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Still. It was an agreement. He knew everything had just changed. Everything. The stakes, the risks, all of it.
And we were heading right into the lion’s den.
* * *
Shay Tenley
I flew up from the concrete floor as someone opened the door across the room. A man left a tray with food on the floor before disappearing again. They wouldn’t bring me all the way to wherever the fuck we were just to poison me, would they?
I limped over to the door and picked up the tray, and I didn’t waste a second. I ate with my fingers. It was as if someone had dumped an entire buffet on the paper plate. Grilled bread, corn, some kind of bread roll stuffed with meat and vegetables, rice, fried fish, a chicken dish with more rice, and fruit.
I had to be careful and eat slowly or else my stomach might explode. I’d been given a bottle of water and bread yesterday after they’d thrown me into this cell.
My water bottle from last night was currently collecting rainwater on the floor. The ceiling had a big, square opening with nothing but a reinforced metal grid. I could jump and hoist myself up, but the holes in the grid were too small to fit my head through.
It was raining, so I stayed near the walls of the cell.
Even in the emptiness of this dark little spot, with the constant drip of water running down the drain in the middle of the floor, I had too many things to process. The humidity clung to me like a second skin, the smell of barbecue hadn’t left the air since I’d arrived, I was always hearing voices and laughter in the distance, and I had to push against a mental collapse every time my thigh hurt.
One wound didn’t wanna heal right. I could live with the sweat, the grime, the bruises, and the other lacerations that’d closed and faded, including a gunshot wound in the fleshiest part of my arm, but the spot in my thigh where I’d been stabbed kept fucking with my head. What could I do if a minor infection grew to something more serious?
I pinched some chicken and rice from the plate and stuck it into my mouth, remembering all the times Reese had been on my case about hygiene in the wild. We loved to take road trips together, and we usually slept outdoors—in the bed of the truck—and we hiked and dived and swam and ran… The smallest cut or a splinter or a scrape, and he was there with his first aid kit and a harangue about how he could take out a bullet but not cure an infection that reached the blood.
“Think of sepsis as a big no-no, baby.”
He would smack a kiss to my forehead afterward, satisfied with his work. Sometimes he wrote funny stuff on the Band-Aid.
I released a breath and squinted up at the hole in the ceiling. He and River could never find me here, could they? I didn’t even know where I was, what day it was, or the time. Even if I could contact them right now, I had no clues to my whereabouts.Oh, it’s overcast as shit. Raining. Hot and humid. The trees that surround the area are massive.
I guessed we were near a town? I didn’t know. There had to be a zoo nearby, though. I’d heard both the calls of monkeys and the roars of big cats. And children laughing. Music. I’d seen pillars of smoke and critters fly by.
I had to survive. One way or another, I had to live. I had to see River and Reese again, my brothers, my aunt, my friends.
I’d yelled into the gaping opening until I’d almost lost my voice, and it’d made me remember a story Gray had told me. He lived in northern Washington, whereas I lived outside DC, so we mainly talked online. He’d been kidnapped once. That was how he’d become someone who wanted to save others. He’d married the man who had saved him too. And every now and then, he opened up about the horrors he’d lived through. Having to watch fellow hostages get tortured and killed. But the longer-lasting pain was the dehumanization of becoming invisible and just…nothing. He’d cried and screamed, he’d kicked and thrashed, he’d been locked inside wooden crates and dark cells. For three fucking months, he’d been a commodity on its way to an auction.
He’d been abused, measured, weighed, and spokenof, not to. Human traffickers had crowded him and treated him like an object. Never using his name.
I glanced down at the plate and my greasy fingers.
For the first time in weeks, I heard River speak up in my mind. In his low, murmuring voice.“First, they treat you like an animal.”
In our lifestyle, I was game for the consensual version of mental torture. Being pushed down mentally by River was one of the headiest experiences ever—because I was always safe with him. He put me back together and never left me alone. Those were the highs we got off on together, him, Reese, and me.
The psychology behind the playtime was still real, though. I soaked up their conversations whenever I found them talking on the couch or wherever. River loved to study people, and he was so good at it. He’d spent his whole career reading threats, extracting information, and drawing conclusions.
My mind started racing, and I anchored myself to the memories of the two loves of my life. Their experience, their arguments, their wisdom, their stories. If I could just cling to their words, maybe I could protect myself from having my identity stripped. The loneliness was fucking brutal, and yet I kept coming back to what Gray had told me about the dehumanization.
Being treated like I didn’t exist, like my voice wasn’t heard, chipped away at my mental strength every goddamn day.
“You’re our fighter, sweetheart. You’re a survivor.”
I drew a deep breath and went back to eating. Yeah, I was a fucking survivor—even if I had to eat like an animal and convince myself I still existed.
Just because I didn’t see a tomorrow didn’t mean I was going to give up on today.
I finished my food and drank from the water I’d collected, and the stomach cramps that followed sure let me know I was alive too.
Screw it.
