Elodie’s eyes drifted over the other prisoners.I’m safe, feeling safe, with him, for now. But for how much longer?Each day could be that fateful day that they’d end up at their destination.
When she thought about it, Gunner was never chained up at her side. Whether that was an omen, she wasn’t sure. But it did give her a strand of hope that maybe the connection she made with him now could save her and her dad later.
“Twenty-fucking-five of you left,” the guard harrumphed. “How many were here when we brought you in?” he asked a prisoner far down the row.
Elodie couldn’t hear the poor man’s answer but knew it herself.Forty-two. Forty-two plus Kallan.Since then the others joined the crew, were killed, or had dropped dead.Add possible suicide to the list.
“Do you guys want to know how much longer you’ll be in here for?” he yelled again.
No one spoke.
“That’s too bad. I guess the answer wouldn’t be comforting anyway. We have four spots that need to be filled. Four damn spots. Our bad-fucking luck is your bad-fucking luck.”
Recruitment had happened only twice before her dad had left. And both those previous times they had only sought one or two spots to fill after their initial capture.
She glanced at the guard, bellowing cells away, obscured through the bars. Four was a leap. It would significantly lessen the number of men around her, making the brig that much quieter, and yet she didn’t feel assured. Elodie would rather have those around her walled off than for them to be set free on the floors and hallways throughout. The cell wasn’t so much as a cage to her, but an added source of protection.
It also increased the odds of her getting volunteered.
Two men on the other end stood up together.
“I’ll take a spot,” one of them said.
The guard turned on his heel.
“I’ll take one too,” said the other.
She strained to hear the exchange.
“You two buddies? Friends? Lovers? Hell if I care.” He lifted his prod out of its clasp. “What’s your vocations?”
“I’m a mechanical engineer.”
“Same,” the other grunted. Elodie recognized them only in that she’d seen their faces before her capture, but knew nothing else.
“We work well together...” one of them said.
“Is that so?”
Neither of them answered.
Gunner lowered himself to the floor next to her, partially pulling her attention away from the exchange. “Know them?” he breathed.
She shook her head. The clang of one of the cell doors being opened rang through the space.
“What are you thinking?”
She shook her head again, briefly looking his way.
“They can’t hear us.” Gunner tapped the bar between them. “Come closer.”
Elodie licked her lips and slowly, painstakingly, shuffled a half foot his way. “How do you know?” she whispered back.
“Know what?”
“That they can’t hear us?”
He grunted and her spine stiffened. She kept her eyes trained on the men down the row. “Audio sensory systems, sonar tech, and precisely calculated voice projection software. The codes never stop moving, the numbers are always updating. It’s fucking annoying as shit.”
