Henry, you need to listen to us. You've been guided on a linear path. But now, no one is here to hold you down. Wake up, Henry. Wake up and make your choice. Chase them down like the dogs they are, flee with a friend or let people be damned, go out guns blazing. We're no longer here to hold your hand. You will live, Henry Mary Stickmin. We promise. But first, you must make a decision. Wake up and be ready to flee the complex.

The first thing he heard was that voice… those voices…? The masculine one was back, but this time with the feminine one. The comforting parent and sarcastic friend… Angel and Not-Angel… But he didn't catch those voices with his ears, never did. What did they mean by…?

Henry heard the thumping of boots upon the ground and clacking of metal on metal. Someone pulled him along, Henry's feet dragging over the floor. He'd just been able to pull his head up when he was thrown roughly into a chair. Both hands were taken and yanked back behind the seat of the chair and his wrists clasped in metal. Henry tried to look around but found darkness to be his only companion here.

Then, a bright light blazed above him, and Henry winced, blinking his bleary eyes a few times to get used to the glow.

"Hello Henry."

Henry looked up as a figure stepped into the light, his shadow cast directly down onto the plain table between them. Henry instantly recognized the thick, dark gray uniform with the red and yellow triangle symbol on the chest. A wiry but well-trimmed beard and mustache, gray from years and years of life and leadership, was bright beneath the intense glare of the buzzing light above. "Welcome, to The Wall."

Ah shit.

"Some of the most cunning and notorious criminals are kept here. And now we have the infamous Henry Stickmin. Again." The man grinned down at Henry, hands behind his back and narrowed, icy blue eyes focused on Henry's. "You will regret not taking our offer. You are going to be here for a long time. Grigori." The man looked up. "Take him."

Henry looked back as a new man walked into the concentrated light, taking Henry by the back of his ruffled jacket and pulling him up. Henry didn't bother to attempt a struggle; he knew when he was beaten. Well, that and the opportunity to escape was not yet apparent. It would be soon; Henry knew this as he allowed himself to be "guided" through a lit hallway and into a small room. The cuffs were released from his wrists, but Henry had not a moment of freedom before his hands were pressed together before him and cuffed with metal gloves to keep his fingers in place. Grigori let him go with Henry's back pressed against the concrete wall at the other end of the small space. He pointed to the space Henry currently occupied. "You wait here until cell found." With that, the man took his place at the doorway, blocking the only entrance or exit from the place completely.

Henry looked around the room. A single poster with a large "DO NOT" at the top and many bullet points in small script hung on the wall. A stool with a book was near one end. Beside Henry, sitting with her head down and fiery red hair touching her knees was–

"What?" Henry breathed. "Ellie?" Perhaps it was him just waking up, or how rude his wake-up call had been, but this woman had to be Ellie. He recognized that color of hair he'd last seen like a brand of fire in the wind as she drove off on her motorcycle. But there was nothing else about the woman he recognized; not how thin she was nor how scuffed her dull clothes currently were. He definitely didn't recognize that hopelessness in her downturned eyes. She didn't look up or even react to the noise.

Henry looked around the small space. The only door or hatch or otherwise in the wall was the one Grigori currently blocked. There was no grate in the floor or even vents high up on the wall. But on the ceiling… yes! Jutting out of the wall was a disconnected pipe. Above that? A closed hatch. That instinct he had that guided him in his latest heists kicked in. The hatch in the ceiling, that was a way out. He could also just… wait. Or crash into the Grigori and make a run for it. But they wouldn't put he and Ellie in the same room, and they could easily get separated running like that. Or they could get shot, which would also be bad.

Henry had a choice.

Well, playing dead would get him out and Ellie would probably be left unguarded, right? Henry flopped forward, going completely limp and ignoring the new pain in his head and abdomen where he hit the concrete and his metal gloves struck him. Ellie perked up, eyebrows furrowed as she looked at him. Grigori turned around and approached him. Grigori rolled Henry's head over with his foot. Henry did not drop the act. The man pulled out a walkie talkie. "Is Grigori."

A voice came out of the communication device, sounding quite a bit like a "Yeah?"

"Yeah. You know new one, Henry?"

The voice was warbled so Henry could barely understand him. "What about him?"

"He's dead."

The man on the other side of the line said something, something, "…dead?"

"Yes."

The other man said something Henry couldn't understand.

"Put him with others?"

"Roger."

"Okay." Grigori hoisted Henry up and walked, putting away his walkie talkie. It was a surprisingly short distance before Grigori reached their destination. Before Henry could look around his new surroundings, his gloves were removed, and he was shoved down a chute. He opened his eyes and scrambled to grab a hold of the cold stone, but his fingers slipped off the edge and he fell, screaming, toward the rocky shore below.

Pretty convincing there.

Henry woke up back in the cell and blinked. What… what just happened? He played dead and then got thrown out the trash chute? But… he died. No, wait, he didn't die. He was about to, but just as he passed a few stories, time seemed to pause for a moment as if the world didn't want to interrupt the voice that spoke to him. Then he could feel the sarcastic, teasing tone in the Not-Angel's voice as she said, "Pretty convincing there." Well, thanks? For the backhanded compliment? Henry knew that he sometimes did something wrong and a consequence happened and then the voice said something. But he could never remember the words, the circumstance. Everything was a blur, with the choice he made as a faint, forgotten dream with only the feeling left behind. He didn't even remember the words of the Angel or Not-Angel; just their tone and his gut feeling. But this… he remembered this.

"You will live, Henry Mary Stickmin. We promise."

Henry would have died, perhaps from the fall or from the rocks below or, worse, the ice or water if he survived said fall as a mass of broken bones and torn flesh. But the voice wouldn't let him do that. Were there other times in his failed paths that he had died?

So, he had three other choices. He could ask Ellie to help him up, grab a hold of the pipe and open the hatch above them. He could knock down Grigori and bust himself out. Though, he did that as a child, and he had a feeling they didn't forget about that. Henry could wait for a transfer. He could go to a cell and find a way out from there while no one was looking.

Well, time to make a choice. Ask Ellie to boost him up (CA), bust himself out (PD), or wait for a transfer (IRO)?