Page 6 of Desecrated Saints
“I can’t do this right now.”
I shove him off my lap and retreat to an empty corner. I can’t have any of them touching me while I still have one foot in that basement. There’s a slither of Patient Eight alive and kicking inside of me. She’s below the surface, a violent force pumping through my veins.
“Show them the pictures,” Hudson orders.
Kade’s hazel eyes bore into me, already seeking forgiveness. The entire room falls away as he turns his laptop around so everyone can see. Each hazy photograph shows a different slice of hell. My blood freezes as I watch.
The Z Wing.
Solitary confinement.
Isolation chambers.
Bathtubs and shackles.
Empty syringes and straitjackets.
“What the actual fuck?” Phoenix walks over for a closer look. “I don’t remember seeing all this shit when I was in the hole.”
“This isn’t the hole, it’s something else entirely,” Kade surmises.
He doesn’t break eye contact with me, not once. It’s unnerving. He’s demanding the truth without mercy. I don’t have to confirm it. He can see the photos are real from the way my body shakes.
“I took these on my way down to find her.” Hudson knocks back his beer. “It was like a fucking horror show down there. Mariam helped us to free some of the patients being held.”
“We turned them over to the authorities for protection,” Sadie speaks up for the first time. “I don’t know if they made it out alive. Incendia’s reach is further than we can comprehend.”
Approaching the safety of my corner, Hudson’s footsteps ring out like gunshots. The tension carved on his face warns me of what’s to come. His gentle handling is about to expire.
“Tell us what we need to know,” he demands, hands on his hips. “We’ve danced around each other for well over a year now. None of us have walked away. Tell the truth and don’t you dare leave anything out.”
“Hud,” Kade warns, frowning.
“Stay out of this. We need to know what we’re dealing with.”
“Are you sure you’re ready for it?” I counter.
Hudson’s expression hardens. “You can’t scare us off.”
“What if I told you that I deserved to be left in that basement? I’ve done things these past few months… things I can never tell you. Some I can’t remember. We were Augustus’s… brute force. Me and Seven.”
“What does that mean?” Sadie interjects.
Sinking further into the corner, I wrap my arms around my bony legs. “He needed people that he could control. We had no choice but to obey, no matter what he ordered. Refusal resulted in punishment.”
Phoenix fists his brown hair. “Like in these pictures?”
All I can muster is a nod.
Turning his back, he seethes through gritted teeth, angrier than I’ve ever seen him. My head is spinning with confusion. They’re all so different. I feel like I don’t know them anymore and it’s killing me inside to think that. I can’t get back all of the lost time.
The fact is, none of us survived Blackwood.
We all died in that riot.
Only scraps of our souls escaped.
“Let’s all just cool off a bit.” Kade closes his laptop. “We’ve got a lot of evidence to trawl through and we haven’t managed to access Augustus’s hard drive. This is going to be a long process.”