Chiro was allowed to bring lunch and dinner up to Sam's room so that he wouldn't have to go down the stairs. As he sat on the floor against Sam's dresser, he proudly described how he begged Butler to let him do it until the older man gave in just to make him be quiet. Sam smiled, but he wasn't really listening. He waited until there was a break in the narrative and cut in.

"Did you see Manus at lunch?"

"No, and nobody else said anything. Maybe he quit, too."

"Do you really believe that, Chiro?"

Chiro pressed his thin lips together so tightly that they almost disappeared entirely. A sharp shake of his head was all that Sam got as an answer.

"What is happening here?" Sam slowly rolled onto his side so that he could eat from the tray on the bed next to him without dribbling it all across his shirt. His eyes never left his friend's face, and when it was obvious that Chiro was not going to respond, he sighed and set down his spoon. "You get so much joy from explaining every little thing, and yet now you won't talk to me. What are you thinking?"

"I—" Chiro looked across Sam's room and out the door, to the closed door across the way. His voice not much more than a whisper, he said, "I think things are bad, Sam."

"The master of my town sold me off to people from somewhere we didn't even have tall tales about, and I woke up in a weird-looking house surrounded by weird people that talk weirdly, and weird stuff is happening and-"

A rough chuckle escaped Chiro's lips. "Stop saying 'weird' so much, Sam."

"Well, what else would describe all this? Except, maybe, scary..." Sam dropped his eyes to the food in front of him. The strong smell of cleaners was wafting in from the hall, and combined with his unsettled mind, his stomach no longer wanted to finish what was on the plate. "I don't think they quit, Chiro."

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"I don't think so, either. But why won't they tell us what is going on? That woman screaming that night, is something making people sick? Like a brain worm or something? We are all eating the same things, though, and the three who have gone missing so far are from three different work groups..."

"And what about those noises I heard last night?" Sam had to force the words out before he chickened out. "Someone was leaving that room. Was it a doctor they brought in? Is that why the cleaner smell is so strong, they are trying to kill off the sickness that might have been left behind?"

They looked at each other, and then, as one, their eyes turned toward the closed door across the hall again. When Butler stepped into the frame created by the doorway in their vision, they both let out gasps of surprise. The grave man frowned at them both. "Meal time is over. Take his tray with you when you go downstairs."

Chiro did not need his name mentioned to figure out who Butler was talking to, and he scrambled to his feet to do as told. After the boy scooted past, Butler looked to Sam once more before closing his bedroom door.

Alone, Sam couldn't stop his mind from going over the night before, over and over. If people were getting sick, then staying up at night was not going to change anything. It didn't make the fear go away, of course, but when the room started to darken, Sam was able to fall asleep. He had nightmares of people falling to the floor, blood coming from their eyes as something ate away at them from inside. One dream bled into another, and if he woke up shaking from lingering fear, he at least woke up refreshed from a full night of sleep.

His back was no longer aching as much. When the door unlocked, he stood up and got dressed before going out into the hall. The door across from his opened as he stepped out, and an older woman with broad shoulders stepped out in front of him.

"Where do we go for breakfast?" Her words pulled out at the ends, her accent yet another that Sam had never heard before.

"It's right down these stairs," Sam responded politely. The gears in his head were turning, trying to decide if she was safe to stand near. The smell of cleaner was so strong in her room that it clung to her skin. She nodded at him and strode briskly toward the stairwell, her sensible brown shoes making little thumping noises as she went.