“Please. After your gunshot wounds and nearly bleeding out, I should be takingyourpunishment,” she grumbles angrily.
Once we are all in the pit, the chill spreads up our backs from the damp concrete. The Dean’s face appears at the opening. “We’ll be back to open the hatch in a week,” she said cheerfully. “I am certain this will be a productive time for self-reflection.” The steel hatch slides closed and Meiying yelps at the instant, complete lack of light.
“Everyone put your hands out,” Mariya said. “Let’s find each other and then we can map out the area through touch and find the food and water.”
“I’m glad I had a huge breakfast this morning,” Kon grumbles. “Mariya? Where are you? Follow the sound of my voice.”
“You follow the sound ofmyvoice,” she snaps.
“Both of you, stop it!” I said. “No fighting for a week, you know that’s just going to make this worse.”
“Yeah, for us,” Jun mumbles.
I feel Tatiana’s hand slip into mine. “I was looking around as much as I could while the others were coming down,” she said, “I’ve tried to stay oriented to the back left corner, I saw some boxes stacked there.”
“You’re a genius!” I praise her, kissing in the direction of her mouth. My lips land on her chin, but it’s close. “Did you all hear that? Let’s link hands and move over there.”
After some scuffling around, Tatiana leads us to the corner, where we find the cases of water and food and a pile of scratchy wool blankets.
“I have to admit,” Meiying says after a while, “I’d rather starve for a week than sit in the dark. My father used to lock Jun and me in a closet as punishment, sometimes for days.”
There’s a shuffling sound, and I know Jun’s moved closer to her. “Remember all the dirty songs we used to sing? We knew they could hear us and they were waiting for us to scream or cry, so we sang. It used to drive the guards insane,” he chuckled.
“We never cried after the first time,” Meiying said.
“How old were you, the first time?” Tatiana asks.
“Four years old,” Meiying replied. “Right, Jun? We were four?”
“That sounds right,” he agrees casually.
Tatiana doesn’t say anything, but she squeezes my hand.
I’ve always had a pretty good internal clock, so I’m guessing it’s been about a day and a half when Kon and Mariya start bickering again.
“You could stop being such an aggressive asshole, for starters,” she snaps.
“We both know that’s not going to happen,” he chuckles, “you should probably get used to it.”
Jun and Meiying start singing in Mandarin, something that I’m sure is utterly filthy.
Kissing Tatiana and bumping noses, I tell her, “I’m going to take another circuit around the pit. Maybe I’ll find something.”
“Be careful not to fall through the grate,” she reminds me.
We were all relieved to find a small opening covered by an iron grate in the opposite corner of the pit that we use as our toilet. It’s gross as fuck, especially for the women, but it cuts down on the smell.
Being deprived of one sense does make the others work harder. My fingers feel especially sensitive. I’ve circled this room enough that I think I know every bump, every depression but I can’t help feeling like I’m missing something. Counting each seam of the concrete slabs, I move past the first corner.
On the next wall, opposite from where the rest of the group are sitting I slide my hands higher, looking for a ledge or… I’m not sure. When my hand brushes over a circle of cold metal, I stop. I don’t remember feeling this before. Have I just never reached this high? Pulling on the ring, it pops out of the depression in the wall and I feel a slight give.
“Hey Kon, come over here. Follow the wall to your left. I’m right across from you.”
It doesn’t take him long to join me. “What have you found?” he asks quietly. I guide his wrist up to where I’m gripping the metal ring.
I can feel the edges of a door or something,” I said, “I can’t pull it out by myself.”
“What if it’s some hatch that lets the seawater pour in and drown us?” he asks.
