My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
“Are you scared?” she asked suddenly.
I waited. “Yeah,” I said. “I am.”
The silence between us was a grave.
Then, without warning, the light snapped back on.
Pain hit my eyes. Everything flooded white. I blinked, trying to adjust, trying not to look as relieved as I was.
She hunched away from the glare, like she’d been shot.
We stared at each other through the smeared glass. I saw her, all of her: the trembling lips, the haunted eyes, the bruises on her wrists. Barely hanging on.
She saw me too. And I didn’t like what was staring back.
The world was smaller now. The cage, the memory, her presence. All of it heavier.
Above us, something creaked. Footsteps on the stairs. I knew what came next.
But in that moment, it was just us. Naked and shaking.
Maybe that was the worst part.
The footsteps grew louder. Wood groaning under boots, relentless and heavy. Each step pulled the world tighter around my throat. I watched the door, watched the tiny rectangle of light at the top of the basement stairs grow and then shrink as he blocked it out.
The kidnapper came down slow, savoring the moment like he was walking into a surprise party. Everything about him reeked of patience, like a wolf that knew the sheep could never escape.
He stood on the lowest step, his hands loose at his sides. His eyes flickered over both cages, then fixed on me. He smiled. No warmth in it.
His voice was soft, almost kind. “Isn’t it peaceful, how quiet it gets down hereat night?”
I didn’t answer. Neither did Amelia.
He smiled wider, showing molars. He rested his hand on the mesh of the cage, close enough that I could see the veins crawling up his wrist. He held the silence as if it was a living thing.
The knife appeared from his belt. Smooth, practiced, the movement so casual it made my skin crawl. I couldn’t stop staring at the blade. The edge gleamed, a thin thread of light in the basement gloom.
“I was thinking,” he said. “If I opened the cage right now, which one of you would try for the knife first?”
Neither of us breathed.
He looked at me. Then at her. “Or maybe you’d both just freeze. Bunnies in a snare.” He tapped the point of the blade against the steel. “You ever see what happens when two animals are cornered? Sometimes they rip each other apart for the hell of it.”
I gritted my teeth. “Why don’t you open it and find out?”
His head tilted, like I was something in a petri dish. “Bravery. I like that. You talk big. But what do you do when the door actually opens?”
I stepped up to the bars, as close as I could get, hands wrapping around cold metal. “I’d kill you.”
“No,” he said, voice gentle, as if he was explaining math to a child. “You’d try. You’d fail.” His gaze slid to Amelia. “But I wonder, which of you has more to lose?”
The room throbbed with silence. I could hear her breathing, thin and sick, like a dying animal.
He crouched, coming level with my eyes. “You think you’re a hero. She thinks you’ll save her.”
I wanted to leap at him, wrap my hands around his throat. But all I could do was stand there, the rage boiling in my head, heart pounding out of rhythm.
