1
CAP
They put my girl in a cage. That was their first mistake.
The second was thinking the dark would make me slow. Darkness is just another kind of map. You listen harder. You feel more. You count.
A boot came up under my ribs before my brain could finish naming the pain. Air left me in a sound that wasn’t a word. Another landed across my shoulder blade and the world narrowed to the slap of leather on bone. Hands grabbed my hair and yanked my head back until stars spat and floated. Someone’s fingers found my jaw and squeezed like a wrench. My cheek split on a cuffed knuckle and the metallic taste of blood filled my mouth the way bleach fills a room; sharp and unwanted.
I went to knees because my body worked faster than my plans. A boot rammed my sternum and the breath that tried to fill my ribs folded like a cheap tent. Faces blurred over me, sweat and cheap cologne, teeth flashing when they barked jokes at one another. A baton clipped my temple and something warm ran into my ear. My hands curled to protect the sides of my head; they grabbed and twisted until a cuff bit my wrist and told me to stop.
“Teach the vet to be quiet,” one of them said, and the words landed like a promise. He backhanded my mouth for emphasis and my teeth paid with a spark of light behind my eyes. I tasted metal and old coffee. My tongue went thick. Knees scraped concrete while they counted their fun, two, three, a little laugh for the one who did the dirty work.
They weren’t professionals. Not the kind who leave no trace. They were careless where it didn’t cost them: elbows to kidney, a knee where ribs meet stomach, kicks that hammered my belt loose. Each hit rearranged the rhythm of my breath into something jagged. I held on with whatever was left. Breathe in through teeth; map the room by sound: scuff of boots on concrete, rattle of keys, clink of metal cables, the low, satisfied chuckle when someone lands their mark.
They dragged me by the collar like an animal with a limp. Shoulders screamed as they hauled my weight. They cuffed me to a chain and half-carried, half-dumped me against cold mesh. My back hit hard and the air left again, but they weren’t interested in sympathy. They shoved, not gently, and the cage door slammed with the kind of finality people use when they plan not to return.
Footsteps retreated, fast, light, satisfied, and the echo of their laughs rolled down the aisle.
I tasted iron and rolled toward the sound that mattered most.
“Ariel.”
Chains scraped. A breath hitched. The breath had a shape to it; a sharp little catch I knew from nights she read things that were too grim but finished anyway. That was how I found her. Not by sight. By the exact way fear sat in her chest.
“Don’t say my real name,” I said. “Not once.”
Her answer came small and quick. “Cap.”
Good girl. Smart girl.
I slid on my forearms until my jacket hissed over grit. Bars laced shadow into the dark. Wire ran between posts. A seam where two panels didn’t quite meet sat shoulder-high between our cages, just enough for skin to find skin if you knew where to reach. I tested a weld. Solid, but ugly. Somebody rushed it. The floor under the front edge of my cage had a thin groove like the whole unit had been dragged in and set down wrong. My palm found cold concrete. I kept moving.
I felt her fingertips. Then her wrist. I fed my hand through the diamonds and found hers on the other side. She trembled hard enough the mesh whispered. I couldn’t pull her in; the steel said no. So, I made myself a wall the way you do when you can’t cross. I took the outside corner, shouldered the seam, blocked as much of the room as I could with the shape of me. Her knuckles hooked mine. She pressed her forehead to the wire opposite my jaw. It was as close as we could get.
“In for four,” I whispered. “Out for six. With me.”
“I can’t see,” she said, voice shaky.
“You don’t need to.” I breathed against the mesh where her hair shadowed it. “Listen. Count.”
A shoe slid behind me in the dark. Not nearby. Farther down the row. A woman breathed through a stubborn cough that scraped.
Through the diamonds, Ariel’s fingers crept to the inside of my wrist where it met the wire. She measured my ribs the only way she could, by how my breath hitched when I shifted to put more of me near her hand. She found a spot that made me grunt and lifted her face to the seam.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Not where it counts.” I angled so my shoulder took the cold, and she could keep my heat through steel and skin. “Tell me about the pink dress,” I said, wanting to distract her and settle her. “The one you wore on our first date.”
She made a sound that was almost a laugh. “The discount rack one. The hem was crooked.”
“You fixed it with a stapler.”
“You noticed that.”
“I notice everything you do,” I said.
Her breath evened. Four. Six. Again. Four. Six. The dark stopped being a hand over my eyes and went back to being what it always is. A tool.
