'Five months, six days, fourteen hours, thirteen seconds.'
My eyes find Colin, and then they pan around the room to see where the Blanks are. There's not one close enough to hear above the noise from the TV. Colin doesn't usually say anything to me, and I think he's only actually spoken twice when I’ve been in earshot, never a full sentence.
'What did you say?' I murmur.
'Five months, six days, fourteen hours, thirteen seconds.'
Stoke’s calendar said it’s February fifth today and if I’ve been here less than two weeks…
My heart begins to thump. He repeats it again.
Allowing for a week or so here, five months and thirteen days ago would have been around the end of August or early September.
I let out a hard breath. Is Colin telling me how long Iwas gone from the Heath from the day I left to when I was brought back?
‘Is that how long since I left The Heath to now?’ I whisper.
'Five months, six days, fourteen hours, twenty-four seconds.'
I let out a shaky breath and look across the table at his sequence, at the number that only usually changes at the end, and a suspicion forms in my now sluggish mind.
‘Is that…how long you’ve been here?’
‘Seven years, three months, twelve days, four hours, three seconds.’
A sudden pang of compassion takes me by surprise. I try not to do that in here. Having empathy makes things more difficult. But Colin is literally counting the seconds since he was brought here. It’s sad, and it makes me feel hopeless.
'Colin, I’m going to get this place shut down,’ I say quietly. ‘I promise.’
He doesn't look at me, but he repeats his number again.
Then, one of the Blanks comes closer and he stops speaking. His pencil doesn’t falter, he writes his numbers while I doodle absently as if we weren’t just communicating. Neither of us speaks again.
My brain is getting very groggy from the pills, I realize, and I swallow hard. I hope I remember this.
If I’m right about what Colin’s numbers might mean, then this could prove that Iwasgone all that time. The Heath has been lying to me.
But why? Why bother? Why pretend? What’s the point? I’m here regardless of if I know the truth, or not.
When I next come back to myself, I'm in my bed and it’s late. I don’t remember how I got here, and there’s only a vague recollection of yesterday, punctuated by the extra fun trip to the OBGYN that I can, thankfully, barely recall. It's like waking up from a dream, but something niggles at me. Something important that I needed to remember.
I sit up straight with a gasp. Colin! The numbers he said!
All of this is a lie and Stoke is in on it…and the Bandervilles as well. Doctor Lansdon, my ass!
Does Joseph know that I killed Joe, his eldest son? Is this some kind of revenge for what I did? But, no, the timing is wrong. I was taken from Sauvage’s club just a few moments afterward. No one knew Joe was dead yet. Even if Jacob, Joe’s bodyguard, had told someone that quickly, there wouldn’t have been a plan to kidnap me in place because of that. This was something else.
But what comes to me next and makes tears come to my eyes is the fact that Shade, Blake, and Mav aren't figments of my imagination. They're real. They're out there and they care about me.
A sob bubbles out of me and I cover my mouth. I can hear a Blank coming down the hall. I glance at the clock. It's past lights-out, so I lie down and close my eyes.
I need to start acting more like myself, so that they stop drugging me. Perhaps if I can make Stoke believe that I want to be here, so that I'll get better, so that I'll becured, he'll stop having them give me all the meds that space me out, and then I can find a way to get the hell out of here.
My mind is already awash with plans. If I can get them to let me out on a jog, I might be able to slip under the perimeter fence. There's a small pond about two miles east,and I know that the fence there has begun to rust heavily where it floods its banks in the winter. There might be a way that I can get out there.
I hear the Blanks talking in the hallway and then laughing in their break room close by. I hear someone scream down the corridor, and I wince when I hear some of the Blanks snickering. They're taking bets on who will wake up with the loudest yell when they’re hit with the Stinger.
They did this to me a couple of nights ago, but I didn't give them the reaction they wanted. They haven’t bothered with me again.
