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I hold up my sandwich and shrug. “Better. Who are you?”

“Does it matter?”

I raise an eyebrow at him. Not really for his sake, because he probably can’t see it—my hair is a

mess of waves tumbling around my face—but for my sake. Because I’m easily irritated and I’m just

now remembering that.

“You were a prisoner in the Way’s dungeon. You wanna tell me about that? Megan?”

“How do you—”

“You were pretty out of it,” he says, cutting me off. “They had a pretty cool assortment of

chemicals in that dungeon infirmary so we had quite the chat earlier. But you won’t remember that. I

made sure of it.”

“Well, that’s not creepy,” I say. Then take a bite of my sandwich and casually—as casually as one

can when she’s just been rescued from an underground island dungeon by a well-appointed manly

stranger with no shirt on—kneel down on the empty sun pad to his left.

“Not nearly as creepy as the condition I found you in.”

“Hmm,” I say. “I guess I owe you.”

“You most certainly do,” he says. “And I want payment in the form of answers.”

“I’m not telling you my personal history.”

“I don’t give a fuck about you or your history,” he growls. “I can take a good guess at that. I wanna

know where they went.”

CHAPTER THREE - JOHNNY

What is the Way ?

It’s a question I’ve been asking myself almost my whole life. From the very first time my father

took me up into the spire and told me to watch quietly I’ve been trying to piece this thing together.

I am not, obviously, critical to the outcome of their goals. I do nothing other than collect money. But

I’m not dumb. I didn’t go to college like Joey and Jesse. There was never a point in wasting that kind

of time on something that had no bearing on my future. But I’m not a dumb guy. I can, and have, put a

few pieces together during my tenure in the organization.

One. The Way is a very small group of global titans. Mostly cutting-edge tech, big pharma, and

humanitarian non-profits for Third World countries.

Two. The small inner circle are so far above my pay grade, I’ve never even met them. I don’t think