could go fuck herself. I wanted to kill Reginald just for good measure. Not to win her back, no, just to prove a point. I should have given into the impulse back at Bottom Pit. I should have leapt across the gulf between us and torn him in two.

Pacing around the room didn’t really help. Being on the other side of these bars felt weird. This room should only be a cell or two away from the White Lady. I shivered with unease. Shouting out wouldn't do any good.

If I sat in a position of strength then the Order of Merlin wouldn't have trapped me in a cell. They locked me in here for reasons unknown and probably figured out I wasn't human. How, was a mystery. Maybe actions with The White Lady had been a tip off, which meant there was another hunter here besides Daniel.

I debated trying to pull on all my abilities and demolish everything nearby, but I didn’t have enough control yet. Plus it would help to know the reason for being thrown in a cell first.

It was upsetting but expected. Terrible situations always started with waking up in the morning. Like the nightmares crawling across my memory at Rachel's, or ending up places I shouldn't have been. Hell, those events must have been my clearly messed up subconscious trying to remember the past through Muni’s blocks. The burning scent had been her charm overloading.

Double Hell, Steven knew who I was the entire time and had tracked my phone calls to Kahina’s cell. My attempts at faking a death would be ruined if she ever put the pieces together. Hours passed with me pacing around the room.

There were no windows. Briefly, I pulled on my few lifelines to establish a location. I was fairly sure that the screaming white monster existed on the south wall’s other side. A mystery person was to the right. Was it Tal, Rachel, or an unknown?

I went back to my cot on the safe side of the room. My head tilted back and belly rumbled. Hopefully these Order people would bring me some food.

"Hungry!" I yelled and banged my head slowly against the wall behind me. "Hungry."

Time passed with no results.

"Hungry."

They recorded audio so someone must be listening. I flipped off the camera perched opposite my cot. One of those people had to be watching too.

"Hungry," came a final depressive groan.

Niggling sensations had worked their way forward in my thoughts. Nothing painful or terrible, but definitely nagging. My fingers felt it in the corners of this pitiful cot. Both feet pressed against the ground and felt the soft demanding vibration.

It felt like someone was speaking. This background rattle was disturbingly similar to the sensations I had while tracking. I'd always grown used to the way things feel, and interpreting those feelings, the vibrations of air as sounds, or words. Every noise was absorbed into landscapes, different materials carrying the weight of sound in alternating densities.

I left myself go again. Saw the world around me, just a little. A peek in the middle of enemy territory. Same as I'd done in the locker rooms.

The vibrations were words. Deep and powerful words. I had to really focus before anything made sense.

"Relax, kiddo," the voice felt worn, calm, and definitely female. I opened my mouth to say something but was cut off. "Quiet. Don't give away the goose just yet."

My eyebrows knitted together. These were words I was feeling. They originated from the very dirt beneath this cell. No one spoke them out loud. This was familiar, deep, and nearly dreamlike. Was it Rachel? Her words were soothing. I almost passed out trying to understand.

"They're coming, with slop,” she said.

"Hungry." I banged my head backward again. Losing myself in these sensations. A vibration that nearly coddled me. Motherlike. Something unknown to me.

"Hush, child."

Why was the strange rumbling from the walls calling me child? Better yet, how did I understand vibrations like they were words? Things had gone from strange to bizarre. Rachel was a Hidden and clearly had some abilities. Maybe every race did, like wolves, elves, and vampires. Was she like me?

My breath hitched and eyes grew misty. Getting air in was suddenly difficult. This person might actually be closer to my kind than ever suspected. Maybe I would grow up to be like her. That's what families did right? I had a brief image of my future.

In the thought I was in a house, cooking for the masses and throwing kitchen utensils at people. My weapon of choice would be a turkey baster. In another four years, I could hurl it with pinpoint accuracy at the heads of offending guests. Not that I had a real house, guests, or a turkey baster. Those were problems for a later date.

The cell's outer door creaked. Hinges weighed heavily on the framing. Metal swung inward to let a man slip in with a plate of food. This person wasn’t Eddy, Daniel, or anyone else I knew. Maybe my undercover Western Sector friends had been captured.

I stared at the plate. Rachel was dead on. Everything on it resembled slop, especially after her cooking for the last two months. The platter was left within arms reach. My visitor stayed just long enough to give me a dirty look, then left.

One hand slowly reached through the bars for a bread roll. It turned out to be butterless and disappointing. The meat managed to be worse, which was a crime against any race. I really was dealing with a bunch of backwater savages. This food all tasted off somehow. Hunger made it difficult to be picky.

It occurred to me too late that the food might be poisoned. Logically the idea made no sense. If they wanted me dead, then locking me up was counter productive. Maybe they were trying to get me to eat a truth serum. No, that thought made even less sense.

Maybe this whole process fell under another round of tests. They might have been seeing I reacted poorly under pressure or showed an allergic reaction to ingesting items. Perhaps the whole trial had never actually ended.

I cleared off the slop platter and used the last of the bread roll to mop it clean. I had been near starvation in the past and wouldn't quibble over quality.

Time passed while I played with the dish by pretending it was a frisbee. The plate made a poor spinning top and a worse drum. None of it solved my boredom.

The rumbling voice I associated with Rachel was absent. She could sense me somehow, but I couldn't sense her. Establishing a link would require a lot of work because people were always harder than objects. I'd done it with Candy, the elf I both hated and was thankful for. Sleeping with her once had been enough to track the lithe blonde through Pack woods.

Rachel, on the other hand, had fed me for almost two months. We also had conversations and shared ideas which were probably more connecting than a single bout of sex. Hopefully anyway, sex and women often screwed up my sense of judgment, especially the good and slightly hateful kind. Despite Candy's attitude afterward coupled with personal guilt, quality had never been in doubt.

A lot of other ideas passed through my mind during the tedious hours. The worst thoughts involved wondering exactly what would happen in the next day or two. Others questioned what I might need to do in order to escape with Rachel and Tal. Killing would probably be involved.

An hour later the door opened. Finally, I had a visitor whose purpose wasn't to give me dirty looks and crappy food. Too bad the person who came in was Father Tom.

I sitting cross-legged, propped against the wall opposite the screaming thing's cell. The plate was poorly spinning on my middle finger. My hand turned toward the door in an obvious display. The middle finger continued to point upwards even after the dish clanked to the ground.

"We know you aren't human," Father Tom’s words were slow again.

An equally deliberate sigh escaped me. My other hand rubbed at the back of hair that had grown too long.

"Yet your words spoke of something true,” he paused briefly to look at me, “-that you almost hate the other races."

Maybe I did, but being locked up pissed me off. Hate might have been too strong a word. I was at the very least annoyed and disappointed. Rachel's rantings about baby killers had stuck with me as well. She was right, the three races that stood with humanity had come out smelling like roses.

There had to be tons of other nonhuman races out there before the Purge. Almost two thousand years ago people decided it would be best to wipe them all out. Had they been given a chance to survive? Were they killed for being less human? Wolves, vampires, both shared the same base species. Both split off from the same family tree. And the rest of us? Whatever we were?

"Do you know what you are, Jeff Ager?" Father Tom asked.

"Male through and through," I quipped Julianne's words before my mind registered the response then my face soured. That comment had been made mere days before she was murdered.

"You don't share any of the same weaknesses that our other discoveries do."

I shrugged.

"I feel flawed enough as it is." The anger, drinking, and foolish willingness to do what women told me were weaknesses of a sort.

"These are dangerous times for your kind."

"My kind?" I raised an eyebrow and looked over at Father Tom. The cat was out of the bag, and if he was going to persist that I was 'beyond the pale' then it was time to live up to it.

"Do you have any clue what I am Father Tom?" I sneered his title at him. "Because I don't."

"You're a monster. Like all nonhumans."

"Me? A monster?" I tried not to laugh. Part of me felt absolutely uncaring. The emotion reminded me of when I had spoken to Roy’s family in Bottom Pit. They were beneath me, Father Tom was beneath me.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Instead, I stood up and pressed my face to the bars then stared directly at Father Tom.

"You said I almost hate the other races. Well, I do. I hate vampires, for taking away the things I cared for." Vampires had taken Julianne and Kahina. Both were lost to the fang one way or another.

"I hate wolves. I hate their games, their bullshit." They blamed me for Julianne's death. None of them had shown up quick enough to save her. They were as much failures as I was.

"I hate elves with their clever deals and backstabbing." Candy, who screwed Evan up then forced me to stay away from Kahina. Never mind the justification. Never mind what I gained. The resentment was real.

"Then there's hypocrites like your Order." Hell, these were big words. "You idiots perpetuating the circle and don’t even seem to notice. Your actions scream of old ways, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. It never ends," my voice raised in frustration. The room grew warmer. I stepped away from the bars and paced around feeling suddenly tired and worn. "All of you, everyone, your fathers, mothers, friends, killing any blood family I might have had. So what if you had a wife! At least you can remember your family! I came here-” my head spun as suppressed memories tried to surface. The words were there, but the thoughts behind them were muddled still, “-I came here and found myself utterly alone.”

Father Tom opened his mouth and I saw red. All the issues I'd been ignoring. All the thoughts that had been buildings quietly in the background. Not once had I been angry enough to share my real feelings. Not once had I truly let anyone know how fucked up their point of view was.

I'd been questioning only myself and hadn't realized that everyone else had problems too.

"Shut up!" I burst and yelled through the bars, shaking them as hard as possible. Concrete holdings groaned under the pressure. "You call me a monster? Me? I never killed someone for what they might do! I've only killed to defend me and mine! Same as anyone does, human or not!"

Who was I trying to convince? Did it matter? Father Tom left the room. It delighted the dark spots of my mind to see him shake a little on the way out. As a follow-up, someone would probably come in here and try to stab me through the bars in defense of their leader. They would likely scream about how I, a sub-human, yelled at such a distinguished man.

I knew what kind of person I was. The list was short: male, bastard, monster. Only in those points I was not alone. My actions were in self-defense or to those deserving it. Violence had always been visited on the scum who refused to pay their debts. The family men got reminders first, warnings. I never just killed people for sport. I made up for it by helping Daniel find runaways. I had standards dammit.

“Who the hell am I trying to convince,” I said dryly to the empty room.

The Order of Merlin was another story entirely. They were willing to cross some uncomfortable lines. Their hate speech earlier and attempts at killing Kahina had proven our differences. They even tried to use one nonhuman race to kill another. People like Father Tom probably considered those Pack mercenaries being killed a bonus.

In the midst of my mental ranting, I finally remembered why the box from Father Tom’s desk looked familiar. Wooden carvings of men holding up the lid danced around the edge. That container had come from Evan, in the woods one night. I passed it to Daniel, and from there to the fat angry Senator. That had Arnold Regious’ ashes inside it.

I paced around the room. There were too many things not making sense for me. The box, Evan, Daniel all of them were supposedly central to my existence and it was a giant question mark.

Crumfield visited next. He held a gun in one hand while his face was borderline livid. One of the man’s hands ran through his hair and pulled at the roots.

I eyed him, unsure if his cover was blown as well. Maybe he got lucky. Everything looked the same as the Brother Zach persona. Stupid glasses, dyed hair, and makeup smudges that broke up the tan a bit.

"I thought you weren't like her. Thought you were just a sucker like so many are." He paced back and forth. We both walked back and forth in almost identical strides. "I believed you were a human. Wrong place, wrong time. Everything checked out! We watched that house for days!"

No surfer or Sector agent vocal patterns were being used. This was pure Zach. I kept walking but felt more confused than upset. What the hell was going on?

"Salted hamburger meat. Silver fork for the food. Cross on the bar counter. You didn't notice any of it!" He waved one arm rapidly.

I kept pacing but slowed down to match Daniel's movements. The agent matched my own steps similarly. We paused at the same time, turned around at the same time. How long had we known each other to walk like mirrors to each other?

"But no,” he said while waving an arm again. The gun’s tip made me jump. “Every thing to step into that house has just been another monster. Another thing out to get us poor humans."

His words irritated me, but his actions were still reflecting mine. I let him do it. He might be trying to calm me down or deliver some other message. Daniel used to steer me around open fields by slowly invading my personal bubble until I veered off to the side. Occasionally he sped me up by walking just a little faster or slowed me down by being slower. He knew how to get me moving.

"What do you think I look like? An idiot for letting someone slip past me. Now my faithful Brothers are subjected to additional review! They're true believers!" He glared at me and now I really understood his anger. The people he had under cover were being double checked because of me. That would piss Daniel off.

Some of the heated words I felt bubbling up after Father Tom slowly fell away. Daniel was worried about the people he brought in might be locked up, or worse. Was Daniel himself under suspicion?

"They wanted me to prove myself, prove that I'm not a monster like you," he said.

I stopped pacing and stepped over to the bars. Not pressing myself too close. Daniel worried me enough without putting myself near the firearm he carried. His hand kept flexing like he was dying to shoot me.

"Why would I respond to salt?" I asked.

He actually looked confused for a moment then winced. His eyes shut tight before an answer came out. "We thought you might be like that old lady."

"Rachel.”

"She's weakest to salt," he said then nodded.

"Salt?" My forehead wrinkled in puzzlement.

"Exactly. Why do you think she does all the cooking? It helps her control what goes in the food. Purist salt is what does it. Not just the incidental stuff you find laying around."

I felt let down. We didn’t share the same weakness, so the chances of Rachel and I belonging to the same race had been reduced to zero. "So she's not human,” I stated.

"Lord no. She's a monster. Remains of the Purge. A reminder of our forefathers' failures. Their great compromise with the evils of this world."

"Monster," the word escaped me. Never mind Daniel's excellent acting. He was well and truly Zach right now. Tone. Posture. The way he walked around. The only thing left over from Agent Daniel Crumfield was the hair pulling.

"Yes. Like you. A monster." Daniel looked nearly revolted, backing up slowly even though I was on the other side of metal rods.

"That's why I'm locked up."

"You're too dangerous to let run around. We have to study you, figure out your weaknesses."

"Because if the monster's in the cage, it can't be out there in the dark.” I pulled back one cheek and growled. “So you’re safe.”

"Shit, man." He tilted his head. "Ain’t nobody safe here. All the worst monsters are in the mirror," his voice was low. Was it low enough to avoid the microphone?

I was about to respond when Daniel lifted the gun and shot me in the thick of my leg. My body fell backward, face twisted in a snarl and eyes watered. I grunted poorly trying to choke out comprehensible words of anger. Language failed me as I cried out with a tone more primal beast than human. The walls rattled and ceiling creaked. This room felt suffocating then turned hotter.

Fire rolled across my vision then struggled to get out. It strained to paint the world in spiraling orange hues. To reduce everything to rubble by dragging down the man-made structure and laying waste to the world around me in anger.

I swallowed desperately trying to keep it back. Last time I let out that fire had been in Bottom Pit. That had caused me to black out and lose eyesight for days.

Daniel’s bullet hurt worse than being shot by Kahina’s bodyguard. It hurt worse than the combined actions of Roy punching my face, yanking on hair then pistol-whipping me. Being shot felt like my leg had been blown off.

He stopped outside the door before my eyes managed to focus. It didn't matter, I was on the ground, moaning, rolling, trying to back myself up to the far wall away from the door.

Gathering sanity took a moment. Both eyes were wild, arms pressed against the wall, leg draped limply across the floor. Blood dripped everywhere. Daniel’s absence barely reassured me. I had to figure out how bad the damage was. What if this didn't heal?

Huffing, heart racing, I scrambled to tear down the pants. Hands yanked at the edges and with a savageness that would have hurt had there not already been an overwhelming amount of pain flowing through the limb.

The torn fabric became a mop at the blood stain in order to see how much damage one bullet had caused. My wound looked small. There were no chunks of flesh missing and an exit wound showed on the other side. I looked around quickly and saw the bullet slug sitting in a wall.

I dragged myself across the room in a panic. Whatever he shot me with was clearly super effective and I needed to understand. Fingers curled around it quickly to get the dangerous item under control. Then I bound up my leg, put pressure on the limb and prayed it would close up soon.

Ten minutes later and the blood had definitely been staunched. Fantastic. I growled at myself as the word passed through my brain. The cot was in reach, I pulled the mattress off and grabbed the blankets. Rewinding cleaner fabric around my leg. Knotting it up with pieces of nearly threadbare mattress covers.

No one else came in the room. Things started spinning in and out. Darkness tried to claim me the same way it always did while healing. I could fight this. I needed to remain mostly conscious. The camera's red beep taunted me every few seconds. I laid there, propped up in the corner, huddling, trying not to shake from the pain.

The ground vibrated with that same nagging sensation. Rachel might have been trying to talk to me again. I couldn't risk pulling on my powers while trying to heal. Anything more might slip me over the edge into unconsciousness. Sleep would truly turn this into a nightmare. Not that my powers mattered after being shot by Daniel.

I tried to keep my eyes focused. My mind kept spinning around the bullet but nothing about it was special. The size was small caliber and my wound straight through. It wasn’t even explosive tipped and at most might pierce armor. He shot clear through me, so my skin wasn't similar to armor.

Was it because of Daniel? Because he was a Hunter? Another image flashed to mind. On top of that wooden box in Father Tom's office had once been another image. When I held it there had been a large serpent with scales. When Daniel held it there had been a robe wearing man with one large knife held in one hand behind his back.

Betrayer.

Hell. I had never heard a name for Daniel in my head before. Other people got them. Humans were Pink Meat. Evan the Incomplete Servant. Kahina the Dangerous Mate. Tal the Mountain Elder. Now there was a title for the agent, Daniel the Betrayer.

Beneath me the earth hummed in a soft tone. It sounded almost like a lullaby, and must have been Rachel trying to soothe me for some reason. We weren’t the same race so why did I feel her? What kind of creature would be allergic to salt?

I groaned and tried to hold onto the edge of awareness but started failing. Finally, the soothing song won and my mind slid into oblivion.