She couldn’t remember what it felt like to be warm. A sad laugh died in her throat.
“We all want his fucking clothes! Find out if he’s dead already!” someone else joined in and more murmurs ensued, growing louder.
NowI’mthe entertainment.
Her heart thundered. Kallan hollered at her back. She jerked closer to the bars she faced. Elodie gripped them and studied the possibly-dead man closer.He’s not breathing. His eyelids aren’t twitching.She had nothing on her person to reflect light over his face. The sweat on her hands had them slipping down the metal.
“For fuck’s sake!”
“Check him already!”
She dipped her hand through the bars and pressed two fingers over his pulse.
He’s alive! His skin is...hot.Elodie licked her chapped lips and pressed further, finding it, also knowing that beingreally hotdidn’t mean being ripe. One could die hot.
“Well?” A hush settled throughout.
“He’s alive,” she whispered, glancing up from his neck to look at the gun tattoo on his cheek, his tousled hair, and taking it all in. His eyelids opened.
I’m dead.
Everything came to a stop. They stared at each other and her life literally flashed before her, neon red and angry. Thick, arched eyebrows creased to frame wild hooded eyes that were directed at her.
Dread kept her in place. Even when the prisoner didn’t twist to grab hold of her arm, she couldn’t move. It was a standoff. Elodie had a feeling that if she tried to jerk back, it would be the end of her. Her throat closed up, unable to swallow.
The noise of the prisoners drowned out, her heart beating in her ears, and she was vaguely aware that no one could see that he was awake except for her. Neither one of them blinked, and even when her eyes stung, fear kept her mesmerized and still.
Slowly, she lifted her fingers off his hot skin, leaving a dirty print behind, and closed them into a fist beside his neck. Elodie pulled away just as slowly, and he rose as if she pulled the strings that moved his body. It was only the two of them for the entire daunting process, and when she had her hand safely back within the confines of her cell, she knew she’d miraculously escaped dismemberment.Death.
She felt...grateful... He hadn’t killed her on the spot, or broken her arm.
Her back hit the wall and she slipped to the center, shaking and high on adrenaline, and when she finally managed to unlock her gaze from his, she closed them tight and leaned her chin into her chest. The spacious haze remained out of reach, though, and it wasn’t Kallan’s amused taunts in her ear that kept her from finding some peace... it was the newcomer’s gaze.
They had burned with a diabolical glow before receding into a milky, ghoulish stare, and she had watched the entire process in an instinctual slow-motion high.
His eyes changed color.
She’d never seen anything like it before. The bright, bloody red of them had shocked her with color, but when the red faded, he appeared blind. Curiosity and confusion, possibly a little bit of intrigue, made her want to study them. Made her question whether or not he could see. The guards had mentioned he was ‘heavy’ with cybernetic implants and she wondered which ones he had. If her new cell neighbor had a problem with his eyes, maybe she hadn’t entirely lost her safe spot.
And yet, she couldfeelhis eyes on her like a creeping burn all over her skin, raising goosebumps on her arms and legs, stripping her clothes away, and baring her to the world.
“What’s going through your head? Your pulse is strumming,” his voice, new among the familiar, ended in a deep whisper that seemed projected right next to her ear. Elodie suppressed a shiver as the hair on her neck rose. She pretended she hadn’t heard him. She needed to pretend because his voice did something to her, deep inside, it purred and vibrated and made her want to hear more of it.
Her skin prickled further and she was thankful no one could see what she felt. Nervous.
“Ain’t gonna work,” Kallan said to her other side. “He’s not a talker.”
Someone told Kallan to shut up.
“Fuck off,” he screeched, coughed, then laughed, eliciting the usual amount of death threats. “You want to make a deal?” Elodie should’ve been used to this, Kallan talking over her, but the thought of him making a deal with the newcomer frightened her.
I’m already stuck in the middle.
“Deal, you say?” The new prisoner’s voice vibrated low, slicing straight through her and somehow, she wasn’t sure if he was talking toheror to Kallan.
“Hrmm, yeah, the guards want you awake, and you’re awake thanks to Ely here, but that also means you’re the walking dead. And you got some nice, warm-looking clothes, particularly that jacket of yours. It’s caused quite a stir among us, ‘cause creature comforts are few and far between, and seeing as you’ll be dead by rest cycle—”
Will he?Elodie wasn’t so sure about that. He was bigger than Kallan and looked immensely stronger, even harder than him. She’d caught a glimpse of sinewy muscle at the edges of his clothes, the popping of a tendon at his neck.
