EXFLIBBERAGUIL AWOKE ONLY TO FIND HIMSELF COMPLETELY ALONE. Not even Box or the ferret was with him in the white room.

What the point of waking up, Exflibberaguil thought grumpily, when I’m better off asleep?

As the room slowly came into focus, Exflibberaguil was able to see four large televisions mounted on the four walls, plus another one on the ceiling for good measure. For the first few moments, the televisions showed only static. Then it came into focus, and showed a live video presumably from a surveillance camera.

He wasn’t able to comprehend much for the first few minutes. He had been recovering from the strange dream he had—something about hunger. It must have been heavily influenced by his loudly rumbling stomach.

After another fifteen minutes, Exflibberaguil finally sobered up. He finally was able to understand the meaning of the video. It showed Nick, all bundled up in chains and handcuffs, mumbling something and turning about restlessly. Her eyes were still closed, and it was evident she was still in deep sleep. Exflibberaguil knew that Mustela usually required less sleep, and had shorter dreams. Sodriew must need to sleep longer.

Exflibberaguil couldn’t see Nick’s bottom half, which was cropped off by the video. The camera was likely in the corner of the room with a rather low ceiling. Taking up much of the video space was a familiar spheroid contraption. Slowly, the memories came back to him.

“Nick!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Oh no! You’re going to get brain damage! Hey you stupid rabbit. I know you’re listening! Because I hope you’re happy that you are about to—to—” Exflibberaguil faltered.

“Ah, you’re awake,” a voice said. It had the same, strange accent as the previous rabbit, but it was undoubtfully a different person. It had something to do with the coldness of the voice. The previous rabbit’s voice held mostly amusement and sarcasm.

“Yes I’m awake!” Exflibberaguil yelled defiantly. “And I demand to be freed! Who are you anyway? Where’s the other guy?”

“The other rabbit is preparing the memory machine and is then going to jump off the ship. I doubt you would ever hear from her again.”

“Her?”

“She is female, yes.”

“Ah, I see,” Exflibberaguil replied awkwardly. He coughed slightly. “Well, anyways, I demand to be let out!”

“I was ordered to make sure you sat and watched. It’s about to start in, oh, four minutes.”

Exflibberaguil missed the insults the previous rabbit had ceaselessly thrown at him. “Er, let’s just get this out of the way. What gender are you?”

“Rather rude of you to ask that,” the rabbit replied coldly. “I see no reason why I should answer.” The rabbit went silent again. After a moment, it began, “You are quite strange.”

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“Me?” Exflibberaguil said, surprised that the rabbit began speaking once more.

“All the others went crazy when they saw their partners all tied up.”

“Others?”

The rabbit scoffed. “Don’t think you are so special. We’ve had plenty of other species. True, they didn’t have their memories wiped. They were mostly tortured, but I don’t know if Sodriew could handle too much electricity.”

“Strange that you should care about the Sodriew.”

The rabbit did not reply. It had evidently believed it had said too much. After a few attempts of striking a conversation again, Exflibberaguil too gave up and diverted his attentions to Nick.

“You are strange,” the rabbit repeated suddenly.

Exflibberaguil tried the rabbit’s tactic and ignored it. It didn’t have the same effect though. Instead, it seemed to be satisfied that Exflibberaguil could not come up with an adequate response. The only thing Exflibberaguil hated more than cheese puffs were challenges he could not finish.

“What?” he said, in order to provoke the rabbit in repeating itself.

“You are strange.”

“I prefer one of a kind,” Exflibberaguil replied coolly.

“It took you close to three galactic time units for you to come up with that,” the rabbit remarked snidely. Exflibberaguil kept his cool, but the tips of his eyes blushed red, giving him away.

“Fine!” he snapped. “You’ve been saying I’m strange three times now. I know you want to provoke me into saying something. What is it? Stop going around in that roundabout way. If you have something you want to say, say it out loud.”

“You’re strange,” the rabbit repeated for the umpteenth time. “Most of the others were wailing and pleading and begging to save their partner. But all you’re doing is arguing with me. Very strange.”

“Of course I’m worried! I just don’t show it.”

“Yet you react so quickly to my insults. I can’t say I believe you.”

Exflibberaguil’s ears were bright red now, and the color started to creep onto his face. “Well, I—”

Before he could find a sort of excuse, the rabbit interrupted him. “Save it. It seems like your friend has woke up. Oh, there’s your rabbit.”

Exflibberaguil turned around to face one of the many screens. The rabbit was right. Nick had woken up, not at all disturbed by her chains. She seemed oddly distant, as if she were hypnotized. Her mouth moved as if she were talking. Exflibberaguil would have thought the sound was off, if it hadn’t been for the high-pitched squealing of the rabbits.

One large, white rabbit with brown spots around his eyes was talking to a much smaller (though still rather fat for Odriew standard) black rabbit. Exflibberaguil assumed the bigger one was the rabbit that had spoken to him.

This was the second time he assumed wrong. The little black rabbit quickly noticed Nick’s movement. She hopped over to her, and in a surprisingly weak voice, said some unintelligible. It was without a doubt the weaker voice of the rabbit that had spoken earlier.

“It’s all muffled. I can’t hear a thing,” Exflibberaguil complained.

“You’re not supposed to,” the rabbit snapped.

After a moment, three robots, very much like Box, rolled up to Nick and proceeded to push her into the machine. The rabbit said something else, before hopping to the lowered control panel and began using the voice-activated system to begin the memory erasing process.

“Wait!” Exflibberaguil cried. “They need to give her the sunglasses! She’d go blind!”

“Strange, that’s the thing you’re panicked about,” the rabbit observed, “when she is likely to get permanent brain damage.”

“Oh, if you want to be cool and mysterious, then stay silent!” Exflibberaguil yelled. “Tell them that she needs to glasses!”

Exflibberaguil could already see the blue electricity coursing through the wires—telltale signs that the memory erase was about to begin.

“Quickly! Let me out you useless rabbit!”

The rabbit, apparently taking Exflibberaguil’s advice, stayed silent and wordless.

“I’m going to climb out then! I know you come in through the ceiling!”

“How?”

“Ha!” Exflibberaguil exclaimed triumphantly. “It is the ceiling! Now tell your rabbits that Nick needs—”

Suddenly, the room was filled with a bright white light, coming from all five directions.