Page 42 of Talk to Me

She shifted next to me. The cold water in my stomach actually made it cramp, but I ignored it. The water itself had been welcome in my mouth and throat. If I got too active, I might throw up.

Then again, they might come for me sooner and make me puke. So no, I would sit here and let my eyes close again. Maybe get more sleep.

“How long have you been here?”

The words came just as I’d started to drift. Reaching a mental place where I could rest much less sleep was challenge. I didn’t appreciate being jolted out of it. It would be a waste of energy and moisture.

Head back against the wall, I turned half-slitted eyes to the slot in the door that let light in. It was dim and murky. Even as adjusted as my eyes were, it was impossible to make out any real details.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Impatience flavored the tremor under her words.

No, I wasn’t. But I kept the thought and the energy to express it to myself. Whether she was another prisoner like me or a plant to gain my confidence, I couldn’t trust her.

Another prisoner might be used as leverage. Force me to endure her torture alongside my own, hoping it would break me. Or if she were a plant—she might want to gain my trust that way.

Whatever she was, I couldn’t trust or rely on her.

“Bitch.”

Probably.

The sniffle that came from the dark was pathetically obvious. Or maybe I really was a bitch. I’d lost track of how many days I’d been here. The longer I was here, the more I assumed I was going to die here. Escape would require energy and effort that I just didn’t possess.

Eventually, they would kill me.

Eventually.

Every minute I survived, however, was a minute I could use to plot a way out.

Tuning out the sniffling, barely muffled sobbing next to me, I tried to picture everything about the facility I could remember.

It wasn’t much… but I had to start somewhere.

Having company didn’t deter our captors from coming to pull me out. I half-expected them to take her first to “prove” to me she was also here against her will. Instead, they dragged me back to a very familiar room and shackled me to a chair.

The handcuffs cut into my wrists. There was a cut in the wood of the chair, a deep groove probably made by a knife. The wrecked state of my clothes meant it bit into my skin. Kind of helpful for the focus, I supposed.

Instead of the Shaggy and Mr. Cold, a newcomer entered the room. How—charming. I took a moment to glance at the guards. I hadn’t paid as much attention to them. Were they different?

I had no idea.

Wonderful.

“Miss Brady,” the newcomer said, his tone was clinical and detached. He began setting out a series of vials and syringes. “The next few hours are going to be very unpleasant for you.”

They set up an IV, inserting the port into my jugular. Dehydration was a bitch. There was a saline drip. Well, that was something, I supposed.

“Remember, when this begins,” the man continued as he began to pull the contents of one vial into his syringe. There was a place for him to add it to the IV tubing. Well, at least it was one needle stick. “You have only yourself to blame.”

Really pleasant guy.

He didn’t ask me a single question. Then again, he probably wasn’t going to until they loaded me up with whatever all of those vials were.

I had an issue whenever I tried weed—I tended to hyperfocus on whatever I was doing in the moment it kicked in. Happened with a lot of other drugs too and nitrous. I didn’t get why my brain did it, but it did.

As he loaded the second vial into the IV, I thought about Taylor Swift’s last album. What songs were on it? What story did they tell?

The pain began like a thousand angry bees swarming me, stinging violently. Even with tears running down my face though, I was coughing out the Taylor Swift lyrics.