Orion’s fists were clenched at her sides, her head thumping from swallowing down fear. There was no room for fear here. Just the plan. The plan was her guide, and, live or die, she would see it through. She would not spend another second in this hell. It would work or it wouldn’t. She couldn’t let fear get in the way.
Jaclyn moved her attention from the ceiling to Orion, and she nodded.
The pounding went away, calmness settling over Orion, strange and unnatural. She’d forgotten that calm was possible for a human being. Or, at least, one like her.
Then again, she didn’t consider herself human anymore. She had felt her spirit leave long ago, fading away along with any emotion other than anger. She didn’t cry anymore, hadn’t in years. Feeling was for the foolish.
She reached up to cover the camera in the corner with her hands, the blinking red light taunting Orion as it had for the past ten years.
Jaclyn climbed down from Shelby’s back, the chain on her ankle rattling as she did so, and huffed out a breath. “Anybody else feel like they’re gonna have a heart attack?” she asked, flashing a weak grin.
Orion had become accustomed to that terrible sound over the years—the metallic jangle of the chain hitting the floor. Sometimes, it was all she could focus on, and it boiled the anger inside her. Reminded her of her captivity. It was the only constant, really.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
Orion didn’t look at the empty ankle cuff laid out on the bloodstained floor beside her. What was the point in that? Mary Lou was gone, and that’s all there was to it. Sure, she could’ve fought for her, but right along with her spirit, Orion’s fight left her long before that day two months ago, when she unwittingly said goodbye to Mary Lou for the last time. Maybe, in her heart, she knew it was coming—with that cough that rattled in her chest like death ringing a doorbell—but she didn’t allow herself to think it could be true. But it spurned in her the desire to fight, once and for all, and for that she felt forever indebted to Mary Lou.
Orion dropped her hands, the joints of her shoulders groaning from the unnatural position she’d had them in. She barely noticed it. Pain didn’t mean much anymore.
“You guys ready for this?” she whispered, glancing at the women wearing little girls’ nightgowns like living ghosts. They’d retired the medical gowns for something different. It was their way of trying to make them look younger. Make them more appetizing. But they all knew their womanhood was their death sentence. If they didn’t do something, they’d be nothing more than a stain on this floor, and new girls would be wearing ankle chains and scars. It was only a matter of time before they’d meet the same fate as Mary Lou, and all the other women before her.
Jaclyn was the first to nod. Confident. Cross-legged on the ground to hide the sharpened toothbrush in her lap.
They had collected things over the years, the Things got sloppy, didn’t notice one less toothbrush to be collected. A pen gone from their shirt pockets.
Shelby nodded too, not as confident as Jaclyn, of course. She still had hope of another way, still carried a belief that one day police would come bursting in to save them. Her eyes were clouded with fear, reservations. Her grip on the small, thin piece of metal in her right hand was limp, unsure, but she held it nonetheless.
Orion read her hesitant eyes for a moment and then nodded. She took a seat. “No turning back,” she whispered, trying her best to remain confident She knew she was ready to die rather than spend another day in this hell. She also knew that if they were caught and the plan failed, death would be the least of their concerns.
Jaclyn scoffed. “Not a fucking chance.”
Shelby shook, sobs taking over her. Her bottom lip trembled.
“This is serious, Shelby,” Orion said, cold with a hint of cruelty. She knew the kind of girl Shelby was all too well, and she wasn’t about to waste another second nurturing the girl or walking her through it. “Stay focused.”
Shelby nodded, swallowing visibly with her eyes moving to the ground.
Slight footfalls and a groan sounded from the other side of the room. Sounds they were all too familiar with, but it chilled their blood the second they heard it regardless.
The large concrete door struggled to open, a smell even worse than inside The Cell wafting in as Thing Two’s scrawny arms came into view.
He muscled the door open, then licked his lips, adjusting his crotch as he eyed Orion and the others with a hunger that was born somewhere in the depths of hell.
“Now, who’s it gonna be today?” he asked in a sing-song tone, pointing at them. “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Catch a tiger by her toe. If she hollers, make her pay. Eeny, meeny, miny, may.”