The Lot

Rowan Reid would be the first person to tell you that holding cells were not built for rest. He’d spent nearly six years avoiding exactly this: staying clear of hot spots, keeping his distance from settlements, doing everything in his power to stay out of the way of the things that had inherited the world since the virus turned it over. Most humans left weren’t free anymore. They’d been swept up early, put to use one way or another, blood or labor or worse, and the ones still loose out in the world were loose only because they’d slipped through the cracks the same way he had. He’d tried hard not to fall through those cracks the wrong way. He’d wanted to live, and to keep on living unnoticed, and for six years that had actually worked.

He’d crossed paths with exactly one of them in all that time, a young vampire, still flushed from a recent feeding, who’d looked at him long enough to be a genuine threat and then simply walked on, sated and uninterested. That was the whole of Rowan’s history with the other side of this war. He hadn’t been close enough to a living soul, human or otherwise, in longer than he could easily count, by design, because closeness was how you got seen, and being seen was how you ended up somewhere like this.

Humans didn’t cluster anymore, not the way they used to. There was no safety in numbers left to find; groups drew attention, and attention got you taken. It had become, in the truest and ugliest sense, every man for himself, and Rowan had gotten very good at being only for himself, right up until three men in black had found the one blind spot in six years of careful planning and ended all of it in under a minute.

Two nights now, since that minute. He’d screamed the first one, screamed until his throat gave out somewhere past what might have been midnight, for someone, anyone, to explain what was happening, and no one had. Eventually, there had been nothing left of his voice to scream with, and after that, there was nothing left to do but stop.

He hadn’t screamed since. He didn’t think he had it in him to start again, even if he wanted to. What was left instead was something quieter and worse: a low, constant hum of fear that hadn’t let up long enough for him to sleep more than in scraps, jerking awake every time the silence changed pitch even slightly, certain each time that this was it, this was the moment someone finally came for him, and it would be worse than the waiting had been.

The room had two benches mounted into the walls, one on either side, neither much bigger than a cot. No blanket. No pillow. The lights never turned off, not once in two nights, and he’d stopped being able to tell if the ache behind his eyes was from that or simply from being that afraid for that long without any relief from it.

He was still turning all of it over, uselessly, exhaustedly, for what might have been the hundredth time, six years undone in the space of a heartbeat, when the door opened.

He flinched hard enough to hurt something in his own neck, scrambling upright on the bench before his body had finished deciding to be afraid. A man stepped through, and for one disorienting second, Rowan’s chest loosened at the ordinary shape of him, a suit, a tie, a notebook, before some older, animal part of his brain caught up and understood that ordinary didn’t mean safe, not here, not anymore.

“Mr. Reid.” The voice was soft, measured, entirely unbothered by the state Rowan was clearly in. “My name is Daniel Kaine.”

Rowan didn’t answer right away. His voice, when it came, sounded rougher than he expected, worn down from two nights of screaming and disuse. “Where am I?”

“That isn’t something I’m able to answer usefully right now,” Daniel said it without cruelty, but without softening it either. “I can tell you what I’m here for, if that helps more.”

“Nothing’s helped so far.” It came out sharper than Rowan meant, or maybe exactly as sharp as he meant. His hands were shaking against his knees, and he didn’t have it in him to hide it anymore. “Six years. Six years of not being anywhere near anything like you, and then two days of this, and nobody’s told me one single thing. What is this place? What’s happening to me?”

Something in Daniel’s expression shifted, small, unreadable. He didn’t sit, didn’t come closer yet, just stood with the notebook closed against his chest, quiet, considering. “You’re afraid.”

“You think?” Rowan’s laugh came out broken, more air than sound. “I’ve been screaming into a locked room for two days, I don’t have a working voice left, I’ve got no one left to even wonder about me, and now a man in a suit walks in and tells me his name like that’s supposed to mean something.”

“It should mean something, eventually.” Daniel’s tone didn’t rise to meet his; it stayed level, almost gentle in its refusal to be provoked. “I understand you’re frightened. I’m not going to pretend otherwise or tell you that you shouldn’t be. But I need you to hear the next part clearly, because it matters more than anything else I could say to comfort you right now, and I won’t get anywhere useful for you if you’re too far gone in the fear to take it in.”

Rowan’s jaw worked, and for a moment, he thought he might scream again after all, find some scraped-raw version of his voice from somewhere. He didn’t. He made himself breathe instead, the way some distant, functioning part of his brain remembered doing before job interviews, before things that used to feel like the biggest fears he’d have to survive.

“Say it, then.”

Daniel came closer, unhurried, and Rowan realized only once he was near enough to make out details that his vision was wrong, blurred at the edges, softened past clarity. His glasses were gone. He hadn’t even registered that yet, hadn’t had room to.

“I’m an adjudicator,” Daniel said. “Property law, specifically, as it applies to unclaimed persons since the reclassification. You are, as of your processing, unclaimed property under that law. There are interested parties. Bids, in effect, though I understand the word is going to sound obscene to you, and I won’t pretend it isn’t.” He said it plainly, none of the softness gone, but none of it dressed up either. “My role is to determine where you’re placed. That’s the whole of it, for now.”

Rowan sat with that, felt it land somewhere far past his stomach, somewhere closer to the floor. “Bids,” he repeated, hollow. “For me.”

“Yes.”

“You could just kill me.” He said it flat, not quite a question, testing the shape of it as something he might actually want.

“A waste of resources, I'm afraid,” Daniel said evenly, then paused, something almost like reconsideration crossing his face at the bluntness of his own answer. “That’s not meant unkindly. It’s simply accurate. You’re worth considerably more placed than disposed of, and I don’t think you’d find either answer more comforting than the other, so I’d rather give you the true one.”

Rowan didn’t have anything to say to that. His hands were still shaking. Daniel seemed to notice, glanced down at them, then back up, and something in his manner eased slightly, some decision settling into place.

“You’ve had a hard two days.” It wasn’t a question. “No blanket. No pillow. Lights that don’t turn off. I’d guess very little sleep, and less food than a person needs.” He said it plainly, reading it off almost, though his eyes hadn’t left Rowan once. “That’s going to change, starting now, whatever else happens today. You have my word on that much, if nothing else yet.”

“Why should I believe anything you say?”

“You shouldn’t, not yet.” Daniel’s mouth curved, not quite a smile. “Trust isn’t something I can hand you along with a blanket. You’ll have to watch and see if I do what I say I’ll do. That’s the only kind that means anything.”

He didn’t move to leave, and something in the stillness of him made Rowan brace for whatever was still coming.

“There’s something else,” Daniel said. “Before anything moves forward today, I need considerably more from you than your name and your fear, Mr. Reid. I know that’s going to feel like an intrusion on top of everything else. It is one. I won’t pretend it isn’t. But you’re going to be presented to interested parties before the day is finished, and a name on a page and a blood type on a chart is all most claimants ever get. I’d like to give them more than that, if you’ll let me.”

Rowan felt something cold move through him, slower than the fear from before, more deliberate. “Presented.”

“Yes.”

“Like at an auction.”

Daniel didn’t flinch from the word, didn’t dress it up softer than it was. “Yes. It is exactly that.” A pause, careful. “I’d rather you understand exactly what’s coming than find out sideways through a speaker in a room you can’t see out of. You’ll have time before it happens. Hours, not minutes. I intend to use them properly, if you’ll let me.”

Rowan sat with that, the fear reshaping itself into something with clearer edges now that it finally had a shape to sit inside. Two days of not knowing, and now he knew, and it was somehow worse for being real instead of imagined. “What do you want from me?”

“Everything that made you a person before three days ago.” Daniel finally sat, across from him, notebook opening in his lap, pencil steady in a way Rowan’s hands weren’t. “What you did. Who did you do it for? What you’re afraid of, beyond the obvious. What you miss already, sitting in this room. Small things, even, the kind of thing no chart accounts for.” His eyes stayed on Rowan, patient, unhurried. “I’m not asking out of curiosity. I’m asking because it’s the only leverage I have to make sure whoever gets the winning bid sees a person, not a listing. That won’t undo any of this. It might make what comes next slightly less unbearable. That’s the whole of what I can offer you today.”

Rowan’s throat was still raw, his hands still unsteady, and somewhere under the fear, a smaller, exhausted part of him understood that he didn’t have a version of this where refusing changed anything, only a version where refusing meant going into that room as nothing but numbers.

Rowan pulled his legs up onto the bench and wrapped both arms around them, holding them to his chest, small and closed off, needing whatever shape that made him take up less room in the world than he did. “Ask then.”

Daniel stood and drew in a slow breath through his nose, unhurried, focused. “O positive. Excellent.” He came closer.

“How can you tell?” Rowan asked quietly.

“I can smell it. The same way you’d know the difference in smell between a peach and an orange without needing to look at either.” He said it easily, as it cost him nothing to explain.

“Vampire?”

“You couldn’t tell?” Daniel sounded almost amused by it.

“No glasses. I can’t see well without them.”

“Stand,” Daniel said without answering the last statement, as if it had flown right by him. Rowan didn’t know why he did it, but he stood, legs unfolding out from under him stiff with two nights of disuse, and Daniel looked him over slowly, thoroughly, the way something gets appraised rather than the way a person gets seen. “Six foot two. Two hundred twenty-five pounds, roughly.” He opened the notebook. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-four.”

“Not too young. Not so old to be past use.” He said it and moved straight past it, no weight given to how it landed, already turning the page for more. “Sit. We’ll go through the rest properly.”

Rowan sat back down, arms curling around his knees again on instinct, and Daniel began slowly, pencil already moving before the next question had fully left him. “Let’s start with your diet, shall we?” He didn’t look up from the page while he wrote, voice even, unhurried. He worked through a string of questions after that: allergies, old injuries, whether he slept easily or badly, what made him sick, what he could stomach and what he couldn’t, clinical, methodical, filling the page steadily while Rowan answered in short, flat pieces because giving more felt like giving something away he didn’t have to give yet.

Then, without changing his tone at all: “Before the world fell into what it is now, what was your profession?”

“My job?” Rowan frowned, the question landing strangely after everything else, too ordinary for the room they were sitting in. “I was a teacher. High school English lit.”

Daniel wrote that down without comment. “Hobbies?”

Rowan opened his mouth and found, humiliatingly, that he didn’t have a ready answer. “I don’t know. Football. Going to the bar on Saturdays. Movies, sometimes.” He shrugged, the motion small and defensive. “I had a cat. I played with the cat.” He was quiet a beat, hearing how thin it all sounded said out loud. “I just went to work, and came home, and graded papers, and watched TV. Mostly.” He didn’t know how to make that sound like more than it was. He wasn’t even sure it needed to be more, until right now, sitting across from someone deciding how to sell the shape of his life to strangers.

Daniel’s pencil paused, and when Rowan glanced up, he found the man watching him rather than the page, not unkindly, just noting something.

“You’re not looking at me when you answer, and if you do, you're looking somewhere beyond me.” Rowan’s jaw tightened. “Are you afraid to look at me?” Daniel asked it plainly, no judgment in it, just the question laid flat on the table between them.

“You’re blurry,” Rowan accused, like it was Daniel’s fault. “I told you I don’t have my glasses. I’ve got a headache from it.”

Daniel made a small, thoughtful sound and stood without another word, crossing to the door and knocking twice. He stepped out, and his absence left the room somehow louder than it had been with him in it. He wasn’t gone long. When he came back in he didn’t sit right away.

“I’ve requested your glasses be sent for from processing,” he said. “They’ll verify the prescription before anyone hands them over. We’ll have a new pair made properly, if it comes to it.” He resumed his seat, notebook open again. “Depending on which household wins the bid, you likely won’t need them very long regardless.”

Rowan felt something go cold and slow through his chest. “What does that mean?”

“Any of the bidders who wins the bid can turn you at their leisure, once you’ve been transferred into their custody,” Daniel said it the way he’d said everything else so far, even, unhurried, no weight added to soften it. “Vision corrects itself in the process, in most cases. It’s simply one of the changes that comes with it.”

Rowan stared at him, the words taking a moment too long to fully arrive. “I could become one of you.”

“You most likely will,” Daniel said it without inflection, without pause, the same flat register he’d use to confirm a name or a date. No warmth in it to soften the landing. Just a fact, laid down between them as it cost him nothing to say.

Neither of them said anything for a while after that. Daniel’s pencil rose again, unhurried, and lifted a lock of hair back off Rowan’s forehead, and did not linger past that single, brief touch. “Natural ginger?”

“Something like that.” Rowan didn’t know why that, of everything asked so far, was the question that made his throat go tight.

Daniel made one more note, looked him over a final time, and closed the notebook. He stood without ceremony and crossed to the door, knocked twice, and was let out. The door sealed behind him with the same solid sound it always made, and Rowan sat with his knees still pulled to his chest, not moving, not trying the door, doing nothing at all except breathe and wait, because waiting was the only thing two nights had taught him how to do well.

Daniel wasn’t gone long. When he came back, he had a folded stack in his hands, khaki trousers, a green sweater, plain and civilian, nothing that matched the jumpsuit Rowan had been given at processing. He set it on the bench.

“Change into these.”

Rowan looked at the clothes, then at him. “You’re going to watch.”

“No.” Daniel was already turning for the door. “I’ll step out.” He paused with his hand on the frame. “Whether or not that buys you real privacy is a separate question I can’t answer honestly, given where you are. I’d rather give you the illusion of it than none at all.”

He left. The door didn’t fully latch, same as always, and Rowan dressed quickly anyway, some old useless instinct insisting on speed even though there was nowhere faster to get to. The fabric was plain and clean, and it felt obscene against his skin after two nights in the jumpsuit, too soft for what it was actually for.

Daniel returned once he was dressed, looked him over without comment, and produced a familiar dark case from inside his jacket. Rowan’s hands weren’t steady when he took it. The glasses settled onto his face, and the room resolved into hard, unwelcome focus: cinderblock, drain, the exposed pipe in the ceiling, and Daniel’s face, finally clear, ordinary in a way that made the fangs he now caught the edge of feel worse rather than better for finally being visible. For one absurd second, Rowan found himself wishing for something other than his own prescription, something tinted, something that softened edges instead of sharpening them, the kind of glasses that turned a bad thing into something bearable to look at. His glasses had never worked that way. They only ever showed him exactly what was in front of him, and praying for rose colored glasses now seemed like a waste of a prayer.

“Come,” Daniel said. “There’s somewhere I need to walk you through.” No cuffs this time. No guard at his back. Rowan followed him out barefoot, unbound, down a hallway longer than any he’d seen yet, and some small clinical part of his brain noted that too, that they trusted him loose now, which meant either they’d stopped worrying he’d run, or they simply didn’t need to worry about it at all.

The room they reached wasn’t a cell. It was large, high-ceilinged, half-lit, and full of movement, people he didn’t recognize setting out rows of chairs in loose, unhurried lines, the ordinary business of preparing a room for an ordinary event. Rowan’s stomach turned over slowly and coldly, understanding before Daniel said a word.

“This is the auction area,” Daniel said, unhurried, plain, businesslike. “Interested parties will convene here to bid.” He gestured toward a small window set into the far wall, glass looking into a box of a room barely larger than a closet. “You’ll be in there. You won’t see what happens out here. You won’t hear it either.” He turned, met Rowan’s eyes directly for the first time since they’d left the cell. “You’ll simply walk in, sit down, and the rest will handle itself. When it’s finished, the door behind you will open, and you’ll be brought back to your cell. Dinner will be waiting. Steak. Steamed vegetables.” A pause, level, patient. “Do you have any questions?”

Rowan looked at the little box of a room, at the chairs being arranged by people who wouldn’t meet his eyes, at the whole enormous machinery of it moving forward, whether he understood any of it or not. Somewhere under the fear, a colder, more useless part of him did the arithmetic anyway: barefoot, unbound, no cuffs, and still nowhere to run to, no door in this building that wasn’t watched, no version of bolting that ended anywhere but caught and worse off for having tried. The logic of it settled over him heavier than the fear itself, and it was the logic, in the end, that kept him standing still.

There were a thousand questions crowding up behind his teeth, none of them the kind that had answers. What happens if no one bids? What happens if everyone does? Does it hurt more the second time you’re afraid than the first? Is there a version of this where he got to keep any part of who he was? Not one of them made it past his throat. Asking wouldn’t change what was already in motion. It would only mean saying them out loud and hearing how small they sounded once they existed outside his own head.

“No,” he said, and the word came out smaller than he meant it to. “No questions,” he murmured tightly.