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This is an epic headache, Stoic.

“My head hurts,” Abe heard himself say. His ears heard his own words as a gentle murmur, but his mind heard thunder, lightning, and painful white noise.

“Hm?” a female voice responded. It came from about ten feet away. Her voice also came to his ears as a gentle murmur, but they exploded in his mind.

Are your eyes open, Stoic?

Abe opened his eyes and saw…nothing.

Black, everything is black.

“Everything is black, Sano,” Abe said.

“I like it that way,” said the voice.

That isn’t Sano.

“I feel like throwing up,” said Abe.

“Perhaps you should go back to sleep.”

No, Stoic. If you go back to sleep you won’t wake up again.

“I have to get up,” Abe said. “I’m thirsty. Help me up. Why can’t I move?”

Stoic, you have been restrained. You are in a condition of being restrained. Don’t throw up. No, Stoic, don’t throw up now. You might aspirate and die.

Abe moaned piteously. “Please,” he said, trying to still the horrible echoes in his head. “Please let me sit up. The bed is spinning.”

He heard the female in the room breathe in and out a few times. Then there was quiet movement, like a cat wending across a mantelpiece. She drew closer.

“If you resist me,” she said, “I must restrain you immediately. Let me move you. Do not move by yourself.”

“Okay.”

Her fingers touched his torso, and he felt a wave of nausea and the thrill of female touch ride simultaneously through his body. Easy, now, Stoic. He became aware of another sound: the sound of a quiet propane heater, a subdued hiss making its way from another room. He was warm, although he was beginning to perceive that he was shirtless.

“Now I remember,” he said.

“Your friends’ names?” asked the female.

“No,” said Abe. “Now I remember what it’s like to feel warm.” He felt her hand pull one of his hands forward. It was almost more thrill than he could bear. Her breath tickled his skin every time she exhaled.

“Sit up a little,” she said. “Not too much too fast. You may pass out, and we can’t have that, now can we?” It was the gentlest, sweetest voice Abe had ever heard.

He pulled himself up to rest on his elbows, raising his head just a bit, but the pain was too great to bear. He winced and cried out quietly, falling back into his pillow.

“Yes,” she said. “Nice and easy. See? Next time we’ll put a pillow beneath your head.” She was whispering almost directly into his ear. “Oopsie-daisy!” she said, helping him raise his head up. She placed a second pillow under his head.

The pounding within his mind subsided after a few seconds. Abe said, “Let’s go a little further.”

“Whatever you desire,” she said.

Eventually, they had Abe sitting almost upright in a bed of some sort, a futon with a thin mattress, he surmised: he could not see anything. She gave him a glass of water, which she guided into his hand, and he drank. “Why am I here?”

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“I rescued you,” she said. “You cracked your head on a sharp rock, and I rescued you.”

“When?”

“Earlier today—or yesterday. I think it’s morning now, before the sunrise.”

“Darkest before dawn,” said Abe. “Why am I naked?”

She laughed very gently. “You’re not quite naked; I left your underwear on. You bled from your head quite a bit, and now your clothes are hanging over the heater in the other room, drying out after I washed them.”

“You washed all my clothes?”

“Mhm,” she said.

“That was nice of you.”

“Mhm.”

“So,” Abe said. “Why have you restrained me?”

“Do I have to answer that, my friend?” she said, with a gentle remonstrance in her tone.

“No, I suppose not,” he said. “But you know I’m unarmed.”

“Unarmed?” she said. “None of us are unarmed. We have weapons built in.”

It was Abe’s turn to say, “Hm?”

“You’re a company man, aren’t you?”

Abe felt himself come fully awake. “No, not me. One of my friends—” He said that much before he caught himself.

The female was silent for a moment. He heard her breathe very softly, and he felt her breath on his body when she exhaled. She spoke, “Well, that’s not important right now. What is important is that you’re all right and recovering.”

Oh, for Umezawa!

Abe remained silent. He felt a fear begin to grow very slightly, but increasingly. “Thank you,” he said.

“How is your headache?”

“It’s getting better. I wonder if some acetaminophen might help, though.”

She moved away, saying, “I’m sure you have a fractured skull. That was a lot of blood.”

Abe tried to feel his head. He felt his arms snap back into place.

“Why do you have me restrained?”

“I already told you,” she said, her soft voice complemented by the sound of rummaging in a medical kit. Abe recognized the sound from familiarity with Lars’s kit. “You all have weapons built in.”

“I already told you,” Abe said, more fear rising within him, “Not me.”

“Oh, let’s not worry about that right now. Here we are!” she said, brightly, though still quite softly. She returned, bringing with her her soft breath and a small package. He heard it being torn open, its contents being pressed into his hand.

“I can’t reach my mouth.”

“Yes, you can reach your mouth,” she said. “I made sure you could feed yourself.”

“Who are you?”

“I will not tell you, not here in the darkness,” she replied, almost as sweetly as Sano would reply. “You may think of me as a collector, I think. Yes, for now, think of me as a collector, and for the rest of this night, trust that I have collected you, and in the light of day, we will learn more about each other. Now, do you have your water?”

Abe took his acetaminophen, drank the water lustily, and realized he was hungry.

“I’m hungry.”

“How’s your nausea?”

“Oh, here and there. I imagine I could take some broth, and maybe some hard bread. You Americans like those saltine crackers, or those oyster crackers.”

Abe heard her laugh very gently. “It just so happens I have chicken noodle soup at hand, and I also have saltines and oyster crackers. Which would you prefer?”

“Baby,” Abe heard himself say, “I want both.”

Well, Stoic, you really are improving very rapidly. Were those pills actually acetaminophen or something more soothing?

“Mhm,” said the female. He saw a flame of propane suddenly leap into being with a pop. The blue light of the flame illuminated a kitchen area about twenty feet from where he was lying, so his eyes desperately searched where a figure of a female should be, but somehow she kept herself hidden in shadows cast by a pot, a box, and other mealtime accoutrements. Every once and again he thought he caught a glimpse of flowing hair. A thrill shuddered through him.

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After a few moments, he heard some water bubble, then she said, “All right then, in a few minutes we’ll have you some broth and all the crackers a boy could desire.”

Boy?

“Aw.”

“Something the matter?”

“No.” Abe sulked within himself.

In a few minutes, she came to him, preceded by the aroma of warm chicken broth. He tried to feed himself, but without any light, it came to no avail. “You’ll have to help me.”

She laughed gently again. “Baby,” she remonstrated. She took the spoon from his hand and began to feed him.

Find it again, Abe. This adventure might turn into something more…uh…pleasurable.

“Baby,” Abe repeated back to her. “You can see in the dark, can’t you?”

She paused before answering. “Of course,” she said.

“I want some crackers.”

She fed him a saltine cracker.

“No, oyster crackers.”

“Oh, you are a naughty little boy aren’t you?” She was nearly giggling. “I haven’t collected one like you.”

She can see you! SHE CAN SEE YOU, STOIC! Do not react. DO NOT REACT!

Abe breathed very deeply, in his diaphragm, just like Lars had taught him when they were talking about shooting to kill. “Don’t raise you shoulders,” Lars had said. “What the hell do shoulders have to do with cardiopulmonary operations?” Thus Abe learned to control his body from the inside, and he did so, breathing from his gut. He thereby resisted raising his eyebrows.

“Very good!” she said. “I believe you, you see. You are not one of the ones I’m after, but you have been among them whom I seek. They have been training you, have they not?”

“Oyster crackers,” Abe said. Suddenly, he felt her fingertips on his lips, pushing one oyster cracker after another into his mouth. He resisted every urge, every wave of urging, to lick her fingertips.

No, Stoic, don’t do it. This is good, Abe. Very, very good. Self-regulating, Abe. No, don’t throw up.

“I think I have to throw up.”

She said, “Don’t throw up.”

Don’t throw up. Not now, not in front of her.

“That’s enough, then,” Abe said. “Another sip or two of that broth, and I need to sleep again. I think it’s safe for me to sleep, don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” she said, as a declaration of fact. “Skull fracture, concussion, headache. Do you have brain bleed? There’s no way to tell, is there?”

“I wonder if one of those new ones had a scanner—” Abe said that much before he caught himself.

“Yes,” she said. “I collected one of the ‘new ones’ just before you and your friends reappeared. He will be difficult for them to refurbish him. I think the insurance company will total him. I found a giant boulder near his corpse; it looked as though it had just been dug from the earth.

Abe felt the hurt return. He said, “The mountain killed him.”

“That much was obvious,” she replied.

“How much do you know about them?”

“Only enough to collect them. I will say this much more about that: given the difficulties in collecting them, I’m going to demand more detailed schematics and algorithm architecture. This has been…frustrating.”

Abe thought for a moment, struggling against the urge to fall asleep and against the dull headache and against obvious traumatic bodily damage. He said, “Was it you that caused Meredith to raise his hand as a signal?”

“Hm? No, not me,” she said. “I didn’t see that. I had only just returned.” Then she said, “See, the Canadians—they have a different way of doing things, a distinct way of doing things. They like their helicopters.”

“So tired…”

“Yes, try to sleep,” the female said. “I will watch over you. I will awaken you should you show signs of a…struggle…”

“If I don’t struggle?”

“Consider it a peaceful end, I suppose,” she said.

“Those are my choices?” Abe yawned.

“If I removed these restraints, you would have very few reasonable options, and most of them end poorly for you.”

“Then remove the restraints, and I’ll be more at ease.”

“I’m removing poor ends from your range of choices. You are more valuable to me with restricted choices.”