“What?”
“A maybe.”
She didn’t push. She knows not to make a thing bigger than it is yet.
The dark felt different after that, like it remembered we weren’t furniture. The woman to our right made a thin sound that wanted to be a cough and failed. Not good. Not new. She wouldn’t be quiet long. Noise draws the wrong eyes in places like this.
“Hum,” I said softly.
“What?”
“That song you do when you grade. Under your breath.”
A breath of a laugh. “You noticed.”
“I notice everything.” I kept my gaze on the seam where cage met floor. “We’ll use it to cover work. If I say clear, you stop. If I say heads low, you keep going even if they light us up.”
“Heads low?” she echoed.
“You told me you liked riding behind me, head tucked, wind doing most of the talking.”
“That was a stupid story.”
“It was a good one,” I said. “Hum.”
She did. Soft enough the wire had to carry it. Nothing melody. Perfect cover. I drifted my boot along the groove until the screw lifted into the arch of leather. A slide of cloth, a quiet breath, metal in my palm, then up my sleeve. I pinched it in the cuff seam so it wouldn’t click.
Upstairs, voices spiked then flattened. Drawers and cabinets opened. Chips poured into a bowl. Faucet for a slow twelve. Every normal sound sat wrong down here.
A dry voice across from us traded words low enough they only reached our cages. “They missed pickup yesterday.”
“Meaning?” I asked.
“They hate holding stock overnight,” she said. “They push to first light. Fewer eyes.”
Ariel’s hum steadied. First light matched the kind of men we were dealing with.
Boots hit the top step. Keys. A different man came too fast. The door slammed open and bounced. Flashlight lit midair, sloppy. Not the maintenance man.
The beam skimmed my cage and stopped on Ariel’s.
“Right where we left you,” he said. “Reach for her again; see what it buys.”
He shoved the light under the wire and crooked a finger at her. “You. Stand up.”
She froze. The hum faltered.
He liked that. “Don’t make me come in there.”
A voice two cages down, rough and hoarse from thirst, cut through. “Leave her, pig.”
He swung the light toward the sound. “Who said that?”
“Me,” the woman said, louder now. “You want to swing on someone, swing on me. She’s new.”
The beam pinned her, small at the bars, chin up like defiance could be taller than a body. He crouched to get an angle. Ariel’s breath hitched. My knuckles hit steel so hard it sang.
“Big mouth,” he said, pleased. He slid his baton through the gap by the latch and jabbed once, fast, under her ribs. She folded but didn’t drop.
