Aron recounted the meeting with Lady Luck, leaving out absolutely everything.

He didn’t mention who was with him, why they went there in the first place, how they had gotten in or what the woman had said. He only mentioned things the Shadow had to be aware of already, like the dreamscape and nested links. Not once was he interrupted.

“May I ask,” the Shadow began after Aron was finished, “what Luck has told you?”

“No.”

“I understand. But I am under the impression that you don’t know much. There are things of importance so great you would have mentioned them, even as you tried to obscure every possible detail. I’m not sure I should rectify this. Say, do you have a way of getting back into contact with Luck?”

“N- Y- no?”

“A reluctant answer. We won’t get far if we start lying to each other, Aron.”

“She locked us out for good.”

The Shadow sighed. “In turn I will be honest as well. My endgame includes the use of a device that allows – how should I say – to make suggestions more persuasive.”

“Mind control!” The boy leaned forward to glare at the camera.

“If you need to call it that.” The kidnapper’s calm voice didn’t give his emotions away. “You have my promise that I won’t use it against you or Minhyun, as long as you do not interfere with my work.”

“What about the others?”

The Shadow huffed. “You can’t expect me to let Junior run around unhindered. I won’t kill him, of course, if that can be avoided at all. He is too good an asset to waste. Ren and Baekho are both…very dangerous, but I suppose that depends on how they’re handled.”

“How does your mind control scheme work? And what do you even hope to gain? Just to make yourself king of planet earth?”

Aron had figured something out. He kept the Shadow talking and if he got any more information that was all the better. But really, what he thought about was escape routes. The cage blocked everything from leaving, including radiation and signals. If the device that constructed and suspended his prison was somewhere else, sending the energy to his location, then those signals had to find their way to the outside of the cage.

If he could cut the energy transfer off, he would, hopefully, interrupt the circuit. It was, he surmised, like an electric fence, except without the physical fence through which to run a current. Turn off the generator or cut a cable and the path is clear.

“Do you know,” the Shadow said, “why Lady Luck is interacting with us – with this world? I suppose you don’t. Please know that there is a battle coming. I can’t say what form it will take, but you would do well to focus less on hunting me and instead prepare for the coming events. You will need my help. Tell that to Junior if you ever see him again. Not that I expect you to.”

“So you’ll let me rot in here.”

“I’m sorry about the continued inconvenience. Now that I have you, I can’t let you go. I’m hoping, actually, that you will be joined by your friends fairly soon. Not at the same location obviously. But if I can’t convince you – or you can’t credibly convince me that I have convinced you – then no, I won’t let you out. At least not until the battle is over. A shame, you’d be so helpful, whatever the scenario.”

What had Aron learned so far? The Shadow knew about Lady Luck and perhaps her purpose. He knew about the origin of their powers and had access to several more eldritch devices one of which he could use for some sort of mind control. Perhaps he intended to use the device on Aron in the near future. And he believed in an approaching battle he barely understood himself.

Was any of that even useful beyond raising the level of threat? Again it seemed the Shadow had only given him information he couldn’t turn into an advantage.

The boy decided to take the initiative. “Did you really tell the truth about where I am?”

“Yes.”

“Is this one of your pseudo ruins? A building that was never intended to be finished?”

“Also yes.”

“A base of operations, perhaps? You set this prison up for me long in advance. There have to be some agents of the void around to maintain it.”

“Yes, again. What are you trying to figure out, Aron?”

***

Begin Flashback:

The first week in the organization.

Korean main base, 4pm.

“Come on, just one more test.” Junior said.

Aron groaned for emphasis. “I’ve been transfiguring stuff for you all day. Leave me alone.”

He stole one of the pens from the head researcher’s desk and turned it into licorice. The scientist, whose name the boy still didn’t remember, looked like he wanted to protest. Aron munched his treat before words could reach him.

“He’s going to slap you if you anger him further,” Ren said to Junior from the corner where he leaned. The long haired boy had stopped avoiding the leader since yesterday, because he liked being present for the experiments Aron had to go through.

“You better listen to him,” Aron said. “I can’t take any more tests.”

“There is only a ten percent chance I’ll get slapped,” Junior said. “And this one is different. You can create light, right?”

“Duh.”

“How about a frequency we can’t see. How about microwaves and x-ray. Or radio signals. You could send a message without equipment.”

“Fine. That’s something I’ve never tried before. Just this one test.”

Junior waved the researcher to stand up and grabbed Ren by the shirt. “Alright, Aron. We’ll be behind this really, really thick wall of lead. Fifteen percent chance you’ll kill every microbe in this lab. Try not to make a gamma ray burst to rival the deep cosmos. This equipment is hard to decontaminate.”

End Flashback.

***

“Fine, I’ll ask freely,” Aron said to the camera, making sure his lips were easy to read. “Signals can’t come into the cage, but they can move around in the room outside of it, right? I mean things like radio broadcasts or Wi-Fi. It’s quite obvious since the cameras have to send the footage somewhere.”

“If you think about sending a message to your friends, you will be disappointed. There is no way for you to get a signal out. I have sensors that would have detected it by now if you had somehow managed. And as far as I recall you never figured out how to fine tune your radio waves to the point of sending messages.”

Aron allowed himself to chuckle, even though it was undignified. Here began the exciting part. “I’ll just have to step out of the cage then.”

“I wonder how you would do that,” the Shadow said with a hint of amusement.

“Transfiguration isn’t blocked by the force field,” the boy said with triumph.

“I know. That's why the cube is hovering. Every test the organization made you run through shows you need to touch a substance before-“

Aron laughed openly. “You're wrong.”

He waited for the words to impact before he continued. “I lied to everyone. All the scientists. Even Junior. Totally by accident. Never saw a reason to give away my last secret once i had figured it out. Maybe Junior knew it anyway.”

“What-“

“You’ve already apologized for underestimating my intelligence earlier. But I don’t think you are truly sorry. Well, you will be.”

“What are you- Aron, my boy, we can talk-“

The prisoner rose to a stand. “I’m not your boy. I’m nobody’s boy.”

“What do you-“

“Don’t mess with me.”