ADELLA (IX)
6th of 11 Month, 281st Year of the Triumvirate

In recent days, I have found myself going around in circles about where to begin in recalling the events surrounding my capture in the swamps around Lelina. My memory is all too muddled by the stress of our situation and the horrors my compatriots and I were forced to endure. They tell me I was gone only for one year, but that one year seemed like an eternity.

Time is hard to measure when you’re in captivity. When every moment could potentially be your last, time becomes simultaneously priceless and worthless. I’m not sure how to describe it, exactly. Your mind fades between hopefulness and despair. Your worst enemy is your own mind. Eventually you learn to shut it down, and everything becomes a blur.

I had no idea where I was when I came to in what, I’ve been told, was an abandoned hospital in the wilds outside of Point Hammond. All I remember is that Rothery and Meriam were there. In the beginning, that was some sort of, I suppose selfish, comfort. There were others as well, in the beginning. About twenty five or thirty. They’d all been there longer than us, and the realities of their situation had long since set in. From time to time one would be taken away, seemingly at random. Others would be brought. From the whispers of our fellow captives, no one was ever brought back after they’d left. Everyone who entered the room did so for the first time. Everyone who left did so for the last.

For the longest time we were left alone together. Our captors, whoever they were, bothered us not. They did not taunt nor torture us, nor did they provide anything other than food or water. We were kept alive, but in squalor. The stench was unbearable. I never got used to it and even now I can taste the air of that place in the back of my throat.

From time to time I could see shadows behind the frosted glass panes overlooking the room. The shadows would stand there, still as statues until turning away and disappearing. It was almost always just an individual. Every now and again it would be a group. At first I thought I might discern a pattern, and be able to count the passage of time based on when it was a single shadow, or multiple. I soon learned that it was completely random.

I slept 40 times before the ‘scenarios’ began. The ‘scenarios’ were what turned our imprisonment from an atrocious situation to a living hell.

They began secretly giving messages to us. At first the messages would be some innocuous thing, like what day of the week it was. These we shared when they started coming. And it was through this sharing that the various groups within the room started to finally intermingle. I suppose that was the point.

I slept fifteen more times when I began to notice a change, however. People seemed to be keeping secrets, and the number of messages we shared began to dwindle. The messages had changed, but to what, I wondered?

One day I bit into a piece of bread to find a piece of paper stashed inside, along with a nail file.

It read: ‘Someone plans to kill you. They believe you plan to kill someone close to them.’
I stood up and went to the center of the room and I told everyone what I found, placing the nail file on the floor. I said that I had no intentions of hurting anyone, and if anyone had received a similar message, it was likely a manipulation.

I left the file and turned to head back to Rothery and Meriam. I only made it a few steps when I heard rushed footsteps behind me. I turned to see one of the other captives, a woman whose name I cannot remember, rushing toward the file. She picked it up and dashed to the other side of the room, straight toward a man standing against the wall.

There was no hesitation, no warning. She just drove the nail file into the man’s neck and killed him. When the others stood up in outrage, she tried to explain.

‘I have a sick son!’ she said. ‘They said they’d get him medicine if I did it! I’m sorry!’

No one listened. They all turned their back on her. I turned my back on her.

A few sleeps later and one of the men, whose name I do remember, Shelby, began to suggest we organize. If we were going to keep our sanity, he said, we should instill order. Our own order. None of us were a threat to each other, he said. It was us versus the bastards who put us in here.

We listened to him. That was a mistake.

Shelby did instill order, but it was an unfair one. He elected himself as the leader. No, that’s a lie. We all looked to him. He seemed the most capable. But he wasn’t what he seemed.

As we eventually learned, he was one of Them. And two of the four others he appointed as his lieutenants were Them, as well. Eventually they just became a new form of messengers. Only now the messages were coming from people we thought were trustworthy.

It didn’t take long before we were at each others throats, accusing each other of stealing food or plotting against each other. We all began to fight. Shelby would swoop in and break it up sometimes. Other times he seemed resigned to watch. To observe. That was my first clue.

Then they started offering people respite. For those who did what They wanted, they were promised extra meals, or a bath. They promised tiny things, things most of us would take for granted. But they seemed like such huge prizes in the dark.

Then, the Worst Day happened. I’m not sure on the details. It started with an errant accusation, or an insult. It doesn’t matter. Five of us died that day. Meriam was one of them. She’d just gotten caught in the middle.

New people were brought in. This was after Shelby and his two cohorts were revealed to be Them. So these new people, they never stood a chance. Their every move was watched. The slightest misstep either got them beaten or killed. Not by Them. But by Us. They weren’t even sending us messages any more at that point. They didn’t need to. When we started treating the new captives as our own captives, I realized, there was no Them anymore.

I started to think none of this would end. But then it did. Agent Pixie Sinclaire and Professor Veronica Trenum. One day they just entered the room on their own volition, unbound, with several men in blue at their backs and a third, giant woman in shackles with them. They took one look around, and the horror on their faces really drove home what we had done.

How dare they, I thought, looking at the judgement in their eyes. How dare they judge?

And then one of the men in Blue pointed at me, and made Pixie Sinclaire an offer.