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Silently, we made our way back to where Sullivan and Portia sat.

More students were pouring into the dining hall, their voices echoing strangely in the cavernous space.

A queue was forming through the doors and was being kept honest by a trio of those meat stewards.

The presence of the latter only helped to confirm Professor Stone’s comments, an attempt by Hellebore’s administration to keep costs down because already, the air was spoiling with the reek of decay.

I risked a backward glance at where Stone had stood but if he was still there, he’d been swallowed by the crowd.

“Is it something related to epic fantasy?” said Rowan as we came within inches of the table, startling me.

“What?”

“Your name,” said Rowan. “Is it like a Lord of the Rings reference or something?”

“Nope.”

“Is it a science fiction thing?”

Sullivan smiled courteously up at us both as I sat down beside him, Rowan settling beside a less than enthused Portia.

“No,” I said to Rowan, grateful despite myself for the irreverence, this break from being so thoroughly unsettled.

“Did you make it up yourself?” said Rowan, ignoring Sullivan.

“No.”

Then as Portia was about to speak, Rowan bellowed with unabashed delight.

“Noooo. No way,” he said, pointing at me.

I froze.

“Are you named for the Silent Hill chick?”

“Silent what ?” said Sullivan, too well-bred to know his schlocky franchises.

Thinking back, that was perhaps my best memory of Hellebore: Rowan barraging Sullivan with lore and theories about the lore surrounding the inescapable cursed town, Portia adding non sequiturs where she could, winking at me where she couldn’t, her earlier aloofness somehow eradicated by our camaraderie.

It was good and if I’d known what would come later, I might have savored those hours with them, the last vestiges of safety I’d possess, tenuous as they were given the company I was keeping.

I learned both Sullivan and Rowan had enrolled voluntarily: Sullivan out of obligation, Rowan because he, in his own words, wanted pussy.

“There are easier ways to get laid,” said Sullivan.

“But not hotter,” countered Rowan, waggling his eyebrows at Portia who’d left and returned with a glass of iced coffee, which she poured over his head without a second word.

“Why are you here?” Portia asked me, after Rowan had staggered, cursing, away to the bathrooms and she had come back with a cup of hot coffee, settling back into her seat.

“They kidnapped me.”

She and Sullivan exchanged looks.

“It happens,” said the boy gently, something ineradicably different about how he looked at me: his face was gentler, his eyes softer, so much softer.

Someone else might have melted like butter but I knew that expression.

He was looking at me like the corpse of a dove he’d found on the roadside, beyond saving but not above pity.

“Like Sully said,” drawled Portia.

“I’d prefer you not call me that.”

“—it is something that happens. Student Affairs reportedly has a comprehensive Intelligence division, and they go out of their way to find those most at risk of becoming a danger to both themselves and the world.”

“Well, keeping me here,” I said, trying to keep the poison from my voice, “will definitely turn me into a danger to myself and the world. So I fucking hope there’s a way out.”

“Afraid not,” said Sullivan.

“Kidnapping is a felony,” I said, stabbing at the last curd of kung pao chicken, the crispness long ruined by its bed of sauce.

“I’m afraid it isn’t,” said Sullivan, collecting our trays into a neat stack after I’d set my fork back down. “Hellebore has an agreement with the world governments. It has carte blanche to do as it will to preserve the safety of the general population.”

I ground my teeth. “Doesn’t make it right.”

“Doesn’t make it wrong either,” Sullivan said.

“I don’t care.” I shook my head. “One way or another, I’m getting out of this place. I didn’t consent to rehabilitation or whatever you call this. You might have but I didn’t.”

Portia said: “There are only two ways out of the school: in a body bag or graduation. You’ll find Hellebore’s locked tighter than Alcatraz ever was.

You aren’t getting out of here before the year is done.

” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And you shouldn’t publicly state you’re intending an escape plan. That’s stupid.”

“Stupid or not,” I said, mouth warm with a tang of rust. I’d done more than ground my teeth, it seemed: I’d chewed straight into the side of my tongue.

The pain felt good, stabilizing, like an old friend setting their hand on my arm, reminding me I was here, that I was alive. “I’m getting out of here.”

“You really are not,” said Portia. “Trust me on this. More desperate people have tried and failed.”

“Watch me.”

Our initial weeks in Hellebore passed quickly, each day indistinguishable from the last. Our schedules were rigorous if nonsensical: we were assigned classes seemingly at random, without thought toward affinity or even cohesion in our learning experiences.

Each week yielded new restrictions, new expectations.

Our rooms migrated through the wings of the dormitory, complicating our routes to our classes: getting anywhere early became a problem if you couldn’t figure out where you were going to wake up.

The only consolation was that Hellebore was more horizontal than vertical, meaning while there was a panoply of wings to sprint through, there were only a few stories of stairs to navigate.

Not that it actually mattered. The lecturers themselves seemed perennially disinterested in us at best and openly contemptuous at worst, ignoring all attempts at questions and worse, homework assignments. We were given plenty to do but nothing was ever graded and no feedback was ever provided.

At least, not in my case.

Johanna insisted I was just lucky: she purportedly was the center of an unwanted amount of attention, something I’d have been more sympathetic about if not for her clear pleasure in this.

Some of us were masochists, it seemed. Likewise, Portia, on those rare occasions I saw her outside of our classes, seemed to be getting worked to the marrow.

When not otherwise discharging her duties to Hellebore, she was carrying out tasks for the Raw Grail.

All of them had to be performed in absolute secrecy, Porta insisted, although I had the feeling she wanted me to prod her, that she might even relish the thought of being provoked into revealing whatever she was up to.

“She’s flirting with you,” said Johanna one night after Portia had cut short an unexpected visit to our room.

Apparently, there’d been a party that had ended with an excess of leftovers, which had to be distributed before they went bad.

I pointed out refrigeration existed as a technology, and she had smiled and said nothing to that, instead going on to explain who had made what.

The fact the student body was not allowed independent access to the kitchens went uncommented on.

“I bet she wants to convince you to join her sorority.”

“I really hope not. I have no urge to be part of one.”

“They’re really not that bad,” drawled Johanna, patient. She told me she was of Eastern European origin, a promiscuous mix of nationalities, but her accent was pure Jersey with its overly pronounced vocal fry. “When I was in college, I was in—”

“College? You went to college and then you came here?”

Johanna’s expression flickered.

“I didn’t want to,” she said in a voice like lead, all her airiness used up in that confession. “But there was… well, he wasn’t a man, but he might as well have been one. I thought he was a friend. He wasn’t. And I had to get away. So, I came here.”

It didn’t surprise me. There were only so many species of girl once you got down to it.

Some breeds ran and some breeds fought and then some took to gutting themselves for their wolves, because if you were going to get eaten, you might as well choose how.

I could see it in Johanna’s overbright cheer, that sickly need to cultivate everyone’s approval.

“Okay,” I said, hoping she could hear the concession in my voice.

Thankfully, she did.

“Anyway,” said Johanna, brightening. “I was in one. Well, sort of. We were all cheerleaders—”

“Too much information,” I said. In the last few weeks, we’d done a fair job at dividing our shared space, jury-rigging a curtain wall to permit a nominal amount of privacy.

I’d been rigorous about keeping our corners distinct but then Johanna convinced me otherwise by setting up an alcove with a little hot plate (contraband, to my surprise, raising her several notches in my esteem), snacks smuggled from god knows where, and more tea than I’d seen outside a grocery store.

I wouldn’t say I warmed but my territoriality lessened.

“Anyway, I don’t know. It might be, like, good for you. The Raw Grail’s got their own sorority house. You can go somewhere that isn’t constantly under surveillance.”

“They do? Where the hell is it?”

“It’s that burnt-up-looking building next to the green house,” said Johanna, sliding forward to the frilled edge of her bed, nail polish brush waggled for emphasis, the bristles slicked with a bright electric blue.

I knew what she was talking about. I’d walked past it several times, bewildered by its condition: it had the look of a barn taken by an inferno and allowed to burn down to the bones. As far as I recalled, the windows and doors were boarded up, admitting neither entry nor exit.

“People live in there?”

Johanna shrugged. “That’s what they say.”