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"Because I don’t know" "You know er it becomes The less you know" "You’ve been here a year How have you survived?" She laughed--sad and resigned "By doing what everyone else doesbuying into the lie" "What lie?" "That everything’s fine That we all live in a perfect little town" "Where paradise is ho I saw on a sign on the outskirts of tohen I was trying to drive out of here last night" "When I first woke up here, I was so disoriented and in so much pain from the car accident, I believed the around in a fog all day, Sheriff Pope found arten, that pub where you and I first h I’d never tended bar in my life Then he took me to a little Victorian house I’d never seen before, told me it was ho memories, Ethan I only knew my name at that point" "But theI couldn’t make contact with the outside world I knew this wasn’t , I don’t know--sinister--about Pope On some instinctive level, I knew better than to question hi long walks toward the outskirts of town But a strange thing happened Every tiuess who showed up? It dawned on me that Pope wasn’t really a sheriff He was a warden For everyone who lived here I realized heme somehow, so for two months I kept my head doent to work, went hoht into all this as well?" "I don’t know On a surface level, they never blinked Never gave any indication that things were out of the ordinary After a while, I realized iteveryone in line, but of what, I didn’t know And I sure didn’t ask"Ethan thought back to the neighborhood party he’d stuht?--and how norht of all the quaint Victorian houses in Wayward Pines and of all the families who lived inside the, carefree countenance during the day, but then lay awake at night, sleepless,to comprehend why they’d been locked away in this scenic prison? He i else, adaptable He figured just as many had convinced thes were exactly as they should be As they’d always been How ht or remembrance of the life they had known before? It was easier to accept what could not be changed than to risk everything and seek out the unknown What lay beyond Long-term inmates often committed suicide, or reoffended, when faced with the prospect of life outside the prison walls Was it so different here? Beverly continued, "One night at the bar, a few uy slipped ht in the shower, I felt it for the first tih I didn’t knohat I was supposed to do about it Next night, he was back at e, this time on the ticket--‘cut it out, keep it safe, it’s how they track you’ "First three times, I chickened out The fourth, I manned up and did it By day, I always kept the chip withis that there were moments when it al dinner, or a neighborhood block party, and I’d catch this feeling like maybe it had always been this way, and that my prior life was the drearow to accept a life in Wayward Pines "At night, after o home, leave the chip in ht, a different direction I kept running into dead ends To the north, east, and ere these towering cliff walls, and I could cliot thinner, and I would always run out of handholds or co I came across more than a few skeletons at the base of those cliffs--old, broken bones Human People who had tried to climb out and taken a fall "Fourth time I ventured out, I went south up the main road, the one I’d driven into Wayward Pines I found what you found--it just looped back into town, back into itself in an endless circle But I kept heading south into the woods Must’ve gone a half mile before I finally ca had become unbearable, worse than the pain of Beverly’s incision He loosened the duct tape "It enty feet high and it ran through the forest in either direction as far as I could see There was barbed wire across the top, and it hun was attached to the fencing every fifty feet It said, ‘Return to Wayward Pines Beyond This Point You Will Die’" Ethan rewrapped his leg The throbbing had faded, and there was still pain, but it seeh?" "No It was getting near dawn, and I thought I’d better get back to town But when I turned to go, there was ain front of me Scared me to death until I realized who it was" "Guy who told you about the chip?" "Exactly He said he’d been following one out" "Who was he?" Ethan asked, and he couldn’t be sure in the low light, but it looked as though a shadow passed across Beverly’s face "Bill" A prickling sensation, like a low-ah Ethan’s body "What was Bill’s last name?" he asked "Evans" "Jesus"