Page 56 of Anarchy Chained: Alpha Thomas

“Why did you tie me up? Kiss me? Touch me?”

He shrugs. “Why not? You’re pretty. And young. You didn’t know anything about anything.”

I tilt my head up to see him again.

He’s smiling when he looks down at me. “Besides, you’d want to touch you too if you were me. I was locked up in that head of his for fifteen years.”

“You’re a pervert.”

“You liked it.”

I say nothing. Because I did.

I look up again and now he’s grinning like a boy. “Thomas made a move on me too,” I say.

“I saw,” he grumbles.

“He kinda frustrated me. After… you.” A chuckle from Sullivan. “You just take. But Thomas doesn’t.”

“He’s dumb like that.”

It’s my turn to grin and chuckle. “I thought you were an everyday run-of-the-mill asshole, but I’m reevaluating.”

“I’m not an asshole?”

“You’re the definition of asshole. But I like your diabolical side.”

“Well, that’s awesome. I can waste away to pathetic weakness waiting for Prodigy to come take me back, knowing you prefer me to him.” He looks down at me, not smiling. “I appreciate the gesture.”

“There has to be a way out.”

“There isn’t. Not without explosives. It might take them a while to blast through the doors back at the southern tower, but they will. And then they’ll blast through these too. Or maybe they know there’s a tunnel over here and they’ll say fuck those southern doors and just head west.” He lifts his arm. Like he’s pointing to something. “They’ll come right though that gate there. Or you know what’s even better than that?” He pauses to see if I’ll play along, then just continues when I don’t. “They might figure out that there’s a tunnel connecting to this one up north or out east. Maybe they’ll just sneak up from the south and surprise us.”

Dick. “Optimist you are not.”

“What’s there to be optimistic about? We’re stuck in the goddamned tunnel. This is all Thomas’s fault. We’ll get out of here eventually. We might spend the next twenty years as Prodigy prisoners, but eventually we’ll get out of that too. And I tell you what… the next time I see an opportunity to get rid of that asshole, I’m gonna take it.”