A/N: Hopefully this longer chapter makes up for the time it took me to post it! Let me know what you think! Reviews make me smile.

JJ had curled herself into a ball atop the bottom bunk, her hands fastened around her knees, rocking back and forth as if to try and soothe herself out of a bad dream. She watched the brunette girl in the twin bed. Watched her chest rise and fall, watched her eyelids twitch, watched her occasionally shift underneath the sheets. JJ watched, and she waited, and she tried to swallow the everpresent knot at the back of her throat. The mini-mart. Leading the girl towards the van. Mrs. Roycewood trailing behind them like a vulture waiting to strike.

JJ wouldn't allow herself to look away from the life that she'd been forced to ruin.

"See how she's dressed?" Derek said from beside her. "That shit looks expensive. She isn't like us."

Aaron shook his head from her other side. "She is now." He looked over at JJ. Guilt—guilt that he knew well—painted a sheen over her eyes. "You didn't have a choice," he said. "This isn't on you."

She just kept right on staring at the twin bed.

All three of them stayed rooted in the pink room for what must've been hours, waiting for the girl to awaken. Very few words were exchanged between them. Aaron had been present for the aftermath of three abductions now, and he sensed a pattern emerging; on some days, the children were able to push the injustice of their situation back to the deepest corners of their minds. On the days of another abduction, though, the cellar air became laced with a sense of remembrance. Remembrance for what had been done to them, and for what exactly they had lost.

Finally, the girl stirred. Her honey brown eyes cracked open. She sat up and began to blink rapidly, as though trying to will away the sight before her. Emily could swear she was dreaming, but the figures before her were clear as day. The blonde girl with the welts all over her arms—the one from the parking lot—looked as though she'd seen a ghost. The lanky boy with dark hair and darker eyes was grimacing. The shorter one with deep brown skin couldn't seem to make eye contact with her.

And just as JJ had on her first night, Emily understood almost instantly. These were not her captors; they were her fellow captives.

In only a week, Emily came to know some very important paradoxes of Funhouse.

The only way out of the basement was through the upstairs, and the only place worse than the basement was the upstairs.

It didn't seem that the Roycewoods were currently interested in killing them, but they certainly weren't above it, either.

The only way to remain unbroken was to bend.

And for better or for worse, the children down here had bent. And bent. And bent. They'd turned their minds into elastic, condemned to keep stretching further away from normalcy. She marveled at their schooling system, which they'd created from absolutely nothing, but had now become impressively orderly and structured. She marveled at the joy in JJ and Derek's eyes as they raced each other back and forth across the length of the hallway, and at how Aaron commentated like an old pro.

"The Blonde Dragon's making up some ground on our twelfth lap here, but the Chicago Phenom's maintaining his lead. Oh! Look at that! The Dragon gets her ankle in there, and Chicago's down! She pulls ahead! Remember, folks, there are no rules in the Underground Chase; tripping, elbowing, and even the occasional tackle are totally legal."

She marveled at their resilience in general. And at how accepting they'd been, welcoming her in with sad but open arms.

In her time down there, she'd only met the Roycewoods twice. Both instances had been paralyzing.

Her third night was a Tuesday. She'd had to look on in horror as Jason, then Derek got pummeled by adult men as prizes for a fucking poker game.

On her fifth night, Roger and Anita had come down to the cellar to complete a ritual that the others said was par for the course; they'd taught Emily her new last name. Her knuckles were still raw and bruised from the ruler.

She'd fallen asleep that night repeating the mantra they'd made her say over and over again in her mind. My name has and always will be Emily Roycewood. My name has and always will be Emily Roycewood. My name has and always will be Emily Roycewood.

She'd cried then. It was the first time since her kidnapping that she'd allowed herself to. In the bed across from hers, JJ had been pretending to be asleep, but Emily saw how the girl's hands had locked themselves over her ears.

"I know you're awake," she'd said once her sobs had petered out into sniffles. "You don't have to fake it. Sorry for keeping you up."

JJ had remained still for a moment before rolling over to face her.

"You," the twelve-year-old had said, her voice soft and solemn, "aren't the one who should be saying sorry."

Even in the low light, Emily had seen the tears glistening on JJ's cheeks.

"You don't either," she'd replied in barely a whisper.

JJ had just rolled over again.

All too quickly, Tuesday rolled around once more. During their school-allotted time that day, Emily couldn't bring herself to focus on the History textbook that Derek had assigned her. Her head was pounding with what-if's.

The others, however, were acting as though it were any other day, and she marveled at that most of all.

"Look," Derek sighed to no one in particular, flapping his copy of Lord of the Flies, "I get it; it's all a metaphor for society and war and whatever."

"Dictatorship," Aaron interjected. "It's mostly about dictatorship."

"Whatever. Still. The boys could've all just teamed up. They didn't have to go and start killing each other. It's so stupid."

"Note how they're all boys," JJ said. "Maybe it's really a metaphor for how much boys suck."

Emily managed a smile at her blonde compatriot. Derek stuck up his middle finger.

"The whole point is that they never could've teamed up," said Aaron, who by now had reread this particular book over twenty times. "It's basically saying that they were doomed to fight each other for power, 'cause that's just human nature."

Yeah, but that isn't even the most interesting part, Emily thought.

The others' heads whirled towards her. She realized she must have said it out loud. Murmured it, at least. This wasn't the first time in the cellar when she'd questioned her sanity. It certainly wouldn't be the last.

"What'd you say?" Aaron asked. Emily had been relatively quiet during her first week, which Aaron found completely justifiable, but still, he was slightly surprised when she spoke up.

"Power," Emily said. "Everyone always harps on that when they talk about the book, but it's not even the most interesting part."

JJ, Aaron, and Derek were silent. She felt obligated to continue.

"I had this tutor back when we lived in Italy—"

"You lived in Italy?" Derek practically squeaked.

"Shut up, Der," said JJ, though she, too, was curious.

Emily nodded. "My mom was stationed there. I was homeschooled, and this one tutor—his name was Jeff, which is like the least Italian name I can think of—had me read Lord of the Flies. Jeff went on and on about how the conch shell symbolized power, and how the whole book was about politics, but I always thought he was wrong. I fucking hate politics."

"So what do you think it's about?" Derek asked.

Emily tilted her head to the side, thinking it over. "Innocence," she said. "I think it's about what happens when kids lose their innocence."

The room was quiet for a beat.

"Always the innocent," Aaron murmured, looking towards Derek and JJ.

"Always the innocent," they whispered back in turn.

Emily didn't know what they were referring to, but somehow, she understood exactly what they meant.

"Because really," she continued, "the sad part isn't that they're all killing each other. I mean, yeah, of course, that's sad, but if it were adults stranded on the island, I don't think it would have the same impact. The sad part is that they're kids. They're kids, and they're being forced to start acting like adults, and doing adult things, and making adult decisions. And sure, in order to survive, they don't have a choice, but that doesn't erase the innocence that got taken away from them. And in the end of the book, even when Ralph gets rescued, you know he's never going to be the same again. Even if he goes back to the life he used to have, the island changed him so much that he won't fit there anymore. The boy he was before is gone."

Silence. The schoolroom was rife with silence so thick you could poke it. All four of them sat there on that cold concrete, breathing in Emily's words, staring around at their reluctant home. This world that they'd had to make from scratch.

"Say that one more time, but slower," Derek finally said, dissolving the moment. He pulled a sheet of lined paper towards him. "I gotta get this essay done by tomorrow."

They all laughed. Even the figure who'd been standing in the doorway managed a small chuckle. The children looked up. They hadn't even registered his presence.

"It's getting late," Jason said. His smile had vanished, returning his face to its usual ghoulish neutrality. "They'll come down to get us soon."

As he stood in the living room, trying not to gag at the smell of cigar smoke, a realization shook Derek; the numbers are even. There are five of them and five of us.

It sure didn't feel even. The five adults were free to come and go as they pleased. The five children were chained in place, figuratively and literally.

The night was almost over; Derek knew that. The men had drunk themselves silly, and usually when they reached this point, they'd slur that it was time to wrap up. Or, alternately, one of them would pass out. That was the second potential endgame to poker nights.

Aaron had been the target of the first slugger's round. JJ the second. Emily the third. Derek had seen the terror on the new girl's face as No-Neck had approached her with his fists drawn, smiling like a weasel. It'd been the first poker night on which she was victimized.

Aaron's left eye was swollen shut. JJ's nose was bleeding; she figured she was nearing double digits in regards to how many times her nose had been broken in the Roycewood house. She'd become an expert at resetting it. Emily's lip had split open, dribbling blood down across her chin. Derek was thoroughly impressed by her stoicism; she'd only glared up at the fat man as he struck her.

But by now it was so late that even Anita looked a bit tired. Her grip on the end of the chains was still steely, but her eyes had begun to droop. Derek took some odd satisfaction in this. It at least showed that she was capable of weakness.

"Last round," Alien-Eyes said woozily. "Lucy's gonna have my ass if I don't make it home tonight."

"Once a bitch, always a bitch," Thick-Arms muttered. Alien-Eyes didn't seem at all off put by the jab at his wife.

"Lets up the stakes, boys," No-Neck slurred. "Why don't we do something real interesting for the last round?"

"Like what, fatass?" Alien-Eyes asked. The other three men chuckled. No-Neck garbled out some expletives.

Roger Roycewood's eyes narrowed as he smiled. "I have a wonderful idea."

It was Thick-Arms' royal flush that decided the game. He was far and away the best poker player among the men, much to the children's chagrin—he also happened to be the hardest hitter.

But he wouldn't be throwing any punches this round. None of the adults would.

The stakes had indeed been raised.

The adolescents couldn't look at each other. They all knew that if they were to exchange eye contact, it would surely turn them from elastic back to glass. And breaking wasn't an option.

"How are we gonna go about this, Rog?" Alien-Eyes asked. His voice was equal parts drunk, nervous, and eager. "If we let 'em off the chains, they could all run at us. You really wanna take that risk?"

Roger looked his captives up and down. He downed the last of his scotch and pushed his chair out from underneath the table, rising to his feet. Slowly, giddily, he lumbered towards the line of children.

He withdrew something short and black and lustrous from his belt.

"They won't run. They won't do anything we don't tell 'em to," Roger said, twirling the gun. "'Cause if they do..."

He paused and tapped the barrel against his chin in thought.

"Eeny..."

The gun's eye locked itself on Derek.

"Meeny..."

It swung towards JJ.

"Miney..."

Over to Emily.

"Moe."

Roger strolled towards Aaron and Jason. He motioned for Anita to toss him the key to the cuffs. She did.

A lock clicked. A boy was free, but only marginally so. Roger marched him over to the poker table and shoved the gun into Alien-Eyes' hands.

"Hold him here," Roger instructed. "Keep the gun against his head the whole time."

He strolled back towards the other four captives and began to unlock their wrist restraints.

"Now, now," he crowed once they'd all been released. "If you fail to follow our instructions, brave little Jason over there gets his brave little brains blown out." He smiled and turned to Thick-Arms. "Get over here, Jimmy. Pair 'em up."

The children were trembling, all five of them. In the depths of their throat sat screams that'd only barely been swallowed.

JJ stared at Jason as Thick-Arms yanked her and Derek towards one side of the living room. For the first time in months, the oldest boy didn't appear outwardly unfeeling. No, now he looked afraid. Terrified.

Roger pulled Aaron and Emily towards the other side of the room. Finally, the four children were forced to stare each other down. Their eyes held only terror and disbelief.

"Two on two knockout match," Thick-Arms said joyfully. "Last one left conscious wins for his or her team."

None of the captives even breathed too loudly. This was so incredibly different from being hit by the adults. At least then, their sense of comradery remained intact. Us vs. Them was the clear ethos, and they could band together in their hatred for the Roycewoods and the poker men.

But now they were being pitted against each other. They'd become the boys from The Lord of the Flies, even if unwillingly so. They were going to have to fight their own teammates, turn against their own tribe.

Because if they didn't, their tribe would lose a member for good.

And yet, when Thick-Arms slapped the wall to signal the beginning of this treacherous boxing match, not one of them moved.

"I said go, you lard-brains! Fucking fight!"

They stayed rooted in place. An uncanny sense of calm drifted over the children. It was small, their act of resistance—and potentially coupled with lethal consequences—but nonetheless, they felt their own power bubbling in their cheeks. Their stillness was a silent declaration that they weren't just game pieces to be shifted around some psychotic chessboard. Their minds were their own, and their spite, too, belonged only to them.

"Go, you little shits!" Roger screamed. He pointed at Jason and Alien-Eyes, both of whom had gone very pale at the burgeoning reality of a shot needing to be fired. "Go, or he dies!"

"Rog, c-come on," Alien-Eyes stammered. "I'm not gonna... you know... actually kill the kid..."

Roger paid him no mind. "Start fighting, or watch Jason eat a bullet!"

Strengthened by Alien-Eyes' hesitation, Derek muttered, "You aren't our puppet master, freak."

Roger's cheeks went crimson with rage. He snatched the gun from Alien-Eyes and stormed towards Derek. The boy could feel Roger's hot and pungent breaths on him as the barrel was pressed to the side of his head. Derek's heartbeat pounded against the cool metal.

Roger tugged a wide-eyed and hyperventilating JJ towards the two of them by the arm.

"Punch her," he growled to Derek, "or die."

Derek jutted out his lower lip and stood his ground. The butt of the gun was promptly slammed across his cheek, and his mouth filled with blood. JJ whimpered like a wounded animal. Even the poker men had fallen silent by now. They simply stared at the scene in front of them in dumbstruck awe, each wondering whether or not the night was going to end with someone's brains on the hardwood.

"I'll kill you, you little fucker," Roger hissed as Derek spat out some of the blood from his mouth. "Don't you doubt for a second that I'll pull this trigger."

The gun dug further into his temple. The other children began to yelp and protest in horror as Roger's finger found its way to the gun's safety and flicked it off. The poker men dutifully grabbed a child each and held them back as they tried to sprint forwards to defend their friend.

"Please!" Emily cried from the tight grasp of No-Neck. "Please don't!"

"Just let us go!" yelled Aaron, who was being restrained by Thick-Arms.

"Shut up!" Roger screamed. "Everyone just shut the fuck up and let me think!"

But just as his index finger began to curl towards the trigger, there was a hand on his arm, pushing the barrel of the gun towards the floor.

"Roger," Anita said, her voice cool and calculated, "stop. He's valuable merchandise; you know that. You're being rash. Now isn't the time. Lessons can be learned in other ways, you know."

The room was dead silent. Finally, Roger let loose one guttural scream towards the ceiling. It was gravelly and low and primally crazy. Still, he holstered his gun. His wife was right; they'd been through far too much acquiring the children. They couldn't get rid of them just yet.

"Round them up!" he yelled to the poker men. "Cuff the four fucking renegades back onto the chain and bring them out to the backyard. They'll learn the true consequences of their actions tonight. Hell, they better learn. Next time I won't be quite so forgiving."

Through the canopy of trees above him, Aaron's eyes traced the outline of the crescent moon. He wanted so badly to appreciate the cool night air on his skin, and the sight of the stars scattered across the black-blue sky, and the unobstructed sounds of the forest, but he couldn't. The rattling of chains required all his attention.

JJ was practically flailing beside him, trying as hard as she possibly could to shake off her handcuffs.

"Come on, guys!" she cried. "They went back to the house; if we get free, we can run!"

"JJ," Derek said, his voice hollow and tired, "I've done this before. There's no way to get free. Trust me."

Aaron shivered at the memory of finding Derek at the top of the cellar stairs after his night in the woods so many months ago. He could recall it so clearly; how cold the other boy's skin had been. How his eyes had appeared almost uninhabited. How it took hours for him to stop trembling.

And here they were now, all four of them, trapped in exactly the same situation.

The Roycewoods and the poker men had dragged them out into the wilderness only an hour before, padlocking a long stretch of chain around a tree and cuffing them onto the end of it. After a triumphant once-over from Roger, the adults retreated, leaving them to fend for themselves. The children were far enough into the forest that the house was nothing but a faint light in the distance. Out here, their only company came in the form of crickets and fireflies and whatever other night creatures were leering at them behind the veil of shadows. Aaron certainly hadn't forgotten what Derek had said about wolves.

Emily leaned up against the trunk of the maple tree they were chained too, pulling herself into a ball.

"What if they leave us out here to die?" she asked quietly. "What happens if they never come back?"

"They will," Derek said, but even he sounded unsure.

The conversation pittered out. The night hummed with life, but somehow, even the shaking of leaves managed to sound slightly ominous. Nature wasn't quite as magical when you were trapped in it. Or perhaps the magic itself just became darker.

"So what now?" JJ asked, scowling down at the forest floor. "We just sit here in the dirt and wait for our least favorite people in the world to come back and save us from the mess they got us into?"

"Think of it like camping," Derek said dryly.

"Involuntary camping," Emily muttered.

Some strange and slightly unnerving force deep within Aaron found this wildly funny, and against his better judgement, he began to laugh. Hard.

The others stared at him as if he were an alien.

"S-sorry," he snorted. "It's just... oh my god. Our lives are so fucked up."

And when the absurdity of their existence dawned on the others as well, they couldn't help but join in. It was wrong, so wrong, to be laughing at such a dire time, but there was something incredibly necessary about it. For so much of their time in the cellar, they focused only on putting one foot in front of the other, and getting through each day as it came. But actually acknowledging the outlandishness of their reality wasn't something that happened out loud. It felt good to laugh at it all. As though being out of the cellar, even if only for a brief time, allowed for a new degree of separation from what happened down there.

And so they sat there in a circle, surrounded by dirt and trees, laughing like wild things.

"We live in a basement," JJ giggled.

Emily threw her head back. "We're human poker chips!"

"Our kidnappers," Derek added through cackles, "chained us to a tree in the middle of the fucking woods! They left us out here!"

"Our personal hell is run by two ugly old people!" supplied Aaron.

The list grew and grew.

"We're so messed up that we won't let each other learn our last names!"

"We almost cry with happiness when we get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!"

"We barely cry at all!"

"We got so bored that we wanted to do school!"

"I've learned more in school here than I did at home!"

"I've started naming every crack on the wall after a constellation!"

"I sleep with all our supplies in the top bunk with me every night because I think our room is going to flood again!"

"I can't remember what my bedroom at home looks like!"

"I don't remember what street I live on!"

"I almost collapsed with relief when Mrs. Roycewood brought the box of clothes from Goodwill down, because we all fucking reek!"

"I've gotten used to the smell of the bathroom!"

"My arms are so scarred up from the belt that it looks like I have lizard skin!"

"Alien-Eyes can't punch for shit!"

"Mrs. Roycewood smells like 1955!"

"I could probably beat them all at poker!"

They laughed and laughed and laughed until their bodies could no longer uphold their own hysteria. Wind whistled through the trees as the children caught their breath. What a thing it was, to be so in tune with other human beings. To be so intertwined in someone else's story.

They were only torn away from their misplaced humor when the howling began.