“The name’s Manson. Terrence Manson,” the man said, watching as Troy settled himself into a suitable sitting position. Even with more time under that gaze, and now with the ability to defend himself, the younger man couldn’t help but feel unsettled. It had too much power. “Do you have a name you would like to share?”

“Oh, uh… yeah. My name is Troy. Troy… I don’t think I should say,” Troy answered with little hesitation. The older man seemed entirely relaxed yet simultaneously ready to jump at him. He had an aura around him that couldn’t be shaken off.

“Not the most common name around here. Has there been any immigration in your family recently?”

“Not in the last few generations at least.”

That was the good answer to make if that smile on the man seemed to tell any story. The feeling of having a knife to his throat disappeared slowly, intentions no longer clear. Was this… the start of friendship or cohabitation?

“Well, Troy Maxwell, you are welcome to stay as long as you’d like,” Terrence said, waving his arms around to show off his humble abode. It was still just a dirty prison cell but the sentiment was appreciated. “Though… I have no real control over when you leave. Nor do I know why you are here, to begin with. Mind entertaining me?”

“I could ask the same to you, but I wouldn’t mind starting,” Troy said, leaning back onto the wall behind. He could still feel a mild ache in his back. He might’ve been dragged around when he wasn’t aware. “My group needed medical supplies. The cops noticed and made sure we couldn’t get any by locking them all up here. We retaliated by storming this place after creating some chaos outside.”

“That would get you in here, alright,” Terrence said with a bark of laughter at the end. “You youngsters and your noble goals. I am glad to see that some of the smaller groups have gone out of sight recently. If I didn’t notice you coming, nobody else should’ve.”

Oh? That was interesting.

“Why so?” Troy questioned. “Are you a notable character around these parts?”

“In the local area? No,” the older man said, getting into the same position as Troy with his back against the wall. “I have a group out there myself, bigger than yours if I have to guess. We’re hanging at around eighty right now. Some of the cities west of here know of us by name but this place is new to us.”

“And it being a new area caused issues,” Troy surmised. Hardship had often befallen those who sat in prison cells while chained up to the wall.

“Indeed. Food is not as easy to come by here as it is elsewhere. The weather does not allow enough animals out here,” the man complained. “I had to go into the city myself to get enough rations to last us another few days. We’ve been welcoming a few kiddos into the ranks so we needed a feast. It is rather hard to only do that with hardtack.”

Hardtack. Even the word was enough for Troy to shudder. He had lived on candy bars, canned food, and that dreadful, tasteless abomination of man for too long. The need to get anything else for a celebration was more than understandable.

“How long have you been in here, by the way?” Troy asked. “I think you might just be the only one here so anybody else must’ve gotten transferred when the war hit us.”

“It’s not total war yet, son,” Terrence corrected. “And… I am not entirely sure. It might have been a week or so. They had me under for most of the time so I can’t say. Keeping track of the dates isn’t that important to me anymore, though I wish I’d done it this time around.”

Troy couldn’t have helped even if he did. Being out in the wilderness with nothing but a talking AI in his ear, it was easy to just let things like that pass him by without a thought. If the ability to know the time was always there, why bother remembering it for yourself?

“That’s not good,” Troy commented. “Any chance that you’ll be getting out soon.”

“Not a chance,” Terrence said with little pauses, putting in another laugh while he was at it. “Those people do not take kindly to people like me. I do what I have to do to keep my people safe. They don’t like us surviving by ourselves.”

Amen to that.

“So no real chance of you being released legally,” Troy concluded. That was just great. “Do you know if they’ve been listening in this entire time?”

“They’re not allowed to put listening devices into these kinds of cells,” Terrence pointed out. “But… When did law enforcement ever follow their own rules?”

“Good point,” Troy said, leaning back into his seat. He knew where he was, he knew it had been about a day since he was put into the prison, and he had a reasonable time frame of when he would have to make a run for it. “Well, then let’s just say we have plenty of time to talk because there is no chance they’ll let me walk out of here either.”

Terrence smiled at that, showing off surprisingly well-kept teeth. One would have expected them rotten, black, and yellow but even the highest of standards were overshot with those mighty examples of well-cared hobbies. It almost looked fake.

“When my people finally figure out where they’ve stashed me, they’ll pick me up real soon,” Terrence said, that smile never leaving his face. “Don’t you worry about that? If there’s one thing I’ve always known about this group of mine, it’s that they never leave one of their behind without first having a poke at their corpse.”

… The laughing was in the same tone this time around but Troy couldn’t help but be uncomfortable with the gallows humour. The thought about being in the kill zone already wasn’t what he liked to have in his head. It was too hard to let go of such things.

Looking down at his hands and the cuffs that entangled them, he couldn’t help but wonder how he was going to get out of those. They couldn’t be taken off with pure force, that was easy to realize with how sharp the edges were. Before they’d even have a chance to break, they would’ve already cut through half the bone. Instead, it was the electronic key within that needed to be taken care of. It seemed to be connected to the online service, luckily, so there was a good chance that it had already been covered previously.

That reminded Troy, though. The gloves, those infinitely valuable things, were still stored somewhere inside the prison alongside his other gear. What he wouldn’t give to find them quickly. He already had a good memory of where the storage areas were but he had to figure out which of them was being used. Or… maybe they’d seen that one coming and had just hid them in an unused area instead. It would be a quite peculiar thing to do but an understandable one at that.

Hitting his head against the wall with a small thud, Troy had to wonder how’d he gotten himself tangled up in this mess. It had gone so well yet everything just had to go to shit in the last moments. At the very least, there was comfort in the idea that the others were getting ready and that Adam was safe.

A screech of metal grinding against each other was heard from the entrance to the cell. The large, steel door was being opened, the face of a certain officer seen behind it. Troy had to wonder what they would want already. There had barely been forty minutes since he’d been thrown in there. Why so early?

“You,” Cassandra, the police officer with no good restraint, said, her finger pointed right at Troy’s face. “Face against the wall. Terrence, you do the same.”

The officer began to walk in immediately, one of the automations following right in after her. Troy was sure it had a name but couldn’t seem to remember it as he walked to stand in front of the wall. A few hard tugs were felt from behind him as the handcuffs were refitted to be on his back. It was a rather quick process that made the man be quite unbalanced when the woman started to very strongly pull him towards the exit of the prison cell. The helping hands of the automation made sure his face didn’t hit the ground yet the human police officer showed no signs of slowing down her steps.

“Try to run and I will shoot you,” she began. “Try to stop and I will taser you. Try to look too much around and I will sedate you.”

“So me talking is fine, right?” Troy said, happy to be the asshole he always strived to be. “I can’t seem to hear any rules about that.”

“Talking gets you a kick from behind if I remember right,” the automation behind Troy helpfully supplied. “But we might’ve cut down on that one recently. Too many HR complaints and all.”

“Totally understandable,” Troy replied with a sageful nod. “However, you guys seem to have caught the wrong person here. Would you be so helpful as to-”

“Save it for the interrogation room,” Cassandra snapped. “And shut up.”

“Shutting up now,” Troy said, smiling brightly. He tried to do the same facial contortions as the ones Terrence had shown off inside the cell. It was an average-quality impression if anybody had dared to actually look. None did, the woman in front only caring about pulling him harshly on the shoulder and the one behind only being able to look at the back of his head.

Troy lamented how unfortunate he truly was as he was pulled to the side and into a darker room. After being sat down with additional cuffs pretty much everywhere, he had to wonder if he was about to be electrocuted. So much steel was pressing against his skin, after all.

And that needle to his left side was not helping things seem calm.