“I need you to see if she’s in the next room.”
Jackson sighs. “Fine. But I’m just sticking my head in, nothing more.”
“Ooh la la, you know I like it when you talk dirty to me.”
“Tavish, look,” I say as I hold a bottle up to the red light flickering above our cell. If I lean the bottle just right, it makes some numbers show through the glass.
Tavish picks one up and holds it up against the normal light. “I don’t see anything.”
“It has to be one of the colored lights.”
He shifts the bottle and tilts it. “Ah, this one is 1835.”
“Get in the hole, Jackson,” Leland urges as I get distracted by Jackson trying to stuff his head through the hole.
The speaker cuts in. “Um… the hole is for objects… not bodies,” a woman says over the speaker.
“Cassel, I thought you were going to cut their feed?” Leland whispers.
“I’m waiting until we see the lady!” he hisses.
“This one is 1975,” Tavish says, still playing the game, and somehow ignoring the antics in our next-door cell.
“Maybe we put them in order by years?”
“We could do that,” he agrees as he starts sorting them.
Jackson flails a bit, drawing my attention back to him. “Leland… I think I’m stuck. I need you to pull.”
“Why’d you push in hard enough to get stuck? You know you shouldn’t force yourself into tight holes.”
Jackson sighs. “You told me to cram my head in farther.”
“It’s fine. I have a riddle for you. If you win, I’ll help you.”
“I’mnotgood at riddles.”
“What’s mean and hairy, and boy, I could use a Bloody Mary,” Leland says.
“Uh… what?” Jackson just seems confusedandstuck.
“It’s Tavish!”
Tavish throws his hands up. “What the fuck! I’m over here doing the puzzle and it’s still my birthday!”
“Ah, I forgot,” Leland says as he picks up something. “I need a key. Anyone have a key?”
“I got one,” Cassel calls from the cell across the room from him.
“I think we’re supposed to use this little pulley system to get the key over to him,” Jeremy says as Cassel fucking whips the key through the metal bars, then it ricochets off a metal bucket before smoothly sliding right through the bars into Leland’s cell where he catches it. I’m gawking… like fucking… impressed.
“Did someone say something about a Bloody Mary?” Henry asks.
“How the hell did you do that?” I mutter.
“Wrong key,” Leland says as he ricochets it over to Micah. It smacks him right in the forehead, which makes Leland laugh.
“Don’t be impressed by that,” Tavish tells me.
