“Good morning, young lady,” he says with a kind smile. “My name is Quan. I am certain you have many questions about where you are and how you’ve come to be here. If you would kindly follow me, I will take you to someone who will explain all these things.”

Dyeawan can’t think of anything to say to that; he’s addressed most of what’s going on in her head right now.

Instead she just nods. “Okay.”

The corridor outside is more spacious than the room, lit by the same lamps used in the Capitol streets, and it is all Dyeawan can do not to wheel herself in giant circles or weave fast and free just because she can. As Quan leads her, she notices the corridors wind in large circles that grow smaller the farther they move through them. The building itself must be shaped the same way, like a circle. Dyeawan has never seen a structure like that in the Capitol.

They pass a lanky man polishing one of the fixtures housing the lamps. He’s missing his left leg below the knee, as well as his right arm nearly at the shoulder. The stumps of both have been expertly treated and well healed, and the man looks clean and nourished. He smiles at them as they pass.

They must have reached a center point in the winding corridors by the time Quan motions to an open door. “Through here, please,” he bids her.

Dyeawan wheels herself inside, surprised when the door shuts behind her with Quan on the other side and she hears a heavy latch secure it.

She turns her head from the door and is immediately convinced they’ve locked her in a room with a dead man.

They’ve dressed the corpse in a simple gray tunic, upon the breast of which is pinned a simple steel crest of a dozen concentric circles. He’s much older than her. Threads of gray are steadily overtaking his thick, dark hair. The man is seated in a large chair in the center of a featureless room. His icy blue eyes are wide and glazed, and the features of his face are completely slack.

Dyeawan squints, examining his neck, and then her eyes go as wide as they’ve ever been. There’s some form of reptile affixed to his throat. Thin, hollow spikes, at least a dozen, protrude from the back of a body that’s bulbous like a toad, but the creature’s snout is long and scaled and latched firmly onto the man’s neck. There’s no blood that Dyeawan can see, but the complete void of expression on the man’s face says death.

When his hand moves, Dyeawan almost wheels her brand-new conveyance back into the door.