Chapter Twenty-Four

I don’t know which floor I’m closest to. How long was I climbing before the power went out? Probably I’m somewhere between the third and the fourth. Between Mean land and Upper Mean. Possibilities flash in front of me, displacing the darkness, but my brain isn’t processing correctly and I can’t make sense of any one of them. Instead I stay still, my feet rooted to the concrete steps like one of those trees aboveground, tethered to the earth.

I swallow, and I can feel the pressure in my ears. They are my only useful sense right now. Okay, Eve. You need to do something. I swipe a hand in front of me through the black air. It lands limply at my side.

I can’t. I can’t do anything.

I push a toe forward, and it edges an inch to the side.

It is like I am paralyzed.

Perhaps I am overanalyzing; perhaps I don’t need to do anything. Perhaps I can wait here until the lights come back on. And then I will continue on my way to see Wren. Yes, that is what I will do.

The thumping in my chest makes me lose my balance, and my hands fumble for the handrail that digs into my back. Both hands grip it tightly. My feeling of powerlessness in the ring today was nothing compared to now; this is real life. This is true vulnerability. This is terror.

A door pushes open below me, and I hear “fucking compound” hissed under someone’s breath. It sounds vaguely familiar, but I need to hear it again to recognize it because my brain is moving impossibly slow. Like molasses that the cafeteria sometimes serves with toast. But whoever it is has a flashlight, and its glow lights up the stairwell. My pupils dilate with excitement as they latch on to it.

When my eyes find the speaker, the giver of light, my pounding heart does not slow. Laughter does not bubble to the surface with relief. Because it is Daniel and Landry, and both slow when they see me, both their spines straighten. As the old saying goes, I feel like the cat just spotted the mouse.

“No bodyguard tonight?” Daniel asks me, and his voice is cold. “That’s a shame.”

“Don’t need one.”

“You know what your problem is, Eve?” he asks, and he shines the flashlight up and down along my body. “You’re cocky. Do you ever see the other girls acting so tough?”

“Sure I do.”

“Nah. Not the butch fighters you run around with. I’m talking proper girls. Like you, Eve. You’re a proper girl. Aren’t you?”

My brain is moving quicker now, and my eyes dart up the stairs and away.

Daniel is still talking. “And that attitude of yours. Another one of your many faults.” He stares at me, but I can’t see his eyes. The sockets are a cloud of black. “What do you think, Landry? Cause I’m thinking we ought to teach Eve here that lesson we’ve been so meaning to teach her.”

“Back off, Daniel,” I manage. I hope they can’t hear the agitation bubbling in my stomach. It must be pure acid, because it lashes and burns. All I can think about is the fact that I fought today and how unfair that is. I fought today. Physically I am drained and tired and vulnerable. And it is a horrible thing, to be vulnerable. “Back off or you’ll end up like your friend.”

“Another thing you ought to pay for,” says Daniel, and a sneer curls his lip. As he shifts the glow of the flashlight, I see that evil glints in his eyes.

No more time to waste. I lurch away from them and up the stairs with the help of every fiber of muscle and every last cell pushing maximum energy into motion, but I am not fast enough. Grabbed around the ankle, I fall. My face lands on the lip of a stair, and my cheekbone screams with pain.

Please let that be the lemon juice. Please let the rest of the blows that are sure to come fall over me unnoticed.

“Will you look at that, Landry. Eve is panicking,” he taunts. “Thought I’d never see the day. God, it feels good to watch her sweat, although I have to admit it’s a bit sad. Pathetic, even.” He grabs my other foot and rips me down the flight of stairs until my bare stomach is flush against cold concrete. I am on a landing—probably the Mean landing—and my only hope now is to scream. So I do, at the top of my lungs, but even then, I know it’s futile. Nobody will come. Nobody ever comes in this godforsaken compound. It is every man, woman, and child for themselves, and the reality is I don’t have enough in the tank to see me to another day.

The back of my head is grabbed; it is smashed into the floor, and my scream is stopped. Cut off much too quickly by pain and shock. Blood seeps into my eyes and between my teeth, and my fingers crawl to my face, my palms offering a bath of much needed warmth. Daniel is on top of me, and his hands grip my arms, and his legs lock over mine.

“Turn her over,” comes Landry’s voice, and I know that I have no chance. He was my only hope, but his voice gives away his delight. He is on Daniel’s side. “I’ve always thought she had a pretty face.”

“Too bad I just smashed the shit out of it, then,” says Daniel roughly. “And for the record, Eve, I loved every second of it.” And with that, he pulls at one side of my body, and I flip over, my hands still covering my face, holding it together. Still he is on top of me, still I can’t move. The smell of his acrid soap chokes the back of my throat.

“Ah, will you look at that,” says Landry. “She’s playing shy.” Fingers touch my bare stomach, lightly stroking back and forth, and a knot twists my insides, one apart from pain and terror. This is a dull and knowing sense of dread.

I thrash around with as much effort as I can muster, the desire to be free drowning everything else that fires through my brain. But it isn’t enough. It isn’t enough because it isn’t a fair fight, not tonight. Not with two of them.

“What do you think of her body?” Daniel asks. I can hear the effort in his voice as he holds me in place, but he is trying to keep it level. Trying to keep it cool. “No complaints there.”

“Meh, too hard for my taste. And she’s tall, too, right? And flat as fuck, like a dude.”

Daniel laughs, cold and sharp, and my hands ball into fists over my eyes as though this will protect me from their evil intentions. Still I thrash, still I try to knock Daniel off me.

“Hey, Eve,” he says now. “Hey, Eve—calm down a bit, ’kay? This’ll hurt a lot less if you stay still. Trust me, okay?”

“You can’t do this!” I scream, and the words erupt from my mouth. They taste like vomit. “You can’t do this to me!”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Eve,” he hisses through clenched teeth. But I see strain in his eyes as he holds me down. He is tiring quickly. “We can do whatever we want because we’re Upper Means, and you’re a dirty little girl nobody gives a shit about. And let me tell you this,” he adds as a small smile curls his lip, “when we’re guards, don’t think for a second you’ll have a moment of peace again. Not when you sleep, not when you eat. Not. One. Second.”

But I can’t respond because I am screaming again. Landry’s fingers curl around the waist of my jeans, and in that moment my legs roar to life, and there is a dull thud that is my heel on his chest.

Daniel turns to see what is going on, and with the momentum of my kicking legs, I am sideways underneath him. Almost free.

“Grab her!” Daniel is shouting, but every cell in my body is alight with adrenaline and the tireless pursuit of life.

I am on all fours. I shove an elbow in Daniel’s face, I fight, I fight. But then my hair is snatched from behind, and long fingers curl around my neck and squeeze with such intensity that blood vessels burst in my eyes, and the fight is leaving, it is dying.

But I am not ready to give up just yet, and I grab at a finger, just one—and it must be a ring finger, because it is weak—and I bend it back as the world goes dark, and I hear a pop, and the grip around my neck loosens. Oxygen soars to my brain.

I am alive, I am alive, I am alive.

“Fucking cunt!” Daniel screams. “She broke my fucking finger!” He is hunched over in the corner, and I run; I sprint up the stairs with Landry at my back, and he pushes me, and he slams my head into the concrete wall, and it is blacker than it was, and it strikes me that I will die here. Never will I say a proper farewell to my parents or my friends or to Wren. Never will I breathe fresh air or feel a breeze against my cheek. Never will I have a shot at finding Jack or tasting freedom.

There is a flurry of footsteps—that much seeps into my battered brain—and maybe yelling, but I am too far gone to make sense of it. No, I must be wrong, because it is quiet now, unless that is my name I hear. It is so faint, it sounds like it is being whispered from the dead other end of the compound, so I can’t possibly respond. Maybe it is the trees outside the Oracle whispering my name. I want to whisper back; I do.

But now I am swaying, back and forth, like a clock, or like a tree—one of those talking trees. Yes, that is it. I am whispering my own name, nothing more, and I am alone, always alone. And now my mind is still, and I no longer know if I am moving or awakening, hearing or speaking, sleeping or dying.