The guys all had the same image etched in black in the same spot: a moon with a droplet dangling from its upper tip. The guardians pointed them out to us during our swimming lessons.
That tattoo shows that you all belong to the facility. You do your best for us, and we look after you.
Yeah, right. That worked out so well for us.
But the six of us are connected in other ways too.
I will even more memories of the guys to the front of my mind. Drey’s broad grin. Jake’s incisive gaze. Dom’s steady voice. Zee’s feral scent.
The tendril of smoke seeping from my arm trembles and then unfurls toward the wall in a thin but steady stream. One tiny piece of me relaxes.
We discovered this trick while messing around during one of our outdoor training sessions. The strangeness inside us seeks out its match if given a nudge.
We are blood.
As long as the smoke I bleed moves toward a target when prompted, I know the guys are still out there. Still someplace where I can find them.
If I ever get out of this shithole.
Pulsing bass draws my attention back to the TV. On the screen, characters bob and spin to the music at a house party.
I gaze at them for a few moments, but the sound doesn’t stir even a fragment of the urge to join their dance. There’s only one reason I move my body these days: to survive.
As the song fades out, the deadbolt rasps over again. Three guards walk in with guns and tasers at their hips. The empty water bottle crunches under a boot-clad foot.
I stand up, an ache of tension forming in my gut. The guards move briskly and silently to usher me out into the hall where more men are waiting, but when I inhale, whiffs of stress taint the air.
They’re more anxious than usual—I might even catch a note of outright fear. But then, when the squad of guards came to escort me to last week’s fight, I was keyed up and on edge because I’d realized yet another year had passed with me stuck in this place.
Another year apart from the guys who are my blood—the guys I love. Another year of failure.
That night, one of the guards pressed closer to me than I liked, and with my temper frayed, I elbowed him with more oomph than I intended. From the crack of bone when he slammed into the wall, I assume I broke his arm.
So I guess I can’t blame them for feeling extra cautious tonight. I’ll just blame them for everything else they put me through.
“Nice night, isn’t it?” I say, glancing at the men around me for any hint of a reaction. Any clue that could help me, no matter how small. “Sounds like a good crowd out there. I bet the boss issohappy.”
“Keep quiet, freak,” one of them snaps.
The others ignore me, not even meeting my gaze. Their expressions look stern, impervious, but the prickle of fear in the air intensifies.
Icouldkill at least five of them before the others took me down, and they all know that. None of them wants to find out if they’d be among the unlucky ones.
My attention moves on to rove across the hall, but I’m as familiar with the details of this corridor as I am with my room. That air vent is too small for me to fit. That steel door leads only to a windowless storage room.
If there was an easy escape route, I’d have found it years ago.
The furor of the crowd gets louder as we approach the arena. My pulse skitters, just for a second.
It does sound like a big one, and plenty worked up already, more so than usual. Just who am I going up against tonight?
In the back of my head, Jacob gives me a cool smile. The chiseled planes of his face look so much like Griffin’s it’s painful, but his voice is more forceful than his twin’s ever was.
No matter what they throw at you, you’ve got this.
I summon the cool composure I first developed during rounds of sparring at the facility. For the next half hour, nothing matters except the fight.
The guards in front shove open the door to the arena. A blast of unmuffled sound smacks into me alongside a riot of scents.