Miriam stood, then abruptly found that she had to lean against the wall to keep upright. Her head throbbed and her right arm was extremely sore. She turned and looked up at the window, but it was above the top of her head, even if she had the energy to stand on the bed. High and small and without curtains, it looked horribly like the skylight of a prison cell. Am I in prison? she wondered.

With that thought, Miriam lost what calm she had. She leaned against the door and pounded it with her left hand, setting up a hollow racket, but stopped when her hand began to throb and the fear swept back in a suffocating wave, driving a storm surge of rage before it. She sat down and buried her face in her hands and began to sob quietly. She was still in this position a few minutes later when the door frame gave a quiet click and opened outward.

Miriam looked up suddenly as the door opened. “Who the fuck are you?” she demanded.

The man standing in the doorway was perfectly turned out, from his black loafers to the ends of his artfully styled blond hair: He was young (late twenties or early thirties), formally dressed in a fashionable suit, clean-shaven, and his face was set in neutral lines. He could have been a Mormon missionary or an FBI agent. “Miss Beckstein, if you’d be so good as to come with me, please?”

“Who are you?” She repeated. “Aren’t you guys supposed to read me my rights or something?” There was something odd about him, but she couldn’t quite get her head around it. Past his shoulder she could see a corridor, blurry right now—then she realized what it was that she was having trouble with. He’s wearing a sword, she told herself, hardly believing her eyes.

“You seem to be laboring under a misapprehension.” He smiled, not unpleasantly. “We don’t have to read you your rights. However, if you’ll come with me, we can go somewhere more comfortable to discuss the situation. Unless you’re entirely happy with the sanitary facilities here?”

Miriam glanced behind her, suddenly acutely aware that her bladder was full and her stomach was queasy. “Who are you?” she asked uncertainly.

“If you come with me, you’ll get your answers,” he said soothingly. He took a step back and something made Miriam suspect there was an implicit or else left dangling at the end of his last sentence. She lurched to her feet unsteadily and he reached out for her elbow. She shuffled backward instinctively to avoid contact, but lost her balance against the edge of the bed: She sat down hard and went over backward, cracking her head against the wall.

“Oh dear,” he said. She stared up at him through a haze of pain. “I’ll bring a wheelchair for you. Please don’t try to move.”