“Well, if you’d let me finish, he told me she had turned herself in. I didn’t believe it at first but then I saw Emilio and he confirmed it. He saw her sitting in the cage waiting to be taken.”
My mind is racing with the possibilities and what the fuck I can do now. I have to get out. I have to save Ana.
Fucking Dick! Dick has her. My hand tightens around the knife in my hand at the thought of that sadistic mother fucker touching her.
But she chose this. She. Fucking. Left. Me.
“Fuck!” I shout, turning and punching the closest thing to me, which happens to be a solid stone wall.
“Fuck!” I yell again as I pull my hand back, not pausing to inspect the bleeding knuckles.
My feet start moving without thought, pacing back and forth as everything inside me wars with itself. Ifeeltoo fucking much. I can’t stay still yet I can hardly breathe at the same time. My skin is positively boiling and rolling with darkness, a pitch black that only Ana can penetrate.
After a few minutes, my head allows me back down to reality briefly and I finally notice Theo and Ethan’s conversation.
“Don’t know why she thought she had to,” Theo finishes with a frown as he notices my pacing has stopped. I can only imagine how I look right now. Drenched in sweat, dirty and covered in sewer water, with a manic and psychotic expression, I’m sure.
I need to fucking get Ana.
Twenty Three
Ana
Ican feel my heartbeat in my head, a painful stab with each slow beat. The pace quickens as my mind comes to awareness. Holding back a moan, the images of my last minutes of wakefulness come back to me and the stark realization of where I must be hits. Although my body tenses, I do my best to give no other indication I’m awake.
My eyes stay closed as I try to focus my awareness on my other senses. The textile of the ground beneath me is hard to determine without moving my fingers and I fight the twitch I feel growing in my hand. Small pricks touch my skin like it’s not perfectly even, so perhaps stone or even compact dirt. On my next slow inhale I take in the smells, dry dead earth is there, but so is the salty tang of sweat and unwashed bodies. The next breath brings me the scent of hot stone and I assume a sunny sky is on the other side of one of these walls.
Without moving, I do my best to take inventory of my body but it’s hard to do when my head is pounding. I was obviously hit on the head with something hard enough to knock me out, but I don’t feel the grogginess of drugs or anything else affecting me. My wrists and feet feel cool and I can tell my hands are tied, I am guessing my ankles too. Apparently whoever tied me up isn’t fantastic at it because the circulation is slowly being cut off. I can’t have been here long then, or it would be worse.
Sound begins to come back, dim over the throbbing of my head, and it almost sounds like I’m still in The Tomb. Either I’m going crazy, or I haven’t been given up yet. Either way, someone doesn’t want me moving.
All of these thoughts race through my brain in a matter of seconds with my eyes still shut until a loud noise has my eyes shooting open. I know that noise.
I’m in the fucking quarantine cage.
My eyes dart around as the heavy doors in front of me begins to swing open and I’m just praying to see someone I know, someone who likes me, around. I see a few fleeing bodies, obviously no one wants to tangle with the guards, but that’s all from my vantage. Shuffling I try to sit up, move away, anything…but it’s no use.
Part of me wants to cry out for help, try to get someone’s attention, but realistically I know it’s no use. John sold me out, and how can I even blame him?
“Even if the inmates don’t give you up first, I have a feeling the guards will come in after you. And many of us will die.”
Emilio and Desmond were right, and I knew it would come to this. Tears prick my eyes as the outside light hits them and a shadow steps over me. I swallow deeply, refusing to let these fuckers see me panic. Even when two men come and lift me by the arms and begin to carry me out, I don’t yell or scream or cry.
It isn’t until the ominous sound of the doors shutting behind me that one tear slips free.
I’m sorry Ax…
No words are spoken to me as I’m led to a building outside the prison. Out here the heat is different than inside the Tomb walls. It’s more oppressive somehow, thicker. Like the stone walls keeping heat in are protecting its occupants rather than caging them.
My eyes are watering but not because I’m crying, the bright sunlight is too much for my sensitive eyes after weeks and weeks of darkness. Through the fuzzy slits, I can see a few more dark blobs around us but can’t make any distinct faces or figures out. We finally reach the building and the second we enter I am dropped to my knees, but it doesn’t stop me from literally sighing in relief. The cool darkness of the room feels better, but I don’t have long to think about my momentary comfort.
Water rushes down my cheeks but I still manage to glower at the man sitting before me.
Dick smirks at my fallen figure.
“Well, well, what do we have here? Those savages took longer than I expected to give you up,” Dick comments as he paces the floor in front of me. With my hands tied behind my back like this, I can’t do any more than lie on the ground where they left me. From the sore spot on my hip it feels like one of my knives is still attached to me though, so I just need them to let me go for one second.
“This is shameful though, guys, really,” Dick says to no one in particular as he kneels down to cut my feet free. Without undoing my hands, he grips my elbow and helps me stand. When he begins to use his hand to wipe dirt off my front I literally growl at him and he chuckles before standing back.