How did they find me?
Are they taking me back?
What about Faina?
My struggles are useless as the bindings around my wrists cut into my flesh and my leg throbs with the memory of the last time I was captive. It’s going to happen again and this time, there’s no one to save me.
They killed her.
They fucking killed her!
I can’t breathe.
Small bubbles of air force their way past my throat as I choke, wrestling the overwhelming tension closing in around my chest. My heart beats so loudly that it’s all I can hear and sweat drenches me through my clothes.
It’s too hot.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t fucking breathe!
I can’t… I can’t…
Suffocation drags me down into a hot, turbulent darkness and I lose my fight against death.
Forgive me.
I wake an unknown amount of time later lying on a single mattress in a small, square white room. The light gleaming down from the bulb above is blinding, but the sight of it sends a spike of adrenaline through my heart, and I bolt upright.
The mattress and I are the only things in the room with a sealed door at the far end.
My heart begins to pound and a cold, familiar dread seeps through my bones.
I blink and the pristine room is suddenly the cell I spent weeks bleeding to death in. Another blink and I’m back in the sea of white, but the walls are closer than they were before.
“Let me out,” I gasp, stumbling to my feet. “Let me out!!”
Not again. I won’t survive again.
Please.
20
FAINA
“Hey!”
Both my fists pound so hard against my cell door that they fly back in my face, but I repeat the motion over and over, regardless of how the movements pull at that throbbing ache in my shoulder.
“If you’re gonna shoot me and then lock me up, the least you can fucking do is get me some food! And where the fuck is Cian?”
No one answers me. It’s tough keeping the rising panic at bay while not knowing where he is. The last thing I remember is immense pain in my shoulder, then my world went black. I woke up here with a throbbing dark bruise and no sign of Cian. If he’s being kept in a cell as small as mine, then I can’t fathom how he’s holding up. Being dragged into a small, enclosed box by strangers is bad enough without having his painful history.
Is this Hawk’s doing? Has he locked us up to keep him off his tail?
Or is he just outside waiting to kill us nice and slowly?
“Hey!” I pound my fists on the door once again and this time, I don’t stop.” I guarantee you’ll get annoyed faster than I get tired! Let me the fuck out! Hello! Helloooo?”
