The room was full of eyes. It was full of other things too, but that was the first thing I noticed. A crowd of eyes in a dimly lit room, huddled beneath a concrete ceiling and concrete walls and the concrete floor I was lying on.

"What the hell?" I said, and the eyes leaned back, whispering among themselves until my own blurry vision finally resolved them into people. People of all ages and origins cramped together in a windowless, cement box. Some looked as confused as I felt, others looked defeated. One boy in the corner held his knees and rocked, muttering to himself.

"Yes," said an elderly man, holding out a wrinkled hand, "and welcome to it. Please try not to panic. You'll be here for some time. It's not so bad if you talk to people."

"Excuse me?" I took his hand anyway and gained my feet. How had I even gotten here? I'd been on my back porch, in the snow, having another argument with—Cooper. Oh god, Cooper. "Hey, look," I glanced around at the faces, testing for answers, "this is some kind of practical joke, right? I mean, I gotta get out of here. I have to be somewhere."

The old man shook his head, and his dark skin looked paper thin in the low light, veins swimming real close to the surface. "No joke, son. This is it, I'm afraid. End of the road. Jeremy's been here longer than any of us and he's not been out that door." He pointed to the rocking boy in the corner and then a rectangle of barely noticeable seams in the wall to my right.

A door.

I brushed off a few half-hearted hands of protest from the crowd and strode up to it. There was no handle. No lock. Nothing but rough concrete and the barest thread of exterior light. I dug my fingers in and pulled. Nothing. Worked a different angle, bracing my feet. Nothing. I scratched at it, pounded on it, until my hands were sore and sticky red.

Nothing. Plain damn nothing.

I sank back against the useless door, shaking hands curved in toward my stomach. The eyes were full of pity now. Full of sameness and recognition. We were you, those eyes said, you are us. I didn't want to be them. I wanted to get out.

The boy in the corner next to me raised his hand, and for the first time I realized he had a crayon in his little fist. Black and worn down to nearly a stub. Still rocking, he put that crayon to the wall and carved a couple lines, a few ovals, precise and methodical like this was his mantra, his chant and prayer against the dark. Though it wasn't dark. Only the dim light, coming from who knew where, turning everything to gray haze.

"Hey, kid," I said, wondering why I bothered. But he'd been here longest, the old man had said. He had to know something. Have seen something. After all this time? "You Jeremy?" I said.

Jeremy rocked harder, muttered louder, barely flicking his eyes my way. It was acknowledgement enough. I scooted over, wincing at the feel of concrete on my damaged hands. "Come on, talk to me, kid. What do you know about this place. How did you get here?"

The crowd whispered and fluttered their hands like a bunch of anxious moths. The old man slowly shook his head at me for trying. I thought of Pop and the way he shook his head too. So I didn't listen. Jeremy didn't answer, but as I pulled closer, I could make out his low words, half hummed, half recited.

"Under fear, obey. Under fear, obey."

Beside him, the wall was full of crayon. Black ovals hovering and flying. Some with antenna, some with what looked like fire spreading down from their sides. I wanted to laugh. This was a prank. This was some dumb gag whipped up by Luka D. and his gang, trying to get me to back off. Like hell I would. Cooper was my brother.

I put a hand to the wall and fell back flat, crushed by blinding memory.

Light.

A wavering sound almost too high to hear, but it made the grass ripple, then crush into itself, stamping a circle around me.

Brighter light, brighter, a tightness in my chest, tingling in my limbs.

Words echoing, buzzing, shaking my skull. Under fear, obey.

I couldn't breathe, couldn't see, I couldn't—

Air gasped into my lungs, the old man by my side again, saying "Sit up, son. Sit up."

I sat up and held my head between my legs. "No one's left this box?" I said, voice hollow, chest aching.

"No one," said the old man. He was shaking his head again.

I wanted to tell him to stop doing that. I also wanted to scream, but I didn't. I held my head and then I let the days go. No one needed to eat. No one needed to piss. I couldn't explain it, other than that purgatory made these things unnecessary. There was nothing but the gray and our own thoughts.

Sometimes that was too much and some poor bastard tried to smash those thoughts out with a wall. But Jeremy would start screaming and keep on screaming until they stopped. No one died that way, but no one lived either. We just existed and it was pain.

I took to lying on the floor and watching Jeremy's sketches fly across the wall. Sometimes they moved, I thought, sometimes they flew off and didn't come back. They never quite looked the same as I remembered, though I tried my best to memorize that stupid fleet of childish flying saucers that he'd drawn. They looked like eggs dropped on wobbling pancakes, but their jagged, desperate lines gave them menace.

Then one day, or night, at some undetermined time in the gray eternity of mindless wait, the door that wasn't a door opened. A new prisoner tossed in. Flat on her back like I had been. The flash of light from the door seams singed my memory and I lunged at it, slave to my instinct, the helplessness I had crushed down day after day.

The door wasn't really open, only the seams glowed, so I couldn't go through. But it felt almost less hard, the concrete retaining a give, like a hardened sponge. I clawed my fingers in and pulled a chunk out. Most of the crowd didn't bother watching me anymore, but still there was a voice. A voice on the other side, and it said, "Please don't. You have to stay or we'll get in trouble."

"Who the hell are you?" I asked, tearing out another chunk of concrete not-door. "Why are you doing this?"

"It was research. I swear it was only research. We meant no harm," the voice on the other side said, rough with regret and defeat. With fear.

"Stop it!" Jeremy shot to his feet, crayon clenched in his fist. "Why can't you just be happy here? Why can't you be happy?" His little face was red, eyes dark as holes as he pointed at me.

"If we had known the first subject would be like this," whispered the voice on the other side, "we would never have come."

"You can't talk to them!" Jeremy shrieked. He threw his crayon down and the crowd in the box cowered back, all those flat, lifeless eyes suddenly moving and wide with terror. "They brought me here. They brought you here to be with me. I'm not alone now, I'm not. So. Stop. Trying. To. Leave!"

I heard the voice on the other side whisper "Under fear, obey," just before Jeremy pointed his finger at me and I hurtled across the room. I sat up on my elbows, but Jeremy was still pointing and my jaw wouldn't move. The longer he pointed, the more my head filled with white light, seeping out behind my eyes, immobilizing my thoughts, filling my ears until I could hear its brightness, until words fell from my mouth, mechanical and involuntary. "Under fear, obey."

Jeremy pointed some more and I lied back down. The concrete wasn't so bad.

I was happy to be here. I thought I might stay.