Lie.

Dago sure as hell didn’t want to be ‘placed’ with the right buyer or whatever the hell this guy was talking about. He’d already planned on lying about who he was; he just wasn’t sure exactly what they were going to ask.

The man stood up from his chair and picked up a clipboard off the table. He eyed the list of questions for a moment before saying anything. Dago knew he must have read this list a thousand times, or at least five or six since he’d been brought in here, he was just trying to build tension and uncertainty. Dago scowled up at the tall man.

“What is your name?” the man asked, reading in a dead monotone.

“Juan Garcia,” Dago said, thinking up the most generic Hispanic name he could.

Dago Vivar wasn’t very common, he was sure; aside from the fact that his name was also listed as deceased and as a mage. He didn’t want to let any information go that he could help.

“What is your profession?”

Dago hesitated when it came to this one. He had been studying to be a doctor and after he’d come back had actually gotten his residency in a hospital started, but that wasn’t something he really wanted to be doing for **** work. He wasn’t sure what to say.

“Well?” said the man with the clipboard.

“I was unemployed,” Dago said, adding a bit of hurt pride to his voice. Hopefully that made it sound convincing.

“Any special talents or abilities?” the man said, shaking his head.

Dago looked at the man, uncertain what he wanted to hear from that. He had picked up and similarly dropped a lot of things when he was a kid, but really the only thing that stuck were the skills he learned horizontally.

“None?” the man asked, not very astonished, “Alright, that’s enough, take him away.”

Dago was hauled to his feet and taken out of the room. His hands were chained behind him and he was shoved into a long hallway with the door slammed and bolted behind him. He couldn’t get out with his hands chained behind him, so he walked forward until he couldn’t anymore. There were two doorways, open as if they were waiting for him. They were marked with two signs that Dago couldn’t understand over the top.