Sometime later, John woke up and groaned. What had happened? It felt like ...
He tried to reach up and grab the back of his neck, but found that he couldn't move. Looking down, he saw that he had been tied to a chair. "What's going on? Where am I?" More importantly, though, was ... where was the orb?
A door opened and a conservatively-dressed woman walked in. John wasn't sure, but he thought that he might have seen her earlier as part of that group of protesters. "Oh, you're awake," she said. "Maybe now you can answer some of our questions." In her hands was the orb. But it seemed to be deactivated.
