Chapter 9.4

The darkness doesn't last forever. When it ends, I wake up confused and foggy, but the questions that follow aren't those of an interrogation.

My sight is blurry, but I can see bright shapes moving across my field of vision; I blink slowly with tangled thoughts. What happened? Where am I again?

"He's waking up." I hear a voice say, it echoes in my mind, and it takes a few seconds to make sense of the words. I blink again and see the rough shape of a blonde man sitting next to me, and behind him a little man in a white coat.

"It's me Luke, we aren't going to hurt you, we just need to know a few things about you. Where's your home?" he asks. I lift my head to see his face, but my head is heavy and neck sore, and it flops back down onto the pillow after half an inch.

"I don't have one." I answer after a few moments and my head was slowly clearing. Oh, right, the mine field, being captured and treated here. Then the needle…

There was an IV hanging beside my bed with a tube which coiled around in circles and embedded carefully in the back of my hand, secured with far too much tape. I relented, even after all my struggles, I failed. But these weren't the questions of an enemy probing for information and the confusion made my head throb harder. Maybe they were just starting with easy questions, I saw Rickon do that too, before asked progressively more intrusive things, until they got what they wanted.

"Ah, I see. And what is your name?"

My name… Someone at the orphanage called me something, but that was so long ago, I seemed so young then. My name… something other than kid or brat- I couldn't remember. Those memories had become so far away, recalling them required more effort than I thought. A thing such as a name had become irrelevant after I was sold to the military.

He sighed, "it's ok, you don't have to tell me now. You're not going to be out of the hospital for a while anyway. I'll call you Ezra for now."

Ezra- seems like a good name to me.

"I want you trust me Ezra, I don't know what you've been through, but we are not going to hurt you, you're safe." safe? what does he mean? Could I possibly afford to trust this man? Could his kindness be genuine? No- impossible!

"It looks like the drugs are still in effect, so you should sleep it off and we can talk more once you feel better, if you want to."

He raises to leave, but there was one thing I was burning to know even though my head swum with confusion, or maybe because my head swum with confusion, "I… um… er…" I hesitated.

He turns, a little surprised, "its ok. What is it?"

"Where is this?"

"We're in a town called Davidstone in the fifth district."

I didn't know where that was, the name meant nothing to me.