Lynell looks at Eric. In any other setting, he would just be a normal middle-aged guy. But she knows better.

“I’ve dreamt of a family my entire life.”

“And I’m offering you one,” Eric says.

She shakes her head. “You’re offering a name. Survival. But at a certain point, surviving just feels like you are dying bit by bit.”

“That’s a bit dramatic.” Eric is grinning, like she amuses him.

“What would you do with it? The code.”

“The right thing.”

He looks sincere. Lynell looks for his invisible shield and thinks he might have lowered it for her. He truly thinks using the code, having that kind of control, would be the right thing.

And somehow, that’s one of the most terrifying things Lynell has learned.

“Are you going to accept my offer?” he asks.

She takes another look at her book, then shakes her head. “No.”

The silence is like poison to her heart.

“You understand that if you turn me down, you become my enemy? You have the choice right now. Pick us, your family. Or make us your enemy. Live here as one of us or become a prisoner.”

One last time, she considers. She thinks of her father. Of Daniel. Of Zach.

Choose good.

She shakes her head. “I can’t.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees disappointment flash across Eric’s face. He sighs and stands. “I wish it could be different, I really do.” Then he gestures to his guards and hands are grabbing Lynell. Her eyes go wide and she struggles automatically. But there are too many of them and they’re too strong.

Lynell watches Eric turn away as she’s dragged from the room.

They take her down the previously locked staircases. She fights and yells, calling for Zach. But he’s nowhere to be seen, and struggling against the guards is pointless.

When they get to the bottom level, Lynell is led down a hallway with no windows. It’s cold. The lights are dim, barely bright enough to see five feet ahead. It smells of rubbing alcohol and cleaning supplies. Every few feet are doors set in the steel wall. A dungeon.

She almost wants to laugh. For a second, she’d considered making the house above a possible home, not knowing what horrors lie below the floorboards.

She’s dragged past doors and taken to a small, bright room at the back. Against one wall is a small, bent, wired skeleton of a bed with no blanket or mattress. A single chair stands in the middle of the room. There’s a bucket in the corner that looks nailed to the floor and the walls are chipped concrete that look cold to the touch.

The guards lead her to the chair, and she sits without being prompted. Without another word, both guards walk away from her and stand in the corners of the room.

The door opens and Lynell snaps her attention forward. Eric stands there, looking at her in what can only be described as devastation.