Sato shook his head. “No, I feel much better now that we’re inside. Could you take me to where they keep the inmates locked up? Maybe where they have the more recent ones?”

“Right, come on then,” Klink said, moving along the hall again. They reached a metal grid door, which he slid open, a horrible screech piercing Sato’s ears. On the other side, a boxy elevator awaited.

“This lift will take you all the way down to the Loons,” Klink said as he gestured for Sato to enter. “Down ya go, then.”

Sato, fighting his uneasiness, stepped inside and turned to face Klink just as the man slid the grid door shut. His pale eyes peeked through the slits.

“Best stay on your toes,” Klink said.

“What do you mean?” Sato replied.

Klink reached through a large space in the door—mangled and jagged like it had been ripped out with teeth—and slammed a lever inside the lift toward the floor. The elevator lurched and slowly started going down, the squeaks and squeals of chains and pulleys filling the air.

“Didn’t you know?” As Klink’s body seemed to move upward, he called down to Sato just before he was out of sight. “Ent no one locked up ’round here!”

~

The trip down the dark elevator shaft was long and cold—especially in light of Klink’s pronouncement that the crazies weren’t locked up at all. Sato’s stomach turned queasy from the jostling and bumping of the steel cage. He saw nothing outside the mesh of metal but black stone, heard nothing but the screech of the lift’s mechanics. Impossibly, the seconds stretched into minutes, and he thought Klink surely must have sent him to the middle of the Earth.

Without any hint of slowing down, the elevator jolted to a stop, making Sato’s knees buckle. He sprawled across the cold mesh floor, biting his tongue when his chin slammed into the hard surface. He quickly pushed himself back to his feet, rubbing his jaw as he stepped forward to look through the lift door.

Another dimly lit carved passageway led into the distance, no sign of anyone nearby. Having expected someone to greet him—crazy or not—he warily reached out to test the sliding door. It pushed aside easily, groaning as Sato slammed the metal mesh all the way open. The sound of the squeal echoed off the stone walls, and any doubt of his arrival was now wiped away. But still, no one came.

He stepped out of the lift, his eyes focused along the dark tunnel since that seemed to be the only place from which someone could appear. He took another step. Another.

And then he heard a scream.