Oscar woke up to an aching body and jumbled memories.

While the lights around him were too bright, he tried to reconstruct what had happened last night. He remembered following Professor Rogers – remembered seeing her with a large, heavily armed man – remembered the rows of boxes and crates of ingredients and equipment.

He remembered the same man breaking his rapier with his bare hands before Oscar could land a single blow.

It all seemed logical in retrospect. They were moving – because they’d discovered him watching them. They were moving so openly – because they wanted him to see.

Too bad he had not made this connection then.

He opened his eyes, hoping to find himself in a hospital, but that hope was short-lived as he became aware of metal against his ankle.

The same burly man from before was standing by the door, talking to someone. The second man’s face was half-hidden with a painted mask, and even when he turned towards Oscar, his eyes remained hidden in the mask’s shadow.

The room had no windows, and the air was stale. The bright lights seemed to have no source, a bright white colour that hurt to look at.

Oscar had no idea where he was, but he was chained to the corner of the room, lying on something that seemed more like an operation table than a bed. There was a sharper pain on his left forearm, hidden by some bandages that Oscar didn’t remember getting.

He was no longer sure his memories were of last night.

The masked man came closer, and Oscar tried to square his shoulders, not seem afraid.

“You have no right to be holding me,” he tried, grabbing at straws. “My family will be looking for me, and I have influential friends.”

Emma will look, won’t she? And she’ll surely ask folks from the fencing school, and – surely an abduction was not threatening, it was stupid. He had a name and some social standing, he wasn’t some nobody that wouldn’t be missed –

“How peculiar a human mind works,” the masked man said. His voice was calm and soft, and yet it sent chills down Oscar’s spine, making him move further away on the metal bed on instinct. “After everything you must have seen, you still seem to be under the impression that your world’s rules apply here.”

Did he mean the occult nonsense from the book? The pentagram and the odd symbols?

“Let me make it clear,” the man continued, reaching out to carefully grab hold of Oscar’s bandaged forearm, “you are not here due to your money or your title, or even because of the things you have learned.”

A thumb stroked against the bandages before digging into them hard, unexpected pain making Oscar yell out and squirm.

A fencer, he was no stranger to cuts, but he wasn’t in the habit of making them worse.

The man’s grip remained firm and excruciating, and his voice remained gentle and even.

“Your virtues are your misfortune’s only cause.”

————

More Oscar after imprisonment: Reflection