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I start to smile. “You know me that well?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Skylenna says with a small laugh. “I had to learn the language of your expressions when you kept so many secrets.”
My face falls.
“And you have a handsome face. I watch you a lot,” she adds with a shy smile.
Good save.
After the nineteen-minute mark passes, I fish the piece of metal out from its secure hole in the wall and thrust my hand around a bar at the front of my cage, jiggling it into the keyhole to unlock. My cage door clicks open, and I step out.
Warrose and Skylenna gape at me with wide eyes.
“How long have you been able to do that, you piece of shit!” Warrose yell-whispers.
“I’m getting flashbacks to the thirteenth room.” Skylenna laughs.
I open both of their cages swiftly. We only have two minutes to get from here to the kitchen without being caught.
“Wait!”
I turn on my heel to see Marilynn waving at us. We walk to her cage, leaning in with raised brows.
“I know it’s Niles’s birthday. Can I help?” she begs.
I peer back at Skylenna. Her lips are pinched together. Those glowing green eyes suspicious. Unsure.
“I promise to stay quiet,” she adds, licking her full lips.
“Can you bake?” Skylenna asks.
Marilynn nods with a glimmer of hope in her eyes. “I love to bake. It’s all I did when I lived alone.”
Skylenna sighs, glancing in my direction with a hurried nod.
“We have one minute and fifteen seconds,” I announce in a hushed tone. Without letting the cage door screech, Marilynn slips out like a thief in the night.
We decide to leave Ruth sleeping next to Niles in case he wakes up. She won’t be happy that we’ve left her out of the plan, but someone needed to stay here with him.
I account for the shift changes, the patterns of the Blood Mammoths that walk these halls. Over the weeks we’ve been captive, I’ve studied it all. Thankfully, those wretched creatures are fond of blind routines.
The lights are off in the commissary, so we’re vigilant to slip around the tables and chairs, reaching our hands out to find our path in the dark. Warrose curses as he stubs his foot on a table leg. Skylenna snickers at his expense.
I have a countdown ticking in my head. There isn’t time to do anything other than what I had planned, down to the second.
We flip on a few lights in the kitchen, searching through the ingredients to see what we have available to make.
“Not much to choose from,” Marilynn comments, snagging what she can from the pantry.
“What are our options?” Skylenna asks.
“Pancakes…”
“Oh.” Skylenna’s shoulders droop. “Are you sure?”
Marilynn pauses, drumming her fingers against her bottom lip.
Tick, tick, tick.
