"That's the bad news. Don't let it ruin your appetite or you'll never eat again," he says, brushing off the apology with a casual lift of his shoulders and a quirk of his lips. He's the last person Bruce has to apologize to here. "There are worse ways to be held against your will as long as you're okay living off the land."

Giving into depression and self-pity just gets in the way of solving the problem at hand. He still has hope he can get out of this experiment or whatever it is--he has to. Considering the alternative is a distraction, the same as feeling sorry for himself, and he's nothing if not adaptable in less than savory circumstances.

"We're still working on answering that question. The good news is it doesn't look like it's to pick us off. Not quickly, anyway," he goes on, unintentionally following Bruce's same line of thinking. There's a clinical air to the way he describes the situation; he's used to life handing out lemons and people with power taking those lemons and squeezing them right into his eye. "We had a couple of disappearances around two months ago, and another two weeks ago, but the bodies never turned up. There were no signs of an attack. For the most part, they seem content to sit back and stay hands-off. Who 'they' are is still up for debate as they only ever make indirect contact."