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Six ran headlong through the streets of the Village, heading for the sea. He ignored or dodged the people he passed, who seemed utterly unperturbed by the sprinting figure with his face contorted by horror. He began to grab glimpses of beached ships and pale sand between the houses and slowed his pace. Panting he turned an corner and walked into the Village square.

Indeed, such was the shock at finding himself back at his starting point Six simply plunged into the merry-go-round of striped walkers without realising what was happening for a moment. Then he came to his senses, letting out a yell of dismay. An Asian woman with short hair glared at him, the sound interrupting her discussion in Aramaic with a cadaverous elderly gentleman. People tutted and elbowed Six as he stumbled to a halt, a rock amongst the flowing tide of bodies.

A hand took his elbow and began to steer him forwards. Six flinched away and looked down. Two beamed back at him, twirling his umbrella with an expertise that managed to make the sharp tip miss the nearby walkers. "Sorry about that, dear fellow," he shouted, raising his cultured tones to be heard over the surrounding babble. "Consistency has never been our strong point!" He chuckled as he managed, with a half-circle of the pool, to extract himself and Six from the walkers with no further problem.

Six shook Two's hand from his arm and glared at him. "What are you?" he hissed.

Two put a hand on his chest and looked shocked. "What? That's very hurtful, Six. I'm a who, just like you. Just like them." He gestured behind himself to the crowd. "Let's just say that I, and some of the other residents have...issues."

"Issues?" Six snapped, his patience wearing thin. "Are you even human? Are they?" He punctuated that sentence by jabbing his finger at the nearby people.

"Well what about you, Six?" Countered Two. "Are you a human after all the things you have seen and done? After all the secrets you have learned?" He jabbed the umbrella at Six, striking him in the chest before Six batted it away. "You seem to be rather high and mighty for a number. Don't make me ask Rover to give another demonstration."

"I am not a number!" Six bellowed at Two, grabbing his shirt. He leg go instantly as the greasy, organic texture of the material registered on his fingers. Silence suddenly descended on the square. Six looked around and noticed that every person there was looking at him.

"Oh dear," Two commented, stroking away the wrinkles in his 'clothing'. "It appears that our latest guest thinks that he..." He paused as some people in the crowd giggled. "That he is not a number!" That prompted a gale of laughter from the assembled walkers. Even the band doubled over with mirth, laughing until their faces turned red and breathless.

Six staggered around, the waves of sound buffeting him. Everywhere he looked he saw faces contorted with hilarity, rendered into an anonymous mass by the uniform clothing. "Shut up!" He cried, railing against the tide. "Shut up, damn you!" Dead eyes and more laughter met his calls. Indeed, many of the people seemed on the verge of screaming rather than laughing.

Two tapped his umbrella on the ground twice. The first strike was lost in the noise of the crowd. The second echoed bell-sharp as everyone fell back into a deathly silence. Six reeled at the lack of noise, at the mute, expressionless masks that were presented at every side. He came to a halt, glaring at the watchers.

"That is our opinion on your little outburst, Six", Two said quietly. "There are only numbers in the village. And here you are."

Six straightened himself back up...and began to laugh. Two frowned. "I don't see anything funny about this situation, Six..." he began, only for Six to cut him off.

"Is this it, Two? Is this how you expect to break me?" Six laughed again before taking a deep breath. "Oh, you did a good job. A little magic here and there. An inescapable village. Blood and death and your filthy little pet shoggoth. But you really don't know who you are dealing with do you?" Two went to speak, but Six turned and addressed the crowd instead. "Is this how he broke you?" He swept his finger across the closest row of faces. "I'm talking to any real people, any humans amongst you. Not the bloody puppets this...thing has added to his collection.

"Did he tell you all you needed to do was comply, to let go of your secrets and your humanity? Did he threaten you with pain, with magic? Did he offer you power or just a place to escape from everything? Who amongst you is still a man that can stand up for themselves and who is a thrall to dark powers with no more will than a rotten cabbage?

"I tell you now I will not break like you, if you have broken! This place must have a way out, and I will find that place! If you are with me then we can go free...and if you are one of the jailers in this freakshow then god have mercy on you."

Two's face contorted with fury and he stepped between Six and the walkers. Many of them were looking distressed, muttering to themselves or gripping their head in their hands. He slapped the umbrella against Six's chest and glared at him. "That's enough, Six! Any more and I'll have you Unmasked." Two gritted his teeth hard enough that Six watched one of them fracture in the entity's rictus grimace, drawing blood from his lip. "There is a limit to what secrets we can get out of you with foul means compared to fair, my good man. But you are hardly unique, and you are hardly worth upsetting the status-quo for."

With that he pushed Six with the umbrella, staggering him back a couple of paces. Rather than falling into a wall or statue two burly men grabbed him from behind, putting him into a hold that he found iron-hard and unbreakable.

Ignoring his struggle, Two turned back to the shuffling, uncertain masses. "It appears that our new arrival needs to be educated in the ways of our little society." A small smattering of applause met these words, swelling at two continued. "We will see that he receives the best treatment possible in the hospital to cure his delusional state." Six renewed his struggle at these words, but a needle sank into his arm and his muscles began to loosen and his senses dim. The last thing he heard was clapping almost but not quite drowning out the words "I am sure once the doctors have finished he will be ready to rejoin us on our terms..."

What followed must have been a side-effect of the drugs.

Nothing else could explain the hellish array of imagery that assailed Six in the half-waking state between the induced sleep of the drugs and the world of the real. Or as real as anything in this place appeared to be.

He travelled dim and murky corridors where candlelight supported flickering, stained light bulbs in rotting brackets on the wall. Blood soaked his knees when he was tossed to the floor as his bearers released him to open a door or remove hideously organic wreckage from partially blocked doors. He saw pale, hairless things without mouths rooting through discarded organs in cavernous rooms. Through others travelled rivers of black, tarry liquid in channels that had been hacked into the floor in patterns that made him wince to contemplate.

In one alcove a dusty cadaver was strapped in place with delicate golden chains. Whispered blasphemies fell from dusty lips as it turned a bobbing skull to follow Six with empty sockets. In another a doctor in a spotless lab-coat drew ichor from the veins of a throbbing heart that was wired directly into the wall with rubber tubing. Everywhere Six looked was another atrocity in flesh and bone and stone and metal or an obscene mixture of all.

All through the ordeal, as he was dragged deeper and deeper into corridors that began to resemble the halls of an insane cathedral and yet at the same time the organs of a mummified behemoth, Six discerned a whispered pattern of sound. It took him some time in his drugged state to realise it was his own voice that made a running commentary of all this madness. Whether it was his own mouth that made the sounds or they were mockingly ejected at him from the shadows was, however, another matter.

Finally he was thrown down onto a trolley and strapped in place. The violent motion and pain of his bonds revived Six enough to look at the faces of men that had dragged him this far, as well as the room he had been placed in.

He began screaming immediately. He did not stop until a gag was forced into his mouth by fingers that contained too many joints to be considered even remotely human.

Two met him at the entrance to the hospital. This time he was wearing the form of a moustached, Spanish gentleman with silver hair. He was reading a paper outside the ruined, burned-out façade of the building, and smilingly tucked it under his arm as Six was brought out into the light. Soiled and ragged, his clothed had not been changed in several days, and thick stubble covered his jaw. The thing wheeling his chair chittered and drooled rank saliva onto the back of his neck, making him flinch when the penny-sized droplets contacted his grimy skin.

Two took out a handkerchief and wiped ooze from the handles of the chair as the tottering monstrosity left them alone, then used a fresh one to clean the back of Six's shaved head. He undid the strap holding the gag in place and left it lying on the sooty gravel path. Six worked his jaw and tongue to try and get some feeling back in them both as Two pushed him away.

"I do hope that this has taught you a lesson, Six," chided Two, his voice bearing a slight accent now. "We do not tolerate descent here. We do not like that kind of unmutual talk that you put about. Maybe now you will be a little more cooperative."

Six mumbled something as a reply, his throat and mouth too dry to form a coherent answer just yet. Two chuckled to himself and shook his head. "I can tell that you are still not convinced. If you think that you survived the worst that we can throw at you with your sanity and will intact you are wrong. What you have just been through was merely a demonstration, my good fellow. The merest hint of what we can, and will, do to you the moment that you step outside the boundaries of our rules."

He brought the chair to a halt outside the door to Six's house. Passing strangers smiled at them both without comment as Two used a long-bladed knife to unpick the thread that has sutured the flesh of Six's arms and legs to the wheelchair's upholstery. Six winced and grimaced as the blade nicked his flesh, but Two expertly managed to avoid doing any further damage to his punctured skin.

When he was finished, Two stood up and gave Six some room. He toyed with the knife in his dexterous fingers, eyeing the other man with a smile. "You'll find a fresh set of clothes inside. We also prepared a meal for you - your favourite. Just heat it up, take a shower and you'll feel right as rain." He paused as Six tugged a little thread from one of his wounds with a grimace. "There is a medical kit in the bathroom as well. I'm sure you will have need of it. And don't forget to drink lots of fluids. We don't want you to injure yourself, do we, Six?"

Without a backward glance, Six staggered to his feet and limped inside, the door opening and closing automatically. Two ran his tongue along the edge of the knife to clean it, before dropping it onto the chair and wheeling it away.