“Wait, they didn’t give you guys a proper dinner?” I asked.
“No,” she replied, then slowly asked, “Why? What did they give you?”
I described my meal to her, and Ryker confirmed his had been the same. Penny groaned in envy and hunger, and I felt horrible about it. Guilty that not only I was the reason she was here in the first place, but now that she was going to remain weakened by hunger while they fed us better meals.
Then I realized it was part of their tactic. The Organization wasn’t just about brute force and violence; they were all about mental torture. Doing the kind of shit that broke people’s bonds, broke their brains, and destroyed them emotionally.
I was onto them, though, and I was going to think of a way to fight the wedge they were trying to drive between me and my friend Penny.
I was too far away to get her any food, but I had a plan, something I’d seen on a Netflix movie about prisons one time. I knew how to get their attention and get a new cell.
It was a gamble. They might choose to leave me in the cell once it was destroyed and then I’d pay for my own foolishness. But if it worked, then I was going to get closer to Ryker for mental support, and closer to Penny to offer my food to her.
I stood up, walked to the bathroom, and pulled the roll of toilet paper off the wall hook. I unrolled a fistful and dropped it into the bowl. I repeated this until it was full and the roll was almost empty.
And then I flushed.
As I’d hoped, the toilet plugged immediately, so I kept flushing. And flushing. And flushing. Until finally the toilet water overflowed onto the floor and spilled across my entire cell.
I flushed again until it reached the bars of my door and headed into the corridor, spreading to the cell across from me and the one directly next to me.
By the time the guards came rushing in, there was inch deep water in my cell, the rug was squishy with water, and the hall outside the door was slowly being flooded.
I was pleased to find the guard who liked me, so I looked at him, batted my eyelashes to appear stupid and nonthreatening, and said, “I don’t know what happened, the water won’t stop coming out.”
To emphasize that point, I flushed again, and the guard sloshed through the water to grab my hand and yank it off the handle.
His kind eyes were filled with ice cold anger, and when he pulled me out of my room, he hurt my arm and I didn’t think I was going to get away with my plan.
When he kicked the back of my leg and shoved me to the ground as I fell, I realized I’d fucked up.
There was no kindness here at this prison, and there was no kindness in any of the guards, no matter how much I wanted to see it.
My own eyes had deceived me.
CHAPTER6
“Clean this up,”the guard snarled, and pushed me against the flooded floor. “You did it, you fucking fix it.”
Since I was so far into it at this point, I had to keep up the lie that I hadn’t done it on purpose.
“I don’t know what’s wrong!” I protested, my face inches from the flooded floor. “I don’t know how to fix it! Let me up!”
At Ryker’s cell, he was beating on the bars on the door and calling my name. His agitation gave his voice a powerful presence, a deep growl that carried it through the prison.
“Everly!” he cried out in a raspy tone, and he hit the bars again. “Hey you! Get her up!”
The guard holding me down didn’t acknowledge Ryker’s demands, but another one rushed to the cell door and slammed his baton against the bars. Ryker jumped back, but he still bellowed at them to let me up.
Finally, the guard holding me let go, backed away and I could push myself up onto my hands and knees. I slowly rose to my feet as my wet nightgown clung to my body.
I shivered in the cold air and hugged my arms around myself, my teeth chattering as I glared at the guard in front of me.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I hissed and edged my chin towards the toilet in my cell. “There wasn’t anything I could do about it.”
“Fucking hell,” the guard snarled and shoved me again, pushing me towards another cell. “You’ll move to another one while we get this handled.”
I couldn’t let them see my happiness, so I swallowed my smile and hunched my shoulders as if in misery. He pressed the baton onto my back and shoved me harder until I was between Ryker and Penny’s cells. Ryker was standing at his door with a dark look on his face, and Penny was lying on her bed, the thick blankets tucked up around her shoulders.