Page 95 of Wicked Nightmare

I hesitated, feeling like a fish outta water. This touchy-feely shit wasn't my forte. Give me a knife and a target, and I'm your man. But comforting a traumatized girl? Not exactly in my wheelhouse. Look what I did to Lakes. I allowed that trauma to roam the earth, spilling blood whenever it saw fit. That was my comfort. That was my safety. But all this weird emotional shit was for the therapists. This chick needed a psychologist and a side of Prozac. Probably the whole bottle.

Still, seeing Rose shaking, her eyes open but not seeing, something inside me twisted. Not the good kind of twist I got before a kill. Something uncomfortable. Something that felt dangerously close to empathy, and I wasn't sure what to do with that.

Fuck it. I couldn't just stand there like a useless lump.

I awkwardly lowered myself next to her, trying not to tower over her. "Hey, kid," I said, keeping my voice low and steady. "You're safe here. No one's gonna hurt you."

The words felt foreign on my tongue. I wasn't used to being the comforting type. But as Rose's eyes found mine, something try to reach out, to connect. Or maybe it was just desperation for any kind of lifeline.

"That's right," I continued, surprising myself. "We've got you. Me and Lakey, we're not gonna let anything bad happen to you. You hear me?"

Christ, what was I doing? Playing the protective big brother? That wasn't me.

But as Rose's breathing started to even out, I felt a weird sense of satisfaction. It was unsettling, this urge to actually help someone instead of manipulating them. Or use them.

I caught Lakey's eye over Rose's head. She looked as shocked as I was, but there was the same look in her face mirrored back at me. Comfort. Connection.

Fuck. What had we gotten ourselves into? This just got way out of my control.

Rose's trembling eased, her chest rising and falling in a calm, predictable pattern. As she uncurled from her fetal position, my eyes caught something on her skin that stopped me cold.

"Holy shit," I said, leaning in for a closer look.

There, etched into Rose's pale flesh like some sick cattle brand, were the numbers "101011". The same ones on her wristband. The skin around it was raised and angry, a permanent reminder of what she was to them. Just another number.

Lakey's fingers traced the scarred numbers, her touch gentle but her jaw tight with fury. "They branded her number on her, Cam," she spat.

"Fucking animals."

I meant it, too, and the conviction behind the words surprised me. I'd carved a cross into Skeeter's chest less than a week ago. I'd dismembered his body in our bathtub. I wasn't exactly in a position to judge anyone's approach to body modification. But there was a difference between what we did and what they did. We killed people who deserved it. They branded children and called it science.

Rose cleared her throat, the sound small and raw. When she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper, but it landed in the room like a grenade.

"They... they wanted to see how much we could take," she rasped, her eyes unfocused, lost in some hellish memory. "Pain... so much pain. Every day, new tests. New ways to break us."

She was talking. Rose was actually talking. I didn't move. Didn't breathe. The wrong sound, the wrong shift in weight, and she'd clam up again and we'd be back to square one. Lakey had gone completely still beside me, her hand frozen mid-stroke on Rose's hair. We both knew what this was. This was the crack in the dam. If we pushed, it would seal shut. If we waited, it might open further.

So we waited.

My stomach churned. I'd seen some of that shit in the lab testing folders but hearing it from someone who'd lived it, that hit different. Reading about it on paper was clinical, detached. Hearing it in a voice that cracked on every other word made it real in a way the files never could.

"Mental trials," Rose continued, her words tumbling out faster now, as if she'd opened a valve and couldn't close it. "Isolation. Sensory deprivation. Pushing us until we... until we shattered. They'd put us in rooms alone for days. No light. No sound. Just your own heartbeat and the voice in your head telling you that nobody was coming. That nobody had ever come. That you didn't exist."

The words sat in my chest like stones. I knew that room. Not specifically, not the same room, but I knew what it felt like to be alone in the dark, waiting for someone who wasn't coming. Month fourteen. The room with no cameras. The silence before the door opened. Different context, same helplessness.

I glanced at Lakey, whose lips were pressed thin. She looked at me and it was as if we were there. Perhaps we had been, long ago. Memories were sparse in returning, but the ones that swirled in my head were ones of a darker kind. Me inflicting pain, violence. Death by my own hands. More tests. Trials. Challenges. But Lakes... she'd been through something like Rose had and that made me pause. If Lakey weren't Lakey, she'd be a helluva lot like Rose. Outwardly damaged. Instead, Lakey had taken all that damage and turned it inward, compressed it, weaponized it, until the thing that should have broken her became the thing that made her dangerous.

Rose hadn't had that luxury. Rose had just broken.

"Jesus," I breathed, running a hand through my hair. "Rose, I... fuck, I don't even know what to say."

Part of me wanted to bolt, to get as far away from this mess as possible. But something kept me there. This discomfort felt like razors crawling into my skin, splicing me from the inside out. Maybe it was the way Rose looked at us, like we were her only lifeline in a world gone mad.

I ran a hand through my hair, Rose's words replaying in my head. This chick was damaged goods, no doubt about it. My mind raced with all the ways this could blow up in our faces. My feet moved on their own, pacing me around the room until I sighed.

Leaning back against the far wall, I watched Lakey fuss over Rose like a mother hen. It was fucking surreal, seeing my psycho partner-in-crime playing nursemaid.

"You okay there, Rose?" I asked. "Need a band-aid for those boo-boos?"