I slink back around until I’m on the side of the facility opposite my pine. Digging through my stolen purse, I produce one of the lighters.
With a flick of the dial, I confirm the flame still works. Then I grasp a fallen branch covered in curling, dead leaves, set it against a crumbling log, and send it up in flames.
Three
Jacob
Iwake up too early, as always.
The room is pitch black. A faint burn still hums through my muscles from a workout that wasn’t quite exhausting enough to knock me out all the way until morning.
They never are. I always find myself here in the dark, the firm mattress beneath me and the faint whir of the air filtration system overhead.
One more day I’ve made it to. Another day more than my brother got. Twenty-four more hours of useless existence under my belt.
The thoughts float through my head like shards of ice on a thawing river, freezing cold all the way through. I’m a void as endless as the total darkness of my cell.
Griffin would have told me to go easier on myself, to not let the past get to me. But Griffin is gone, and my awareness of the facts of my existence doesn’t stir up my emotions anyway. It’s simply the way it is.
Someone around here needs to see things clearly.
I close my eyes and focus on the rhythm of my breaths. Inhale. Exhale. Over and over. As repetitive as our days here are.
In an hour or two, the overhead light will blink on. A tray of breakfast will slide through the compartment on the door.
I will eat, and then I’ll be tested, and then I’ll eat again, and then I’ll train. Then back to the cell for dinner. Then the lights go out.
Going through the motions, watching, waiting. Collecting all the little details that might someday add up to enough to make a difference.
I’m just thinking that when my chance arrives out of nowhere with the blare of a warning siren radiating through the walls.
I jerk upright on the bed, my heart thudding only a little harder than normal but my entire body gone rigid.
The alarm wails on and on through the darkness. Something’s gone wrong.
The guardians have been disturbed, their plans shaken in some unexpected way.
It’s an opening—it’s exactly what we’ve needed.
At least, it will be if I can make use of it. This time, the first step in the tentative plan we’ve stitched together in fragments of conversation over the past few years depends on me, not my brother.
It should have been me all along. If it’d been me, maybe I’d have been the one who—
My mind snaps around the errant thought like a steel trap, shutting it away. I shove to my feet and step toward the door.
There, I tip my forehead against the cool metal surface, listening to the sounds from the hall with all my might. I don’t have Zian’s keen hearing or his ability to see through solid surfaces, but the people outside are making enough noise that I catch faint markers of their presence through the blare of the siren.
In the first moment I home in on the sounds, heavy footsteps are thundering down the hall by my door. By the time I register them, they’ve passed too quickly for me to reach out and catch hold.
I grit my teeth and strain my ears even more.
Is the situation bad enough that more of the facility’s staff will come running, or has the opportunity already slipped through my fingers? This is the first time since we gathered all the pieces we needed for our plan that we’ve had our jailers at a potential disadvantage.
Who knows when it’ll happen again.
As I listen, I press my fingers against the door as well, flexing my sense of my power from within my skull through my chest and arms. I need to be ready. And pulling this gambit off is going to take all my strength—all the strength the guardians have left me with.
Since we arrived at the new facility, we’ve all found our talents, even the ones we’d kept hidden, have been weighed down. Restrained. Something they’re putting in the food or the air must be dulling us, taking the edge off the weapons inside us.