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“Five days alone, two days with Father,” he explained, still unwilling to meet my eyes. He had talked about this Father briefly, always with apprehension. “First day with us, second day to fix home.”

“What is the first day with us like?” I asked him tentatively. He was a teenager, but innocent in so many ways. I couldn’t help but want to protect him, but I didn’t know how I could protect him down here.

Silas swallowed and finally met my eyes. “Let him take me, okay? It’s better for you if I go with him.”

I walked the few steps to him and rested my hands slowly and softly on each of his forearms. He was taller than me, and I had to look up to look into his eyes, but he was still just a kid. The one thing of substance I had learned about him: Silas didn’t like touch. He despised it, in fact, flinching away every time. I couldn’t help but wonder if Silas had only been touched in anger and aggression, never love and comfort. “Silas, what happens? You can tell me, and you should. I need to be prepared.”

Silas shook his head and stepped back. “Father will be angry if we’re not in the rooms when he’s here.” He reached behind me, grabbing the lantern off the sink and walking toward the room I had woken up in. I followed him, not wanting to be left in the dark.

We meandered into the room, Silas setting the lantern on my bed—the only one with a sheet. I had learned that Silas didn’t sleep on them, but instead in the corner of the room on the floor.

“Silas?” I called, and he glanced at me briefly as he made his way to his corner bed in acknowledgment. “How do you get supplies down here?”

“Father will bring them when needed,” he explained. “Food every visit, soap every eight visits. Clothes every fifty-two.”

The rhythm of his voice was completely flat, as if he were reciting a grocery list rather than the conditions of my captivity. I swallowed hard, catching the pattern hidden in his strange tally.

“Do you know what a week is?” I asked.

Silas looked at me, confusion marring his face, and shook his head.

“A year?”

He shook his head again.

“Okay,” I muttered and decided to do the math in my head. Based on what he said, he was alone for five days and Father was here for two. That was a full week. So it sounded like his soap came every two months, and his clothes once a year. “How many times have you gotten clothes?”

I could see Silas thinking it over in his mind, mentally counting. “Nine.”

Nine years. He had been here nine years—maybe ten? “Did you receive them when you first came here, or was it fifty-two weeks later?”

“Weeks?”

I shook my head and used the language he would understand. It would take time to help him understand the workings of the world outside of this place, and I hoped more than anything I could get us out of here sooner.

“Visits,” I corrected.

“Oh, are weeks and visits the same?” he asked curiously.

I shook my head. “No, not technically. It seems your visits happen twice a week. A week is seven days. A day is one cycle of sleeping and eating,” I explained.

I wasn’t sure if it made any sense to him, but he had a basic understanding of math, though I wasn’t sure how. Maybe that would be my next question. “I didn’t get them on the first visit. I came in clothes. They had pictures on them.”

Ten years. He had been here a decade. He didn’t remember much from his life before here, but it was obvious he had one. I had contemplated him having been raised in here for his entire life, but I had seen a silver tooth in the back of his mouth and a scar on his upper arm from a vaccine. I doubted whoever this Father was had performed dental care and vaccinations in this dungeon.

I looked around. That’s what this place really was: a dungeon. I didn’t know my life thoroughly enough to know if I had done something to deserve to be here, but I doubted Silas had when he was only a child.

“Do you know how old you are?” I asked Silas.

He shook his head. “What does that mean?”

“How many clothes visits have you been alive?”

He thought it over for a while. “Six,” he mumbled, and I couldn’t help but chuckle.

“I promise you’re not six, Silas.”

He glanced at me, his eyes wide. “I was six years old when I was brought here. I forgot what that meant. I haven’t heard it since.”