He grabbed my arms and wrenched them unnaturally behind my back, and I screamed. Loud. High-pitched. Because why not? I had no reason to stay quiet anymore. He scooped me up and started loping away, not nearly as fast as he probably would have liked.
Ihadshot him. A shivery little thrill passed through me. Probably grazed his leg, if I had to guess.
And it hadn’t helped me at all. I was no doubt on my way to Resi, anyway, for further torture.
Which could be useful. But my options for mounting a rescue were dwindling by the second. The gun and whistle were gone. The knife? Undetermined. I couldn’t feel its weight, but I also hadn’t felt him take it. At any rate, my hands were useless, though not, as far as I could tell, restrained with anything besides his hulking arms.
But hehadbeen shot. That had to be worth something. I jerked against his welded grip, testing it out as he, moaning painfully to himself, dragged me somewhere far from anywhereI’d seen or had time to examine. The stale air from the nylon bag filled my nostrils, tainted with metallic copper and musty earth and gunpowder.
I squeezed my fists, resisting the urge to thrash wildly. What would he do? What would he tell me if he could?
Wait. Plan. Don’t die.
Well, I hadn’t yet. My record was perfect.
I wriggled, stretching my fingertips, feeling for the knife. It had to still be there. I sighed, breath catching against the inside of the bag, and focused on Noam’s labored breathing and slow, limping steps. The wound was slowing him down; he wouldn’t be able to keep this pace for long.
He grumbled something under his breath as we rounded a bend, my shoulder scraping roughly against the cavern wall. I clenched my jaw against the pain, swallowing down a yelp.No. Keep quiet. Wait.
Suddenly, he paused. Were we here? I sensed him shift, then grunt as he eased me down. My back hit first, then my head, and a little cry of pain escaped before I could stop it.
All at once, the bag ripped open, stale air rushing out, replaced by an acrid coppery tang that stung my dry eyes. Copper. Blood. Fear.
“Oh hey, Louisa,” Resi’s voice cooed, lazy and dripping in mockery. “Good timing.”
I squinted, adjusting to the sudden flood of greasy light. To Resi—her sickly sweet giggle echoing off the cavern walls. To Obadiah, hunched over something—someone—near the wall.
My heart seized.
I’d seen him a mess before. No doubt. Butwasthat really him? Muzzled and cuffed to a slab of stone, his bare, pulverized scalp coated with dirt and blood, his skin as pale as a corpse where it wasn’t blackened and yellowed and daubed with fresh splatters of red? Blood that Resialsowore. Blood that meant shewasn’t done hurting him. And she hadn’t evenstartedhurting me.
He was breathing. I was breathing. That was a good start.
“Where’s Max?” Resi asked.
“No clue,” I said. Come to think of it, this would be areallygood time for him to show up.
Resi nodded to Noam, who seemed to understand the gesture. “I suppose you’re thinking,” she said, “that now that I’ve got you both here, I’m going to give you some long, grandiose speech about why I’m like this and why I’m doing what I’m about to do, et cetera, et cetera. But I think we kinda covered all that already, so…”
She flicked the acid onto his wrist.
I screamed. Because he couldn’t.
Horror swallowed me whole as his wrist—scarred but till now unbroken—transformed into a grotesque, twisted mass. The acid devoured it, relentless, eating through flesh and muscle, bubbling, blistering, consuming. The air’s coppery musk was replaced with the effluvium of burnt flesh and hair.
And the worst part was, despite the muzzle, I couldhearhim scream.
Something hot and terrible and profound surged in me. My grip on the knife tightened as I rose, blinking through the pain radiating from my shoulder. But I couldn’t lose myself. Not now. If I ran at Resi with the knife, the goons would pounce on me in seconds, and he’d still be there in chains. Dying.
Wait. Plan. Breathe. Keep acting. Don’t die.
If I couldn’t hear his voice, I’d just have to keep imagining it.
The numbers were seared onto his skin forever already. It had taken seconds. It was over. Resi had done what she wanted. She could stop.
Why wasn’t she stopping?
“Oh,” she mused. “I guess you expected me to stop, huh?”
