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He crawls out of my lap almost immediately and nods.
“Such a brave boy.” I press a kiss to his forehead as I stand, then scoop him up and cover his eyes before carrying him through the room, ignoring everything and everyone else.
I search the rooms until I find one with a sofa and a television, and I lay Zale on the sofa. I pull a blanket from the back of it and cover him, then turn the TV on.
“I’ll try to be quick, but some of those people are sick and will need help. You stay here for me, and I’ll keep coming and checking on you and find you some food.”
He nods and burrows under the blanket, his eyelids drooping almost immediately. I tuck the blanket around him and wait for him to drift off before I leave the room.
Calix, Rémy, and Maxim are all waiting for me outside the room, but I ignore them and keep walking, heading for the basement where I found Zale.
“Sugar—”
I whirl around and point at Rémy. “Don’t. Not now. There are people here that need me. Zale needs me. I don’t have time to fall apart, so whatever it is you want to say, just don’t. For now, I want to get these people out of here.”
“People?” Maxim looks from me to Calix, but I walk away and leave them to figure it out.
I push the door to the basement open and jog down the steps, the smell of shit and piss seems even stronger than before.
“Fuck,” Maxim curses from behind me.
I turn and see the guys looking in the cages.
“The boy was in here?” Rémy grits out.
I nod before looking at Calix. “Do you know where the keys are?”
“I’ll find them.” He turns and heads back upstairs as I walk up and down the rows of cages.
At the far end of the room is a steel door. I didn’t notice it before since it blends in so seamlessly with its surroundings.
“Sugar, these people are dead.”
I press my hand to the door, feeling a sense of urgency. “I know. But I still made a promise to get them out, and I will. I refuse to leave any of them trapped down here.”
Footsteps on the stairs have me turning to see Calix coming back down. I meet him halfway down the aisle, and he hands me a set of keys. I flip through them, looking for one that’s a little different. The keys for the cages are all remarkably similar, but there is one that’s a bit larger and more industrial-looking than the others. I take it to the door and shove it in the lock, then brace myself before I open it.
The room must be soundproofed because when I open it, the sound of whimpers hits my ears. I walk into the dark and drag my hand down the wall, looking for a switch. When I find it, I flip it on and swallow down a cry of my own.
Cells line each wall, but unlike in the previous room, these cells are concrete rooms with the front made up of reinforced glass. Inside, the cells have been decorated to recreate snapshots from my memories. The first cell is a replica of the childhood bedroom from my home, right down to the book on the end of the bed. There is a young girl sitting on the floor near the head of the bed. She looks up at me with dead eyes, but that’s not what has me sucking in a sharp, painful breath or Calix cursing behind me. It’s the fact that she looks just like me—or the me from twenty years ago, at least.
“This is why he said he had no more use for me. He has all these younger versions of me to break instead,” I hiss as I move to the next cell and find a copy of my old classroom. In the corner is a child sitting facing the wall, naked from the waist up with welts crisis-crossing over her back. She turns when she senses she isn’t alone and stares at me, a woman she’ll look exactly like in years to come.
“Get them out,” I all but yell. My hand shakes as I pass the keys to Calix and walk down memory lane. The life I once led gets twisted and darker, with reality and fiction morphing together until I stop at the cell that depicts the place my parents were killed.
It’s empty now, and the room has been ripped apart, something that never happened while I was there. It makes me wonder if this room is showing someone else’s memory instead of mine. I look down and see the bloodstains, and my mind flashes back to that night.
I jump when I feel a hand land on my shoulder, but I don’t pull away when Rémy’s scent blankets me and his arm bands around my chest. It’s the only thing keeping me on my feet right now.
“He got the bloodstains right,” I say numbly, staring at them, wondering how he did it. Perhaps that day was burned into his memory like it was mine, making sure neither of us could forget.
I pull away from Rémy and move to the next cell. It’s empty. There are no scenes from my youth, no painful flashbacks from hell. Just a dark cement room waiting for its macabre makeover. The next is the same. As is the next, and the next.
I’m about to stop looking when a flicking catches my eye. Stepping closer, I move to look through the glass and find a bed pushed against it. On the bed is a girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen. She’s naked and bruised over eighty percent of her body. The wall behind her is designed to look like portholes on a boat.
I shake my head and ignore the room that’s eerily similar to the room on Santos’s boat that I blew up. I sit on the floor and press my hand to the glass next to the girl as Maxim and Calix work on opening the cells and checking on the girls as quickly as they can. This girl stares vacantly at me. After a moment, she lifts her hand and presses it against mine. And I swear, glass or not, I can feel her.
Afraid to speak, I stare into her eyes so she can read me, and I make her a vow that I will get her out of there. I can’t change what happened in the past, but I can make sure she has the future she deserves. That they all deserve.
