On his way up to the cafeteria, Ethan stopped again at the cage of the female abby. She was sleeping, curled up in a corner against the wall, thinner, frailer even than the last time he’d seen her.

One of the lab techs who worked in the abby holding facility moved past Ethan, heading toward the stairwell.

“Hey,” Ethan called after him. The white-jacketed scientist stopped in the middle of the corridor, turned to face him. “Is she sick or what?” Ethan asked.

The young scientist flashed an ugly smile.

“She’s starving to death.”

“You’re starving her?”

“No, she refuses to eat or drink.”

“Why?”

The man shrugged. “No idea. Maybe because we made a bonfire out of all her cousins?”

The scientist chuckled to himself and continued down the corridor.

Ethan found Theresa and Ben at a corner table in the packed cafeteria. When she saw the bruises on his face, her eyes—tear-swollen and red—went wide.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Have you been crying?”

“We’ll talk later.”

Dinner consisted of packages of freeze-dried horror.

Lasagna for Ethan.

Beef Stroganoff for Ben.

Eggplant parm for Theresa.

All Ethan could think about was how much food this single meal was costing them.

One meal closer to nothing.

And no one had any concept of how fast the supplies were dwindling. Just took for granted that they could walk into this cafeteria, or down to the community gardens, or the town grocery, and find food.

Where would the civility go when it all ran out?

“You want to talk about what’s going to happen later tonight, Ben?” Ethan asked.

“Not really.”

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to see it, sweetheart,” Theresa said.

“I want to see it. This is his punishment for what he did, right?”

“Yeah,” Ethan said, “and we have to do it, you understand, because there aren’t courts anymore. No judges or juries. We have to watch out for ourselves, and that man hurt a lot of people. It has to be made right.”

After dinner, Ethan sent Ben back to their quarters and asked Theresa to take a walk with him.

“So Hassler and I had it out,” he said as they trudged up the stairs.

“Jesus, Ethan, what are you, in high school?”

Three doors down on the right-hand side of the Level 4 corridor, Ethan swiped his card at the reader and pulled open a heavy steel door.

They stepped onto a small platform.

Ethan said, “Hold onto the railing,” and pressed the up arrow button.

The platform accelerated through the rocky tube at the speed of an express elevator.

Four hundred feet straight up.