She didn’t reply.
“Look, if we’re going to mutilate our hands anyway, why not coordinate it with a meal, on the off chance they’re unprepared and panic?”
An exit to the mental maze. I wasn’t sure what lay on the other side—it could be death—but it was at leastsomethingwe could act on. If time ran out, and we hadn’t thought of anything better, we would do what we had to.
She puffed out her cheeks with a contemplative exhale. “So, hypothetically, they open the door to stop me from damaging their money maker, and I attack?”
“I’ll do it too.” I didn’t love the idea of hurting myself after just having healed from some nasty broken bones, but I wasn’t about to put this all on her.
She smiled genuinely at me for the first time. “One of us is going to need to have functional hands for the rest of our escape. Besides, the self-injury was my idea. I’ll take down the guard, you get us out of here alive.”
“Do you think youcantake him down?” I asked. It wasn’t that I thought I could do any better, but I hated to sign her up for a losing battle.
“I fought nastier things in the forest. I’ll be fine.”
She had foughtthingsin those woods? I reflected on the animalistic noises with a shudder, grateful that I had never laid eyes on one of the creatures. Dia wasn’t frail, but she wasn’t armed the way the rest of this planet was. How she could take on anything in that forest, much lessmultiplesomethings, was beyond me. If I were going to be stuck in a life-or-worse-than-death situation, I was glad she was on my side.
Still, the odds weren’t in our favor. So much could go wrong. Risking what little freedom we had within our four walls wasn’t something I was looking forward to, but it was better than giving up.
“Do you think we have until dinner?” I asked, hoping to buy time for a better alternative to present itself.
Dia’s eyes flicked over my face, and I somehow knew that she was searching for injuries on me and finding none. “I think so. It was the scientist who made the call on when the last girl was healed enough, not the mealtime guard.”
“Dinner then.” My chest tightened on inhale. “Let’s plan accordingly.”
Faeryn
Nausea had been rolling through me since lunch. My clammy hands trembled as they fidgeted with the hem of the blue hospital gown, the fabric creased where I had been messing with it all day. If this plan failed, I wasn’t sure we’d get another chance. We were relying on several uncertain factors. The guard needs to be unarmed. The guard needs to try to handle the situation without reinforcements. Dia needs to be strong enough to take down the guard. And if all of that went in our favor, we had to actually escape the facility.
Dia had taken many mental notes while being transported, dragging her back here awake was amajoroversight on her captor’s part. She told me the facility exit was a decent distance away, making a standard hallway route a non-option; there would be too many opportunities to block our path and recapture us. Our best shot would be traveling through the vents. She remembered seeing their grates lining the upper walls along the corridors. The height would require one of us to provide a lift, and the other to pull them up. We had debated our roles, ultimately landing on me providing the initial boost. Having two healthy hands would prove beneficial towards that effort. She expected that once inside the vents, we just had tofollow the turns of the large hallway, passing through the pod room, and exiting as close to the entrance as possible. From there—run.
Bile crept up my throat at the first creak of the metal door lifting.Dinner time. I tried to look at Dia for comfort, but found only cool focus in her eyes. My gaze flicked to her flexing fingers, and I swallowed my sickness down. I wasn’t going to be able to watch this. I wasn’t a pacifist by any means, but I couldn’t risk reacting the way I had in that alley. I needed to be calm. Dia was tough and knew what she was doing. This had been her plan all along; I just built on it. At least, that’s what I told myself as guilt of having the more painless role set in.
One of the two guards who had been assigned to us walked in. Each took two shifts a day, but that didn’t matter. They might as well have been the same person. Their identically large bodies wore the same tight white tops and hefty dark trousers with pockets lining the outsides. Hopefully, those pockets didn’t conceal anything detrimental to our plans.
“Sorry, they don’t take requests for final meals,” the man snorted, making his way to Dia’s enclosure first.
She took the tray immediately, and I worried her eagerness would be a tell. She never grabbed the tray until they left, not allowing her enemies to see her hungry. This evening, the tray was the closest thing to a weapon she'd get, and it would need to be easy to grab once events rapidly set into motion.
The guard walked to the acrylic wall of my cage, painfully human eyes smiling at my suffering. “It’ll be like you never left the pod.” I had the distinct feeling my previous escape had been a thorn in the staff's side for some time, rivaled only by their hatred of Dia for causing the trouble in the first place.
Crack.
The guard didn’t seem to realize what was happening behind him, eyes still trained on me. Asshole. I spat on the glass to appease his need for spite, happy to supply a final “fuck you”, but unable to force any words out. I knew what was happening to my sister just out of arms reach.
Crack.
She didn’t let out a single cringe of pain.
The guard turned calmly, his shoulders visibly tensing in response to the third snap of bone as he connected the sound to her behavior.
“What the fuck?!”
And he started heading for the gate.
My eyes desperately locked with Dia’s, icy fear shooting down my back. He was going to get reinforcements, drugs, weapons… it was over.
“Aggghhhh!” my warrior sister screamed, turning to the glass and bashing her head into it with a bone-chillingsmash.
