I awoke in a cell. They had somehow knocked me out. For a moment I questioned how they did that without chipping my bones, but I had more important things to worry about.

It was a cell, to be sure. But the worst part was all around, everywhere I looked.

It was perfectly designed for me.

Posters on the wall of my favorite rock singer, Kerrigan West, a hot tub, upon the counters lay packages of Sauce Pockets, Cheese Twisties, and cinnamon bagels. Why had they specifically fitted this cell for me? How did they even learn this!? How did they even know I could eat food?! Well, I wasn’t going to complain about it, but this felt like a trick, or some sort of bribe.

A cable was stuck onto my forehead with a sticker, dangling in my face. I thought it was my old hair finally growing back. Well I guess Ol’ Stocklord isn’t that lucky.

I ripped it off instantly, “For Pete’s sake, these people are trying to jack my mind! Or what’s left of it…” I thought, feeling at least a little free from the invasion of privacy. I was going with a Quincy level paranoid theory that they could read my brain thoughts. Darn, I missed that kid already.

I stood up and looked around wildly, staring at all the walls quickly to make sure nobody was watching me through cameras…

I suppose I got the answer to that one.

There was an obvious camera in the top left corner of the room, too high for me to reach since I’m short. Gaaaah… I bet they planned that shit out too.

As I was straining myself trying to reach the camera, the bars on the ‘cell’ rose and a woman walked in. She was pretty old, around her fifties, but she still seemed pretty lively. Her eyes were somehow baggy, yet gave me an undeniable glare that rocked my soul. She was also tall, scarily so. She seemed like a creature the Greeks would lock in a maze, yet somehow more graceful and beautiful. And no, she wasn’t a literal minotaur or anything, but she was certainly… ugly. To put it bluntly, ya know.

“Jonah.” she said promptly, pulling a small clipboard from her white doctor’s coat. “Please, sign here.”

“What is this all about, ay?” I curiously asked, taking the board and reading over the paper.

“Just some legal stuff you are required to sign. I don’t think too much about that jabber.” she told me. I wasn’t going to listen to that.

“You have a name, lady?” I said with disdain. She was obviously trying to get me to fall for a Soul Signature. I wouldn’t sign until I read it all over and scanned for fine print.

Soul Signatures are just a fancy way of saying ‘Sign this, and sign your life away’. The effects varied based on the specifics, but it was a viable way of hiring unwitting minions. Or perhaps even tricking me, they thought. The absolute fools, I am Stocklord! The last thing I’m gonna fall for is a cursed contract.

“You will address me as Beta, and you will cease your ill-bearing attitude. I am your caretaker for your time here in Dark N.W. Facility, and you will comply with anything I request of you. Sign the paper.” she ordered quite bossily. I dunno if she was trying to mind control me or something, but I hated being told what to do. So I chucked the clipboard aside onto the floor when I saw one line that stood out.

“You forfeit all usage of your power to outside entities and third parties upon signing this document.”

“You will sign that.” she demanded. Eh, ya know, I’m a gentleman, I respect women, but I also really wanted to hit this woman right now. Like just whack her senseless in this cell for all the garbage TUHF has done to my brilliant company, but I restrained myself.

“You’ll have to make me.” I told her, sneering. “I’m not signing away my powers to something I know nothing about.”

“The boss told me you’d be stupid, I suppose not. Doesn’t everyone want you to work for them? How else could you have stayed alive through all the constant ‘hirers’?” she asked, now seeming both curious and perhaps impressed. And for your information, you, the reader, I want to run my own company, not work for some simpletons! I’m Stocklord, and the lord means I fucking RULE!!!

“You want my money then. TUHF wants a fucking sugar daddy… Well, little lady, get me a cigar, and we’ll talk this out with ya’ boss.” I smirked, attempting to charm her.

“He’s not accepting meetings currently.” she answered stubbornly. Seems she doesn’t get weak knees for skeletons.

“He’ll make an exception for me. Especially if I comply. Go, tell ‘dat man to stop giving me cursed legal documents and talk to me face to face, hmm?” I debated.

“You are in no position to make requests.” Beta held her spot.

“I am if you want my money, right?” I gave her a cheeky smile. She sighed, nodded, and left from whence she came. She’d be back, and I knew I just had to hope her boss wasn’t as determined as her to get my soul.

It had been around half an hour. Her boss probably had some sorta meeting he was in. I wondered if that same boss was the leader of TUHF, Master. If it was, I just hoped this cell wasn’t directly inside their main mansion in the heart of New York. That would prove problematic for my eventual rescue.

I’d already guessed I was gonna be like this for a while, since I didn’t really know who’d lived or died in the attack.

Good lord, what if Twee died…? What even happened to Mount Avernus? My Mountain… My home… It was gone now, wasn’t it?

I started questioning everything, trying to hold myself back from having a mental breakdown.

The truth was pretty clear, I’d finally been caught, and in a worse way than I thought possible, but I still attempted to not think about it. I needed a clear head for what I was about to do.

Still, I’d lost nearly everything I’d worked years for. My status, my friends, my money, my family too. It would bring any hard working man to tears.

As I sobbed quietly, I didn’t notice the bars open until Beta stepped into the room.

“You are to meet with him now. He seemed in a good mood too, don’t change that.” she told me grumpily, probably angry that her precious boss likes me more than her.

I pulled myself together, and calmed down. I would slowly inhale and exhale, but I don’t really have lungs to do that with, so I pretended to do it and it did the trick.

Nothing mattered now. Life was going to change and I needed to accept that. Beta threw a blindfold over my head, cuffed me, and walked me out of the room, holding my skeletal shoulders.

As I exited, I heard two pairs of extra footsteps walking with us. I think they thought I could actually make an escape attempt like this. I get overestimated a lot. They think a skeleton can break into a three hundred foot sprint? I’m amazing, but not that amazing.

The place we walked through sounded echoey, I heard people speaking to each other, and what sounded like perhaps a truck or a forklift. I can’t tell the temperature anymore, ever since I became a skeleton, so I was unsure if it was cold or hot.

After a moment, we arrived at a door. I knew it was there because we stopped and I heard it open. How else could I determine such a thing?

We kept moving and suddenly we stopped again, and the blindfold was removed. I was in front of a desk. Not a desk of someone, there was nobody even in the chair. Instead, a large plush black chair waited for my ass to sit upon it, it faced a dozen or so security monitors, all showing static. The buzzing and whirring of machinery clunked from within the walls, I heard it clearly. I didn’t have much time to take everything in before I was forced to sit.

They attached my cuffs to the desk as I looked up and around. I needed to get all ta’ information I could, since I didn’t know if I’d come back to this place any time soon.

“We’ll leave you in here for ten minutes, perhaps he’ll teach you a lesson.” Beta said from behind, out of sight. I started to get the frightening impression that this wasn’t a normal meeting. Perhaps the creepy security monitors should have told me that, but I was afraid now, and I think that’s what they wanted.

I heard the others leave and shut the door as I stared at the monitors. I waited, I watched, and if they wanted to intimidate me, I was afraid to admit that it was actually kinda workin’.

I heard a sound, it felt like it was all around me, like a presence of something technological winding its way closer. The whirring in the room around me grew louder as the presence attempted to intimidate me, its movement like metal snake, graceful, but carrying a scraping distorted digital sound with it.

It slipped past me and suddenly the screens became a little clearer, the static fading to the silhouette of a face. Not a human face though. No, whatever this wasn’t human, instead more jagged, yet gelatinous in places. The face had two glowing eyes, each the color of bloody raw meat, they had glowing yellow dots in the center like pupils, pulsing amorphously. This face also had no mouth, instead, where it should have been, there were green EQ bars like you’d see at a sound studio, pulsing up and down with each guttural breath he took, now audible through the many speakers around me.

“Select Language.” a text to speech voice played through his ‘lips’. Captions of the speech showed up on each monitor.

I paused for a second, unsure if he was speaking directly to me.

“English?” I answered with confusion.

“You have selected English. Call will start in ten seconds. This call will be recorded for REDACTED purposes, your life will only be in danger if you break our guidelines. Thank you. Please begin speaking after the tone.” the woman’s distorted, grainy voice mumbled explanatorily.

I had no fucking clue what any of this meant, but I felt like I was in the Matrix, or some cheap Horror B-Movie. Except this... thing, it felt so much more terrifying than a bad movie.

This was the truth, and the truth was worse than I thought.

*BEEP*