“Is it going to be a mystery?” I ask and then lean up slightly, looking into his eyes—which are closed. So I pretend he’s looking at me through his eyelids.
“Go to sleep, Bane.”
“You know I can’t just fall asleep.”
He huffs, and then I close my eyelids, letting myself just exist.
And within minutes, I’m dead to the world.
I remember again—the smell of wet soil, the way my fingernails ache as I dig through the walls. I want to breathe. I want to see the sky. But as I attempt to escape this prison, I realize that the darkness is my friend.
If I’m quiet, the men who are sent down here have a hard time finding me. Sometimes they miss me entirely.
I stare down at my dirt-covered arms and hands, and I smear some on my face.
If I don’t breathe, if I stand perfectly still, I blend into the earth.
I still don’t know what he wants from me. He’s never told. He wants me to figure it out, but I’m not a mind reader. I’m just a child.
Well, not a young child anymore. I don’t know how long I’ve been down here.
My fingernail catches on a rock and rips in half, making me whimper in pain. It slithers through me, setting my teeth on edge, but then I breathe through it and let it strengthen me.
Little do I know that the pain I swallowed, that I kept hidden inside me, would be the cause of ecstasy one day.
But right now, as a feral child, it’s nothing more than something to strengthen me. To make me fight against those who want to torture me.
Something moves above me, and I freeze, pushing myself farther into the hole I’ve dug out of the crumbling wall.
Footsteps.
“Where is the little rat?”
I hold my breath, closing my eyes so they can’t see the whites of them.
“He’s always hiding. Boss wants him upstairs.”
I remain still as the two men move around the cellar, trying to find me. But I’m hidden.
That is, I think I am.
Suddenly, hands grab onto me, dirt spilling off me and onto the ground as I’m wrenched from the hole. I struggle, fight like hell to escape, but I’m shaken so badly that my teeth rattle, my body going limp as they drag me through the tunnel. My body knocks into stones and glass, and I feel the way my skin bleeds.
I expect to be dragged up the stairs, but I’m not. Instead, I can feel him. The presence of evil.
My eyelids blink up at the man looming over me. The one in the shadows.
Death incarnate.
“He’s covered in filth,” Death says.
“He’s always like this.”
I hear knees pop as he lowers himself next to me, his hand stroking my hair gently before those talons grip onto me tightly and force my face into the ground. I can’t breathe, my hands trying to claw their way out, to be free. But I’m inhaling it. I can’t breathe. I can’t…
I wake up, my eyes opening, my breathing slightly ragged. The vision of the man from my past fades. The man who tried to kill me so many times, who stuffed me in the cellar and watched me bleed, but I don’t know his name. I don’t even know his face. He’s a shadow. A ghost of my past. The one who made me who I am today.
“What is it?” Georgiy asks, and I swallow roughly, nuzzling into him, smelling the scent of his deodorant. It settles me.
