There was a Johnny Cash song playing on the radio. Only the boom-chicka-boom rhythm could be heard over the cicada hum of the after-church crowd filling the diner.

The waitress dropped a hefty plate on the table and was gone before she could be seen. The food filled the air with the aroma of Sunday: cured pork, fried potatoes, and the yeasty smell of buttermilk pancakes. Going out for breakfast on Sunday was the only indulgence that Horus still allowed himself.

It was more than just a meal, it was a ritual.

As a boy, his parents took the brood out after the early morning sermon. The whole family would cram themselves into a booth at the same archaic diner every week. Horus always claiming one of the honored spots pressed against the wall with full access to the mini-jukebox. Across from him his sister, Bella, seized the other seat; their age gave them privilege over the other two children, who were doomed to be crammed in the middle. Horus's mother and father sat on the ends, anchoring them all in and preventing their exuberance and mischief from spilling out and bothering the other dinners.

Horus had kept up the tradition long after he had become an adult and he had a family of his own. And he still did it, long after his family had ruptured and split apart. It was a small constant in his life-a ceremony that had meant more than going to church ever did. Faith had failed over time. Bacon and coffee endured.

He turned the newspaper over to a fresh page, folding the fragile gray sheets into a tight crease. The headline at the top read: Is This the Zombie Apocalypse? It was another article about a Miami man who attacked someone and ate his face. It was accompanied by other strange, recent reports of crimes involving cannibalism from California, New Jersey, and Baltimore.

Horus skimmed it. Just another fear piece intended to play on deep-seated human phobias to sell papers. Sloppy reporting linking completely unrelated events — events with rational explanations — to make a case for a popular social meme. Just another invented horror that was somehow more palatable to people than the real atrocities occurring every day.

Horus dug into the food. The sausages had a faint odor of maple syrup. The egg yolks broke like liquid sunshine. The paper sat forgotten for a few minutes of heavenly, grease fuelled bliss.

An eruption of applause from a large group made him glance away from his plate. A collection of gray-haired white people — men in suits, women in conservative dresses — were celebrating something. Everyone in the restaurant looked their way as one couple sat back down, broad grins on their faces. High on the wall behind them, a clock ticked past eleven.

He was supposed to be at the Music Box for one. Plenty of time to get there. Horus scratched his beard and frowned. He wasn't looking forward to it. There was a counseling session with Amy scheduled.

She had been put in the wolf room last night. She wouldn't be in a good mood today.

Yesterday, the atmosphere in the bunker had been off, bored and business-like. Even R.J. had a marked lack of enthusiasm. This would only be the second full moon since the laboratory opened, so there should have been more of an air of anticipation. But it seemed that the staff was already beginning to adapt to the cycle. The transformation only occurred when the moon was at complete fullness, or nearly complete. At a reported ninety-six percent visibility, no one had expected her to change yet. She was only put in the pen as a precaution.

Amy disliked the bedroom. In their sessions, she never failed to let Horus know that she considered it nothing less than a prison. But the wolf room was infinitely worse.

When they met, she would be sullen and angry for having been in the dungeon-like enclosure. If Horus could even lure her to the window, she would probably just sit there glaring at him as though it was all his fault.

He swirled the hash brown on the end of his fork in the oozing yolk. Guilt threatened to assault his appetite as he realized how horrible he was for dreading having to talk to her.

But progress was excruciatingly slow. The post-traumatic-stress and the depression were clear to read but hard to treat. No matter what they discussed, she remained a prisoner. No matter what small headway they made, there would always be another full moon looming in the future threatening to undo it all. Treating Amy pushed him so far beyond his capabilities, he felt like a fraud every time he met with her.

"So would you say you feel like you're adjusting to the new environment?" His words from their last session had felt scripted. It was a lame question, whose answer was known. Futilely, he wished for a different reply-something positive for a change.

"It's still a prison." Amy met his eyes and spoke with a contempt that went beyond the four walls. The snarl in her lip lashed out at her jail cell and the man watching over her. There was an irony to it that only someone who had been a father to teenagers could feel: another twelve-year-old girl in another bedroom could have said the same thing in the same way and sounded churlish. But this girl had every right to that sentiment.

And under the irony and the contempt, Horus sensed the condemnation of his efforts. Like a two weekend a month father, he had tried to buy her friendship. He had gotten Wiley to make concessions. They got her an iPod, books from a list she selected, and new clothes, which she picked herself from a catalog.

The wardrobe she chose was merely a replacement uniform. Gone were the government-sanctioned jeans and white T-shirts; now every day she dressed in jogging pants, a T-shirt, and a hoodie-all of them black. When asked about this decision and why she hadn't gotten a wider assortment of clothes, Amy had said, "I wear this, because this is how I feel."

The music and books had worked a little better-she at least seemed to enjoy those. And Horus was waiting to get approval for a TV and DVD player to be installed in the room. More gifts to his substitute daughter in hopes of bridging the alienation she felt. The odds of them materializing into affection was dropping to the same minute probability reserved for getting hit by lightning a second time or beating the house in Vegas. It had the sickening sense of history repeating on him. It hadn't worked the first time. Had he learned nothing from his own experiences?

But how was he supposed to handle this girl? Nowhere in his training did it teach him how to care for a child kept in isolated captivity. What was the accepted therapy for a teenager barely out of puberty, who was being caged up and treated like an animal?

Horus reviewed his notes. He went over all the observation reports, scans, and dietary charts. There was a note from the dietitian saying she should be eating more. Amy was back to pecking at her food. For a week after the last full moon, she had consumed almost six-thousand calories a day-alarming for completely different reasons. But other than that blip, she bordered on being malnourished.

Horus contemplated bringing up her eating habits but imagined she'd only get more upset with him. Instead, he chose to talk about her progress. An old fallback ploy. Tell a patient how far they've come in order to try and cajole them into going a little further.

"I know this situation is hard for you, but you do seem to be in a more positive frame of mind these past couple of weeks."

She looked off into nowhere. It was the same creepy blank stare he had seen her do too often, usually when she didn't want to answer a question. Her eyes may have had a dead look, but her leg bounced wildly. It rested over her other knee and swung as though suffering a hyperkinetic spasm.

"You've made great improvements since you first came here. I wish you would work with me and help me help you so that we can make even larger strides next month." She still didn't respond. "You know, none of us want to keep you here. We are only here to help you."

"Will you be able to cure me?" Still, she looked away. Still the leg distractedly went back and forth.

"I'm not going to lie. I don't know if there is such a thing as a cure. But we will try to help you adjust. In time, I hope that we will have a better arrangement for you than the current one."

She turned to him and her leg came to a stop. "If I'm good, are you going to let me out into the fresh air?"

"It isn't a question of being good or not. You are good. You have been nothing but good. You are sick. You have a disease. The disease is what we are locking up, not you. You are just a..." He didn't want to use the word victim. She already saw herself as a victim. He needed to get her over that. "You are innocent in this. None of this is your fault."

She stared toward the corner again.

He was losing her. Time to pull out the secret weapon. "I see that you and Jamie have become friends?"

Her eyes widened. The acceleration of heart rate was so apparent it seemed to make her skin jitter.

"Don't worry," Horus said with a soothing voice. "I think your relationship has had a healthy influence on you. I don't intend to stop it."

"You don't." A shy smile fell like a shadow on her lips.

"You see, we aren't all monsters here." He instantly regretted his choice of words and hastened to continue, "Jamie wants to be your friend and so do I."

"I thought you were paid to talk to me."

"I am. But that doesn't mean I don't like it. I look forward to our sessions." A white lie. "And I don't say that about all my patients."

"Have you had bad ones?" She had a grin as though she enjoyed the question. Had she momentarily forgot she was in therapy and was just happy to be having a conversation with another human being? Or was the pleasure in her face a reaction to the pain that the words had caused him?

"Amy, I once had the worst patient."

Compared to this girl, Kyle was the true monster. The animal she turned into was just that: an animal. A mindless beast. She had no control over herself when she killed those people. It was just some primitive instinct. Kyle had no such excuse.

Horus struggled not to picture her as the girl that was lead out of the mansion by security that night all those years ago. That sobbing girl, who couldn't have been much older than Amy.

He had watched them take her out into the rain. One of the bodyguards held an umbrella over her head, while the other guided her by the arm. The wind caught the umbrella and blew it inside out. The storm pelted her, concealing her tears and turning her disheveled hair into sad limp strands.

This was the first one Horus had actually seen. Before now it had all just been rumors. Rumors he had pretended weren't true. Kyle had never admitted to any of it in their sessions. He steadfastly stuck to his narcissistic world view where he was some champion that could do no wrong. And for Horus, it was easier to let it slide as lurid innuendo from disgruntled employees than something that needed to be faced and dealt with.

From what he had learned from the gossip of the household staff, the guards would drive the girl around for a few hours until she calmed down. Then they would buy her clothes to replace her torn ones, give her money, and take her home. Before releasing her, they would warn her about how the world would see her if she ever said anything to anyone. How no one would believe her. How her parents would reject her for either being a liar or a slut.

Horus hadn't intended to slurp his coffee. The abrupt noise brought him back to reality and the sound of the diner once again penetrated into his consciousness. He put the cup down and took a breath. The plate was empty. He could feel his nerves shaking in rage. It was like he was right back there, staring out the window from the shadows, as Kyle's victim was put in the back of the black SUV.

He wiped his mouth with his napkin and looked around trying to clear his head. At the table next to him, a young family was just getting their order. The little boy and the little girl were each getting a heaping portion of waffles covered in whipped cream.

Horus forced himself to smile kindly as they glanced over at him. They were so much like his own children back when they were small. Before the smile failed, he turned his head and looked out to the parking lot.

An otherworldly chill seeped into his veins.

From a white Toyota pickup truck, a man stared at him. There was no mistaking it, he was being watched. The man's arm rested across the steering wheel. The tattoo sleeve was perfectly clear in the bright morning light: a coil of snakes with a red anarchist "A" emblazoned across it. It was a tattoo Horus was only too familiar with.

Horus leaped from the booth and made for the door. He pushed past the crowd that had formed waiting for tables and charged out into the parking lot. The pickup already had the engine going and was pulling out of the spot.

"Hey! Hey!" Horus yelled.

He chased it until he reached the curb, and Kyle Silver raced a yellow light and tore off down the nearly empty street.

Horus screamed as it drove off, "I killed you once, you bastard. I'll kill you again."