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She looked up, and behind her stood a man. Dusky skin, golden-brown eyes and dark-brown hair that fell out of his wool cap, down to his shoulders. He wore a grim smile under a thick dark-brown beard and now gestured to the seat next to her, vacated by Twenty-Eight. “May I?”
English. Oh—she managed to nod, and the man sat down. “Don’t let Vikka scare you. She’s all bark.”
“She jabbed me in the ribs.”
“Oh, maybe a little bite.” He smiled. “You okay?”
And just like that, her eyes filled. She swallowed and looked away.
“Right. Yes, I get that feeling.”
Get. Ahold of.Yourself!
She blinked, took a breath, and turned.
A piece of bread sat on her bowl. She looked at the man, who gave her a grim smile. “You must be starving.”
That’s when she noted his number. Twenty-Four. “You’re in the cell beside me.”
“Mm-hmm. I saw your door closed when I came in from work.” He dug into his noodles. She noticed he also had bread, so where he’d gotten the extra piece, she didn’t know.
She picked up her fork and stared at the noodles. Her stomach roiled. Around her, only the barest conversation pinged off the metal walls, the grimy windows, most people eating in silence. Even the man next to her kept his voice low.
“My name is Shae. Johnson.”
“They call you by your number here,” he said. “Do you speak Russian?”
“No.”
“Okay, then, your number is dvatset-tree.” He rolled his R’s. “Mine is dvatset-chiteree.”
“Twenty-four.”
“But you can call me Judah. Judah Lion.” He held out a hand, chipped and gnarled, lean and strong as he gripped her hand.
The warmth seemed to go right to her bones, the nausea dissipated. She looked at her noodles.Stay alive.Okay, she could do this. She picked up her fork.
“Attagirl,” Judah said.
She wanted to smile, but suddenly, with the first bite, she’d turned ravenous again.
“Drink the tea. It’s watery but it helps get the noodles down.” He picked up his own cup. “Besides, you need the liquid. Despite being surrounded by water, it’s easy to get dehydrated.”
She took a sip of the tea, and it did make the cold noodles go down better. “What happens after this?”
“We go to work.” He took a sip of his tea. “We’re replacing an old gas line that stretches from Yakutia to Kamchatka. It’s a privately owned line by the Petrov Bratva—the Russian mob. And they own this prison ship, too, so we’re their private slave labor.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we dig holes and lay pipe and travel with the line as we work. Which is why we’re on the ship. Before this, as we traveled through Siberia, we were in train cars, so this is like paradise.”
She stared at him. “How long have you been here?”
“Three years. Nearly.” He glanced at her tea. “Finish that. We can have as much tea as we want, but we’ll leave soon, so you need to finish up. I’ll get you more.”
She picked up the tea cup and drank it down, despite the burn.
He got up and headed over to the counter.
