“I’d been there all my life.” Sam said, looking unhappy with the fact that he had to speak. “I don’t know how I got there, but all I remember is being there, in that lab. Amelia and Naomi were there, and Claire was too. Savvy came later, and then Derek. Then we got out. There were others, but only us got out. That’s it.”

“Yeah.” Amelia nodded. “I’d always been there. With Sam and Naomi and Claire. We was all there, even when we were little, ‘cept for Savvy and Derek. They came later.”

Naomi nodded. “Me too, like Ami and Sam.”

Claire shrugged, speaking quietly. “Yeah. I was just a baby when I was there. Don’t ‘member anything before. Just that place.”

Then everyone looked to Savvy, who was the only one who hadn’t yet spoken. “Well, I had a whole life before I got there. But it was a different life, y’know? I had a mom and a dad. But there was a car crash, and they died and I was blind and then I lived in a group home for a long time. Bounced around a couple times. But I was blind and sad and when Hanl came to talk to me, I felt like he was a good person. He said he had a son and daughters, and I’d always been an only child, so I was excited. He spent time with me. We went to lunch every Wednesday.” Her voice had become hoarse, so she cleared her throat and took a deep breath before continuing. “I was happy for the first time since mom and dad died, and then the adoption went through and I was so excited. The circumstances had been a little different, so I hadn’t ever been to the house before Hanl took me to move in. I think it was bad paperwork, honestly.

“And I was excited, except I didn’t go to his house. It was that lab. And he got me into a false sense of security and then he sat me down in a chair and gave me a glass of water. It must have been drugged, or something. Next thing I knew, I woke up and I could see and I was in a cage.”

Then the room fell silent, and all the kids looked at each other. Most of what had been said was already shared knowledge. It hadn’t been a secret of how they all got to the same place. The fact that most of them had been there for most of their lives made it even less so. But Derek and Savvy were the outliers in the situation. They hadn’t been babies when they had gotten there. They had been brought in different ways, both by a man they had trusted. By their father, whether biological or adoptive.

The only thing Dr. Riley had learned was that they had all been there by someone that they trusted or that they thought they could have trusted. A father figure, the adults that had raised them. It wouldn’t surprise Dr. Riley if the kids felt strange, living in a different lifestyle. It wouldn’t surprise her much if they had wanted to go back.