When Eden came too, she was upside down and bouncing off of someone’s muscular back. Her eyes opened to darkness. A thick black fabric covered her entire head and she tried to remind herself to breathe slowly, to not let the fabric choke her. It was a struggle to keep her body limp as she slowly came back into herself but it was worth the fight. He hadn’t noticed yet that she had woken. He carried her roughly slung over his shoulder, like a sack of potatoes he didn’t care about bruising. Lucas. Where was he taking her? How long had they been walking? She could hear his labored breathing, but in the darkness and through the fog of her brain, it was impossible to tell how long she’d been out.

Her head ached; every movement that jostled her was a firework exploding behind her eyes. A wave of nausea rushed through her. Clamping her lips tight, she fought the vomit down again. It would help no one to puke inside her own fabric prison.

It was hard to think; everything was fuzzy and without her sight or smell or feet on the ground, she was helpless. It felt like a lifetime, punctuated by pains sharp and lasting, that he trundled along with her bouncing over his shoulder. He stumbled, pitching forward violently before he caught himself, and Eden couldn’t help but groan in agony.

“Good morning,” he said. “Not much farther now. Hang tight.”

She said nothing, gritting her teeth against his voice. He spoke to her as if she was a friend, as if he hadn’t just knocked her unconscious and stolen her. He spoke to her as if they were not enemies. The idea filled Eden with more rage than her bruised body could comfortably contain. It filled her throat with vile insults that she fought not to fling at him. Not yet. Not until she knew where she was. Not until she could see and defend herself.

She hit the ground hard, the air rushing from her body in a shuddering gasp. Lucas had dropped her, without word or warning, and she curled inward on herself, gasping to catch her breath. Her heartbeat was pounding in her ears, and she braced herself for whatever pain was coming next. The beating never came. Slowly, with trembling hands that she realized were numb because they were bound with rope, she pulled the hood from her head.

It was dark, and she was alone. The only light in the small room came from a window set high in the steel door. It was the soft glow of incandescent lighting, coming in from the lit hallway beyond. She blinked several times, head pounding each time, as she struggled to get her bearings. The floor was a rough patchwork of steel sheeting, welded and bolted together with raised seams. The walls were the same: steel and bolted together by an amateur by the looks of it, seams crooked and the bolts irregular. The air was musty and stale, unrecycled and unpurified. She shivered, whether from the cold or something else.

“Hello?” she called.

There was no answer; her voice bounced back at her and reverberated through her own skull. Her hands, bound together tightly, were pale from the loss of circulation. Her feet, she discovered when she tried to stand, were bound together as well, and bare. He’d taken her boots; most likely to discourage her from running. As she took stock, sitting pressed up against the far wall of the cell, Eden worked at the knot binding her feet. Her feet tingled as the rope came loose and the blood rushed back into them. She gasped with relief but there was no time to relax. She set to chewing at the bindings of her wrists. The rope, tight as it was, was mercifully thin, old, and already frayed. Lucas was a member of the Hive, that much she suspected. But why her? What value could she possibly have to the Hive? She took a break to spit rope fibers from her mouth, halfway through the bindings. She had nothing to offer them.

Finally, her teeth cut through the last strand of rope and she rubbed her hands together, trying desperately to win back the circulation. She cursed; the blood stung as it rushed back into her fingers. The window at the top of the door was high enough that she imagined she could stand on her tiptoes and crane her neck to see out of it. Eden groaned as she got to her feet, stumbling a bit as she got her balance and wondered again how long she’d been unconscious and bound.

A long hallway stretched in either direction. A patchwork of rusted and tarnished steel sheets were bolted together to make up the walls and flooring. Strip lights lined the corners where the wall met the floor or ceiling. After about ten meters in either direction, the halls turned sharply away, in either direction from what Eden could tell. The sections she could see were broken up regularly by other steel doors with slotted windows.

“Hello? Anyone else down here?” she called through the window, her voice echoing back at her from every direction.

Her echoes faded to silence. Eden tried to feel some comfort that the other steel doors apparently held no other prisoners. Alone, in the dark and the damp.

“I know you’re down here,” she shouted, more forcefully, almost offended by the lack of guards. “Cowards! Show yourselves! Anyone?” No response. “Cowards,” she whispered again.

Eden sank back to the floor, leaning backwards against the door. The broken rope and her hood lay crumpled in a pile in the center of the room. It wasn’t much of a room, really, now that she was looking around. She stretched her sore legs out in front of her and her toes came close to brushing the opposite wall. She could almost feel the kiss of steel on her fingertips if she were to open her arms out wide.

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How long had she been down here? Eden took a deep shaking breath, trying not to choke on the stale air and willing her racing heart to settle. Rory would notice she was missing, sooner rather than later. He’d know, somehow, what had happened. He wouldn’t let her become one of the missing, like Alex Jepsen.

She had to be deep in the old mines; it was the only place that made sense to be this damp, dark, and stale. In the beginning, in the early days of Haven, the city had worked the mines, searching for gold or other precious metals. Nothing but bad luck beneath the surface. As the ground refused to yield its treasure and instead claimed several lives due to the unstable mines, they sealed it up and put in support beams where necessary. And, some said, off-site research labs. Off-site, secretive research. Those were the rumors. Everyone knew the mines were simply too unstable to stay in. Clever, Eden had to admit. The Cards and the city police had poked around in the upper levels of the mines, but deemed it unlikely that anyone had made their home further down, even a radical terrorist group. The danger of exploration wasn’t worth the risk and common theory was that the Hive operated a moving base throughout the city, always one step ahead of everyone else. They weren’t one step ahead. They were miles below.

It was impossible to track the passage of time in the unchanging unnatural twilight of her cell. Time passed, despite Eden’s best efforts, but eventually she heard heavy footsteps, the sound echoing off the walls. She counted the footsteps as they came closer and closer towards her cell. She didn’t know if she hoped they stopped or continued past her, suddenly. Her mouth was dry and her hands were damp with sweat. She moved away from the door and instead crouched against the far wall facing the tiny window of light. She tried to make her posture look as nonchalant as possible.

The steps slowed outside the door; Eden held her breath and wondered if her visitor could hear her heart thumping. The door swung open jerkily, the hinges ungreased and complaining loudly. Eden waited, her body tense and coiled against the wall like a spring, waiting to pounce.

“What–”

Eden launched forward with all her might, throwing herself towards the man who had let himself into the cell and still held the door open wide. It was Lucas, she realized as she tried to dodge around him. He filled most of the doorway, but she ducked beneath his arm and stepped out into the hallway, exhilaration and adrenaline moving her forwards until she was yanked backwards by her ponytail and thrown back into the corner of her cell, pain blossoming again in her back of her head.

“You don’t want to fight me, Eden,” Lucas said. “Just hang out and listen for a minute.”

“You don’t know what I want,” she growled. Eden could taste blood in her mouth. She’d bit her lip when she hit the wall. “How do you know me? What do you want with me? Who are you?”

If she couldn’t get past him, maybe she could get something out of them. Lucas crouched in front of her, elbows on his knees, cocking his head at her curiously. There was not an abundance of malice in his eyes, but he did look fairly annoyed.

“I’m Lucas,” he said. “I told you that already. Now, tell me everything you know about Paradisium.”

Paradisium. The same strange word from Rory’s report, the one that had made him so angry. Her eyes widened. What was he involved in? She let the surprise pass through her and tried to let it go, trying to keep her face a neutral mask.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “What is that?”

He raised one bushy eyebrow. “I think you know what it is. You’re close with Dr. Lawrence; we already know this. Tell me what you know about Paradisium, what Dr. Lawrence is working on. Start talking. I don’t want to have to hurt you again.”

She mustered all her strength and took aim. Eden spat in his face, an equal mix of blood and saliva. She braced herself, waiting for the blow to come. Hal would have knocked her backwards for that. Lucas stared at her, shock on his face.

“No dinner tonight, I suppose,” he said, wiping his face. “No one will find you here, Eden. No one is coming to save you, and I’ve got all the time in the world. I’ll be back.”

Alone. Lucas left her without a backwards glance, muttering darkly as he let the cell door close behind him. She threw herself at the door after him but it locked automatically as it closed. Panic rose like bile in her throat and the edges of her vision darkened. Her eyes darted from one corner of the sterile metal cell to another. He would be back and there was no way she would face him again unarmed.

The room was bare, completely unfurnished besides the ropes and hood that lay in a pile in the center of the room. She picked the hood up and threw it roughly at the wall. She fought the urge to scream as it slid to the ground with an unsatisfyingly soft thump.

There had to be some way to prepare herself for his next visit; Eden wasn’t ready to sink to the floor in defeat yet. Another deep breath steadied her and her vision cleared, but her stomach rolled. She stumbled and threw her hands out to steady herself again.

Her fingers caught at the seam between two sheets of metal. It was loose, the bolts too old and rusted to hold the sheets together securely. Eden pulled at the seam again, digging her fingers between the two sheets until the seam was coated in blood but wiggling freely, a large piece almost coming loose in her hands.

“Come on,” she whispered. “Come on!”

With a primal grunt, Eden tore the piece of the lower sheet of metal away, revealing only the solid dirt wall behind it. She hefted the piece of metal, about as long as her forearm and half as wide. The edge was ragged and rusted where it had broken apart from the rest of the siding, and smeared with streaks of her blood. It was light and Eden tested it by swinging it over her head once and then again. She winced as the edge bit into her hand again but she was able to keep hold. It wasn’t much, Eden realized as she settled on the floor of her cell with her makeshift weapon behind her back. It was all she had. It would have to be enough. Eden leaned her head back against the cool steel of the wall and waited. All she could do was wait.