I woke up slowly. I wanted to pretend that I was asleep on my own bed and mom would wake me up soon. When I opened my eyes, I was in a hospital room, Nikolai sitting next to my bed.

"Good morning!" Nikolai smirked. He wrote something somewhere i couldn't see it.

"How long was I out?" I tried to sit up, but I was tied to the bed. I fell down back to lie down.

"Only for the night."

The boy got up and knocked three times on the door of the room. “I don't understand why you wanted to go to the blue house. If you're looking for a playground, it's far from there.” Nikolai tried to hold back his laughter.

I tried to remember what happened to me before I lost consciousness. I remember those horrible spikes and the dead people. I remember how close I came to being one of those dead bodies. I stared at Nikolai and tried to look like I was okay, even though he probably wouldn't have cared, even if I had started to cry or react in any way possible.

"No-one told me I couldn't go there. Is being curious illegal here." I moved my shoulders. I have never felt like this… aching feeling all over. I tried to sit on the edge of the bed, but even the slightest movement made my head spin.

"Curiosity isn't illegal, but breaking and entering is." Nikolai sat next to me and slapped me. That beat kind of made me focus. The room was no longer spinning, so I could see more closely around me. I was in a very simple room where the only decoration was a poster of a doctor with a giant staff. Next to my bed was a small flower with a small card on the side that read:

"I'll talk to you later, I'm really sorry. I promise I explain all of it.

- Dad"

"You're lucky Louis is your father, otherwise you'd be in real trouble."

"What is really going on in the blue house? I- I saw a dead body.” I didn't realize it at first, but my hand was shaking almost panic-like. I would have thought Nikolai would be horrified. He just… chuckled and shook his head like I was a total idiot for being so scared about such a trivial thing.

"They're not dead, just…unconscious." Nikolai spoke as if all this was just normal life for him. “I'm not your father. Ask your real father about this. I just had to let him know when you wake up.” I won't say anything else to Nikolai. I just stared ahead and breathed in and out. Nikolai walked to the door and opened it. Before he left, he stops for a moment.

“If this is too much for you, you'd better go home with your tail between your legs. I don't know what is being done in Tartarus, but here we are trying to survive. If you want to stay here, you have to learn it.” That was the last thing he said before he left.

That same moment I found myself squirming out of my chains. I didn't know what else I could do. Dad will come soon. He would surely explain all this for sure. On the other hand... Do I want this situation to be explained to me in a way that makes what I saw somehow acceptable?

I slowly walked to the other side of the room with a giant window. Every step I took hurt. My muscles felt like they were on fire. Outside, everything looked the same as yesterday. People seemed to be living their normal lives. I guess I could do the same. Instead, I opened the window and jumped from the window to the roof.

As I should have guessed, it really hurt. I tried to regain my balance as the world spun around me. I slowly stepped forward to stay upright. However, I was still on the roof, from which parts could easily come off. I only remembered that fact when I hit a small piece of metal that had come off the roof that threw me off of it.

Surprisingly, I didn't die or even hurt myself. Instead, I fell straight into my father's arms. Dad chuckled uncomfortably as I looked at him confused, but I could see how my surprise made his heart skip a beat. All he could do between shocks was say, “What you-”

"I was not created to live within four walls." I tried to laugh it all off, but it sounded more like an insult. Dad didn't laugh, didn't even smile. He looked at the hospital door for a long time, but then turned to walk in a completely different direction, me in his arms. I smiled deliriously and tried to say something funny.

After a moment that felt like a second and a year at the same time, we arrived in front of a brand new house. Dad put me down, and made me sit on the steps of the house. "Wait a minute here, I'll be right back." Dad walked into the house, and quickly came out with a small pill in his hand and a strangely shaped glass of water.

"How can I be sure that this isn't a way to try to kill me too." I didn't try to joke anymore. I tried to smile, but I felt more like I was going to cry.

“Edan, just trust me.” Dad smiled in his usual charismatic style. I looked at the glass and the pill for a couple of seconds. After a small sigh, I swallowed the pill whole and drank the whole glass. Why was it so hard for me to disobey orders here? I could do it better at home. Louis pressed my head against his shoulder. I was too weak to tell dad no. I felt my whole body begin to shake slightly as his sweat stained hands wrapped around me. “I'm really sorry I didn't warn you about that house. You were never meant to see what's inside it."

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"What even is that place?" Part of me wanted to move away but father's hug felt nice.

When dad finally loosened his grip, he put his hands on my shoulders and lifted me so that I was looking straight into the man's eyes. “I want you to understand that that place is not as bad as you think. It's just a new testing ground for I.C.T.A.” I had once read about I.C.T.A a long time ago. It was probably some homework topic. At least I remembered that they were in charge of Tartaros when it was still a bad place. They are mentioned in the news article that was in Mom's office. However, I must have never heard what they actually did.

"Then why those pipes- I saw someone's body!" I tried to gather my thoughts into some kind of pile. "Someone was forced in there!" My words sounded slurred.

Louis sighed quietly and stood up. A small strand of hair escaped from Father's bun in front of his face, and he did not fix it back. "We have an agreement with I.C.T.A. We give them criminals to test their drugs and other experiments that they do. They, in turn, help us maintain control in Ashphodea. So we even have some help when we get here... distractions like you know who. Don't worry, all the people who end up there are bad people who have committed bad crimes. We never harm innocent people.”

"You test drugs on... humans?"

“I don't know for sure what excactly they are doing. Neela works more with them." Dad crouched down in front of me and hugged me tenderly. "Be that as it may, we have no other options. I.C.T.A is vital to our lives. A big price for a big job.”

"Couldn't it be done without… people?"

"If only life were so easy. If we had other options, we would have done that.” I didn't know what to say. My father's words were drilled into my head. "I'm a good person, we all are. Even good people have to make difficult choices sometimes." Dad had such a confident look on his face that I too believed every word that came out of his mouth. I don't know if it was because of what dad said, or because of the pill I just took. I just... believed him.

“Okay, I… Did you have anything other than an apology?” I got up, which happened shakily, but it still worked. Louis gave me a big smile and pointed to the house across from us. It was a gray box-like house that was very strange among the rest of the simple beauty. It was just… a house.

"I thought we could go try shooting. I want to see what Tartaros teaches you.” I looked at my father questioningly. Yes, we learned about guns in school and I was pretty good. At school we had to try out all possible weapons so that we could get experience with all weapons and figure out what suits us best. Firearms have always been my favorite, but my mother hated them and told me she wouldn't want me to be a "gun person". Still, I keep learning to use guns.

The inside of the room was as dreary and gray as the outside. One of the walls of the room was filled with various firearms. On one side of the guns was a simple one with figures at the end that were all too familiar to me. Dad took a simple shotgun from the gun rack and tossed me a smaller pistol.

"How good is your aim?" Dad said, pointing at the targets with his gun, "Show me what your mother taught you." Dad fired and one target that looked too much like Serena exploded into pieces and a second one appeared in its place.

“No- So, Mother hasn't taught me anything about using a gun. Serena-Eurydale teaches all the children of Tartarus. She's tolerable. A bit strict, but she lets us try everything.” I was trying to think of something negative to say when I realized that Dad didn't like what I said. "But even though my mother doesn't teach me very much, she can be really tough. She tells me to train for hours on end, but he doesn't like the idea of me actually fighting. Then, when I say that I would like to try to be like Milo-Stheno, she denies it, because I am much more useful on the field."

Father laughed and shot the new target to pieces. “I can see it clearly. Evie-Your mother is a very… interesting person.” I raised my pistol and looked away so I could shoot one of the targets. “I don't want to talk about your mother all this time we've been together, but…did she ever talk about me? Do you know anything about me?”

I thought carefully about what I could and couldn't say. “Really, I didn't even know you existed. Mom said she'd tell me about you when I was older, but I don't know if she was lying.”

Father laughed and shot another target. "That is completely absurd. You have a right to know about these types of things. I should already know what your favorite food is and you should know my most embarrassing memory that will teach you to be a good lesson.” The man lashed out in frustration and shot two more targets. "If I had known, we wouldn't be in this situation."

"Your fiancé might not have liked it if my mother had come to your door with the baby." I laughed nervously and fired the first shot. I got really close, but not quite.

"Almost! Good position, just make it more stable.” Dad smiled at me and corrected my position. "You don't need care about women's opinions. This relationship is the most important. You don't have to think about your mother or Neela when we are alone.” I smiled a little and shot one of the targets, hitting perfectly.

I tried to shoot again without my father's help. I hit the target right in the middle. I was so excited that I screamed with excitement. Dad eagerly slapped me on the shoulder, just like Sonia would. “We should do this more often.”

"We can make this a weekly thing if you stay here for a longer time," Father said, "Your mother probably won't notice you're gone, she spends all her time being stubborn and hunting strays."

I didn't know if it was a joke or not. I still laughed. "My favorite food is meat substitute and vegetables," I said to change the subject, "What is that memory you wanted to tell me about?" Dad messed my hair.

"It's a funny story. It happened in the first year of my law enforcement training…”

And that's how rest of our day continued. We talked about everything we didn't know about each other yet. Moment by moment I noticed new similarities in us like our eyes. We both get easily interested in things. We both don't have a lot of friends. Father told me about the world beyond Tartaros and Ashphodea, and we planned to travel to see other cities sometime. Father promised to show me the walls that were the reason for the building of Tartaros and Ashphodea.

I didn't want to admit it, but I was starting to like this place.