“I’ll be honest with you, the whole thing stinks.”

With his arms crossed and his back against the banister, Ivan stared at Louis as he finished his beer in silence. Lou was sitting on one of the back porch’s wooden chairs, not quite looking back at Ivan as he told the story he had heard from Hank a few days earlier.

“But what do you make of it?” Ivan asked finally.

“I don’t know for sure what I think yet, but I did get the feeling he was hiding something.”

The drive from the gas station had been tense, feeling almost longer than usual. Louis would later that day confess that he wasn’t in a rush to get back because he wanted to get as much of the conversation out of the way as he could. There was a chance Belle could overhear them, since she was home that afternoon. She had known Hank for the longest time too, and would be concerned to learn some of the news. Louis felt like he needed to wait a bit longer before figuring out what parts of the story he’d want her to hear or not.

“Maybe not hiding something, just”, Louis corrected himself after a moment, realizing he didn’t quite know what he meant. “I dunno. The whole thing’s just too weird.”

Ivan didn’t need to agree. His friend knew too well the extent to which he shared that notion. They had talked about Hank’s situation on a number of occasions in the past few months, and both of them agreed that what happened to their friend was a textbook example of how things were handled in the strangest ways around those parts.

Hank had been friends with Ivan and Louis for almost as long as they’ve known each other. The three of them went to the same high school, and although Hank had graduated a year earlier, when all boys between ages sixteen and twenty were drafted by the Coalition in the Mainline Act of 68, they all started in equivalent positions.

Most kids in Weaver Parish would be drafted into the munitions factory by Rockland Creek, where the three of them would meet again, as well as some of the other boys like Viktor and Juan Carlos, who they’d known from different schools. Between long shifts and even longer nights out, the young men would soon grow into best friends, at least until Ivan’s squabble with the Manufacturing Workers’ Union took its final toll on his career and he found his calling in enlisting to the Republican Army.

Louis had been closer to Hank in recent years, so to Ivan it made sense he had been approached first. Still, the way he put it didn’t quite make it seem any less disconcerting.

“I met him earlier this week, after my Tuesday shift at the company”, Louis had told Ivan early in the car, as soon as he touched the subject. “I was at the bar with the boys, that one we always go to. Sometimes we drop by on week nights since it’s less busy, just a beer or two and a game of pool before clocking out. The place is usually dead quiet on Tuesdays, and last week was no different, except… I noticed this one fella by one of the booths on the back. Bald head, plain clothes… Just staring at us from across the joint, hands resting on the table. I think he was drinking a beer, but now that I think about it I’m pretty sure it was actually a full glass of water. I didn’t see him touch it once.”

“Hold on, you’re telling me you couldn’t even tell who it was at first?” Ivan had asked him.

“Look, it’s a dive bar, okay? Lighting’s dim and the cigarette smoke’s thick enough to stop a bullet, let me finish the story” Louis said impatiently. “Also, you don’t get it, he looked like someone else entirely. Bald as a cueball, no sign of his beard. Do you even know what he looks like without a beard? Because until last week I didn’t.”

“So when did you know it was even him?”

“As soon as my colleagues left I went to the cashier to pay for the last round and he immediately stood up and approached me. When he called me by name and I thought I recognized him I almost freaked out. You know when you’re at a bar and something so weird happens you start tracing your steps back inside your head to make sure no one spiked your drink, since you’re not even drunk?”

“Can’t say I do.”

“Yeah, well, it was one of those moments. But wait, it gets much weirder from here.”

Louis would go on to explain throughout the remainder of the trip how Hank wasn’t shy about getting into excruciating detail after he was asked where he’d been for the last year or so. According to him, he had been apprehended by containment agents in what he believed to be a county line between Weaver Parish and Wyatt County, after his semi-truck was spotted leaving a sight that hadn’t been contained on time.

“Says the last thing he remembers is a bunch of men with guns and unmarked tactical gear shouting at him at some sort of roadblock. Guys in hazmat suits, some men in suits showing him documents for him to sign before and even after they zip tied his hands”, Louis explained. “You know, the usual.”

“And what’s the first thing he remembers, after that?”

“Well… The Institute, naturally.”

The rest of the afternoon would be spent between the two of them sitting on the back porch, doing their absolute best to enjoy a beer or two while Ivan asked specific questions and Louis barely managed to muster two or three straight answers in a row.

“‘Calibrations’…? What the fuck is that even supposed to mean…?”

“How the hell should I know? I just asked him what they did to him in there and he kept droning on and on about these ‘calibrations’, whatever they were.”

“Didn’t you ask him to be more specific or something?”

“I did it like twenty times, he looked like someone trying to explain quantum physics to a houseplant. I can’t even describe in any other way how awkward it was.”

Ivan just shook his head. He did have an idea of what Hank could mean by that, but he wasn’t exactly thrilled to let Louis know. In fact, the whole point of that conversation, at least for him, was to get a read on just how much Louis had found out about the process itself just from that freak encounter no one had been predicting.

“This is ridiculous”, he said finally. “Did anyone see the two of you having this conversation? You could get in trouble for this.”

“I don’t think anyone did”, Louis said after trying to remember. “I paid and we left and he and I just stood on the sidewalk in front of the bar talking, it was pretty late and there was no one around.”

Ivan caught himself thinking that was the perfect opportunity for someone keeping tabs on Hank after his release to be observing from afar. A parked car, a second story window. His train of thought was interrupted when Louis said:

“I tried to offer him a ride, but…”

“But what?”

“He said he had a bus to catch.”

For some reason, that sentence made the timeline snap into place inside Ivan’s brain. He said:

“But then he just left by foot.”

Louis blinked twice at him.

“How– How did you know that?”

“Call it a lucky guess, I think”, Ivan grunted. Truth is, he wasn’t quite sure himself.

Looking scared and visibly frustrated, Louis let out a long sigh before getting up from his chair.

“Let’s go for a walk”, he said. “There’s more to this.”

—

“Then he says one day the guy just walks straight up to his room and says, ‘hey, I hope this isn’t too weird but we need you to fuck off back home or something’.”

“Just like that? Out of the blue?”

“They already had the paperwork signed for him. On his behalf, apparently.”

“Amazing.”

That Sunday afternoon had gotten much colder. Ivan was walking a few feet behind with his hands in his pockets, contemplating the seriousness and the pointlessness of it all as he and Louis took a stroll around the property. Having told Belle he was going to show his friend some ideas he had for future renovations, the duo now had a good enough excuse to speak freely of the incident without being overheard.

“What else did he tell you?” he asked Louis at one point.

“About what, exactly?”

“About the Institute.”

“I mean”, Louis tried to articulate. “He did say quite a bit. It’s just that, well…”

“What?”

“I’m not sure I understood right.”

“How come?”

“It’s hard to explain. It was like listening to someone trying to remember a dream, or a movie they watched half asleep.”

“Well, that’s convenient. What did he remember, anyway?”

“I dunno. He mentioned all kinds of stuff. Like these big machines they’d put you on, and nobody would tell him what for. Some sort of medication he was supposed to take, this IV shit he wasn’t supposed to take off. People asking him a bunch of questions, some sort of psych eval to make sure he was getting better.”

“Getting better from what, exactly? Driving sixty miles an hour through a place where these clowns didn’t put their ‘containment’ bullshit up in time, so now they need to harass civilians for some reason?”

“Look man, I know you’re not the containment sector’s number one fan, okay? I get it. I’m just telling you what I was told.”

“At least tell me he remembers something about what the Institute looks like.”

“I mean… I guess? When he was telling me what it was like he mentioned it was… I dunno, just a bunch of corridors? With a lot of closed doors. Some window panes you could see through, some you couldn’t. You know, like any institute looks like.”

“What do you mean ‘like any institute looks like’, do I look like I know what an institute is supposed to look like?”

“I don’t know, weren’t you there at one point?”

“Yeah but that was years ago, before they started taking civilians to do God knows what. Where did they even keep him all this time?”

“This small room, apparently.”

“Like a cell?”

“Not according to him, at least. They kept telling him he could leave any time he wanted.”

“So why didn’t he? Why didn’t he even call us? His wife, anyone?”

“He didn’t say.”

“This is so much bullshit. I can’t believe this. Guy bails on his friends and family for what, a year? Then suddenly shows up, out of the blue, looking like he escaped from a mental institution. He may as well, for all we know.”

“So what you’re saying? That he’s making this up?”

“Hard to say without actually getting a good look at the guy, but honestly? Who knows at this point.”

“Ivan, I agree it’s all too strange, but at the same time I also agree there’s no way you could tell for sure without actually seeing what I saw.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because he looked genuinely fucked in the head. Like there was a piece of brain missing. You can’t just fake this type of crazy.”

“I’ll know for sure when I meet him in person.”

“And how do you figure you’re gonna get a hold of him?”

“I’ll call him. I still got his number somewhere, wasn’t that long ago since we last talked. Worst case scenario I’ll just show up at his doorstep.”

“Right. You do that. Guy’s been through a lot already, he’s gonna need any help he can get from the few friends he’s got.”

“For sure. I wish Vik was still around, he’d know what to do.”