The man in the next cell was dying.

Not like I was dying. Not like the rest of us were dying. He didn’t have weeks, months, years left of this hellish existence.

He had days.

Hours, maybe.

And I wasn’t sure if the sharp emotion carving scars across my soul was grief… or something much darker.

My hands fisted, but what dug into my palms weren’t nails but bare and bloodied fingers.

Fluorescent lights flickered and buzzed, the sound scraping across my skull and plunging me into darkness long before they extinguished.

He may have given up.

A shiver trembled up my spine.

He may want to die.

My lungs constricted.

Please, I silently begged. Please.

Another shiver, the cold from the stark cement floors seeping through the thin rags hanging in bloodied strips from my shoulders while I choked on the scent of pain and peroxide.

Blood and bleach.

You’re being selfish.

If he wanted to let go, if he wanted an early escape from the slow march of death, I couldn’t blame him. But no one should be left to suffer alone

 Not if they didn’t have to.

Please, please, please.

It took all my effort to lift my head. To stare at the wall that seemed so far away.

Why did they have to bring him here now? Today?

I couldn’t even talk.

Could he?

How long had it been since they’d dragged him down the corridor? How many minutes had passed since his broken body was thrown into his cell, hitting the floor with a nauseatingly dull thud followed by an eternity of silence?

Such stark, sinister silence.

Long enough for the lights to finally flicker off, the absence of their electric buzzing leaving room for the harsh, rattling breaths coming from the dying man’s cell.

I closed my eyes. Wanting to help him. Not knowing if I could.

I can’t. Not again.

“Please,” I whispered, the single word tearing up my ruined throat, a broken breath of sound that touched the floor near my mouth, crumbling before it could reach him. “Please, don’t die.”

A harsh rattle was my only response. Loud enough that hope sprang to my chest in a wild, terrible bloom, lingering for a beautiful second before reality cut the stem and it withered into dust.

Even if he did survive, how long until death claimed him?

This… this never ended.

We never won.

All we could do was to wait. Endure. Survive.

And hope our minds didn’t break before our bodies.

I swallowed back tears, swallowed back the dark dread creeping across my vision like toxic black smoke, and began the endless, agonizing, four-feet journey of dragging my battered body as close to our shared wall as I could.

“You’re not alone,” I tried to say, but my vocal cords were frayed and it came out a hoarse croak. I cleared my throat—

A pained scream clashed against my clenched teeth, filling my mouth with a coppery taste.

Try again. You can’t… you can’t give up.

“I’m here,” I whispered while a rusty saw tore down my throat, slicing and ripping and tearing. “You’re not alone. You’re not alone.”

Silence. So stark and devastating that the hot throb behind my eyes grew gritty, and only dehydration kept my tears at bay.

“She’s… gone.”

My head jerked up, and this time I couldn’t suppress my moan when fire lit into the angry nerve-endings of my flayed back. I held my breath; waited for the burning pain to release its death-grip before slowly, oh-so-slowly, turning onto my stomach until I could rest my head on my shaking hands. “Who?”

Another harsh rattle. Wetter than before. Sharper.

Dread stole my breath.

A punctured lung slowly filling with fluid?

Please, please, please.

But what else could it be? What else could—

I sucked in a breath.

Oh.

“I’m here.” My whisper was laden with grief, weighed down with my own pain, distorted by my ruined throat. But I couldn’t stay quiet. Not while knowing the anguish of sorrow suffered in silence, knowing how much worse the Hunters’ torture was when all that waited back at the cell was crippling solitude. “I can’t… I can’t do much to help, but you’re not alone.”

The rattling cut off. “You… sound… like… her.”

That voice… Desolate. Stripped of all life. But it was the way he struggled to speak, the short, sharp breaths in between each word that made my stomach clench with fear.

“How badly are you hurt?” 

A sharp sound rasped up his throat. A laugh—if a laugh could be born in the deepest pits of hell. “Not… enough.”

“N-not enough what?”

“Hurt.”

A chill burrowed beneath my skin, prickling at the thoughts I’d tried so hard to bury. “Don’t say that,” I whispered. “Please, I—” My throat clogged.

“How… old?”

How old? Was he asking me how old I was?

My tongue swept over my dry and cracked lips, trying to supply the moisture my body was sorely lacking. “I… I’m not sure. Twenty-four, I think. I was… taken here when I was six—”

A dull thud from the next cell.

“Are you okay?” Alarm turned the question into a high-pitched croak. “Did you fall?”

“No.”

My heart raced. My palms grew clammy. If he died… “N-no, you’re not o-okay? Or n-no, you didn’t…” Sudden saliva pooled in my mouth. It tasted like fear. “You didn’t fall?”

The silence grew oppressive.

“Please. Please. Please!” Suddenly my voice was no longer a broken hush but a desperate, shattered cry that dragged with it a pool of blood.

“I’m… here.”

Relief struck so hard and fast that I forgot to spit and instead swallowed the metallic fluid that had filled my mouth.

Mistake.

I coughed.

More blood.

I spat.

More blood.

I gasped.

Still blood.

“Girl?”

I shivered and shook, then opened my mouth and let the disgusting mix of saliva and gore trickle past my lips and onto the ice-cold cement floor.

It spread. Touched my cheek. Seeped across the floor until my ruined rags sucked it all up.

The cold bit into my skin.

Would I ever grow warm again?

“Stop.” Command infused that one word, turning him from broken man to ruthless ruler. “Breathe.”

Something deep inside, some fractured, collapsed darkness, bristled, but I obeyed the command, breathing in the too-cold air and exhaling a coppery mist while my brain pounded out of my skull and throbbed against the hard floor.

Minutes. Hours. Time passed.

My lungs no longer strained. “T-thank you.”

He made a sound I didn’t—couldn’t—understand, then moved.

I could hear it.

His struggle.

His rattling breaths.

The slow shwush… shwush… shwush… of torn fabric dragging against the floor.

He can’t walk either. He’s broken, too. Why is he… Why—

Something hot and ugly stabbed through my stomach and spilled from my mouth before I could stop it. “Don’t!” I tried to push myself off the floor, but my arms were thin, brittle sticks, crumbling beneath the slightest pressure. “Don’t.”

A pause, a stillness.

Then, “Why?”

“You’re too hurt.”

“So… are… you.”

My eyes burned, but I still had no tears to shed. “I know.”

“You… moved.”

“You shouldn’t.”

The stillness turned sharp. “Why.”

I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Couldn’t show this stranger the scars my body concealed, the deep gouges ripping through my soul. But neither could I let him strain his injuries when he wasn’t like me—wouldn’t survive regardless of the intensity of his torture.

Bloodied fingers scraping against the hard floor, I settled on a simple, “Don’t. Not for me.”

A sucked in breath that ended in a terrible rattle. “Fuck.”

Crushing pressure in my chest. I wanted to cry. I wanted to break. I wanted to beg this stranger for forgiveness.

He was dying.

He needed help.

This wasn’t about me.

Drawing one shuddery breath after another, I rolled onto my back, pretended the agony slicing into my shredded skin was heat. Just heat.

I was so very cold.

Another shaky breath and I sat up.

My back throbbed.

Heat. Only heat.

shwush… shwush… shwush…

“Stop.” My breath sawed in and out of my lungs. My body was weak, like I’d been running for days. “I’m okay. I’m resting against the wall. You can stop.”

“So… young.” shwush… shwush… shwush… “There.” A rattling breath. “Wall.” Another. “Feel… me?”

I threw a desperate hand against the cold cement, imagined the person on the other side, the warmth, the feel of a touch that wasn’t brutal, wasn’t cruel, but comforting. “Y-yes.” The burn in my eyes turned sharp. Stabbing. The pressure in my chest swelled until I could barely breathe. “Y-you didn’t have to—”

“Why… here?”

My mind blanketed. Numbed. 

I didn’t reply.

“Girl?”

“I…” She didn’t do anything wrong. She had to. It was my fault. I killed—“My name is Hope, not girl.”

A long, considering silence.

I spent it drowning at the bottom of old, wooden stairs. Spent it mourning all the pieces of my soul I could never reclaim.

Until desperation forced me to speak. “What’s your name?”

“Despair,” he said, drawing a single, harsh breath before continuing. “Might as well… be called… what I am.”

“I don’t… I don’t want to call you that.” Names have power, pumpkin. “You—” My voice broke, torn down by a wave of grief so fresh, so powerful, it was as if I’d only now gotten the news of his death. “Y-your real name?”

“Not… safe.”

“They’re not… they’re not listening.” A heavy weight pushed against my chest. Pushed and pushed and pushed. “I used to think—” A gasping breath, my lungs being crushed. “But they’re not,” I wheezed, trying my best to banish the memories, to unsee the pool of blood and the shock of red hair matted by its bite. “He told me—” My throat shrunk. “He told me…” There was no more air in my cell. It was under water.

I was under water.

Drowning.

“Breathe,” a voice commanded.

The word throbbed behind my eyes.

Prickled along my skin.

Dove into my lungs; inflating, pushing, forcing them to expand.

“Breathe.” It came again, and the dark, deadly shadows winding around and around that command wrenched my monster to the surface.

Breathe.

I doubled over, no longer conscious of shredded skin or missing nails or torn vocal cords. My entire universe narrowed down to the wrenching, burning anguish ripping through my chest, ripping with the same ruthless disregard the monster had used to rip apart my life.

Breathe.

Claws dug through muscle and bone.

Breathe.

My hands slapped against my heart.

Breathe.

It felt… it felt…

It felt like every molecule in my body was on fire.

I drew in a deep breath, preparing to scream, to beg, to cry. But just as I thought the pain would kill me, it stopped.

I gasped.

Lungs rattled in the next cell. “They know…”—more rattling—“we can always…”—wetter, harsher—“sniff out…”—a wracking cough, then silence, silence, silence—“cameras.”

I jerked upright. “W-why do you sound so much weaker?”

“Didn’t… have… much… left.”

“Much of what? And how—” I stopped talking. My voice had returned to normal. My back no longer throbbed. The monster… The monster had healed me and now…

Now…

I rubbed over my chest. Rubbed and rubbed, but there was nothing there. Just shattered pieces. A desolate emptiness. A moment of freedom, of relief from the evil creature who’d turned me into a monster.

Bile rushed up my throat and spewed from mouth in a violent burst.

“Girl?”

I coughed, but my throat no lunger hurt. “I’m fine.”

But I shouldn’t be.

I shouldn’t be.

We’d barely survived the last session—both of us splintering beneath the onslaught of endless agony. Splintering until my monster had been drained, bones no longer setting, flesh no longer healing, blood no longer clotting. The Hunters had pushed us before, but not like this.

I clawed at my chest. Stared down at my newly formed nails.

It should’ve been days before my injuries disappeared. Maybe weeks.

Invisible broken shards moved beneath my hand. If they cut me down the middle now, if they cracked my sternum and spread my legs, they’d see pieces.

Only pieces where my heart used to be.

I climbed to my feet. My legs were shaky, unsteady, but I was healed.

Blinking, I took a wobbly step. Then another. The hateful light at the back of my cell was green, so I hit the button I’d wasted at least a year of my life compulsively pressing, waited for the door to slide open, stumbled through and crashed straight into the toilet that barely fit the cramped space.

Once I had enough toilet paper, I staggered back, collapsing against the wall and just breathed, breathed while waiting for enough strength to clean up my mess.

The silence from the other side of the wall was oppressing.

“Are you there?” I whispered.

No reply.

“You k-knew all along? About the… the cameras?”

More silence.

“I-if you know they’re not listening, then your name… W-why can’t you share? What isn’t it… safe?”

For a small eternity, he said nothing, the only sound that of his harsh, rattling breaths joined by my louder ones, faster ones, panic edging closer and closer while a wounded, broken please burned up my throat and—

“Knowing… my… name.”

Relief slumped my shoulders, and the pressure crushing my chest slowly disappeared. “It’s not safe to know your name?”

Another bout of silence, but this time, it felt like confirmation. Like he didn’t want to waste words. Waste his breaths.

Is he getting worse?

 “Please,” I whispered. Don’t die. Don’t give up. Don’t leave me here alone. “Please.”

Not again.

It was too soon.

No one talked to me. No one. Not since Matthew—

My thoughts splintered into darkness.

“…back.”

My head swam. A black void crushed my skull.

Reality was a pinprick of gray far, far above the depths where I’d sank, and clawing my way back was like running through thick, muddy water.

When I broke the surface, my thoughts were mists flickering with black light.

“Girl.”

“B-boy,” I rasped, and collapsed against the wall.

“Boy?” A glimmer of humor.

“I’m not calling you despair,” I mumbled.

“She… didn’t… either.”

She again? I closed my eyes, softened my voice. “Tell me about her?”

A brittle silence met my request, but I didn’t mind. There were many things I couldn’t talk about either.

I dropped my chin to my chest and just breathed. “Something else, then? I…” My mouth went so dry it was my turn to turn brittle. “I’ve been alone so long,” I finally whispered.

“My… brother.” Hacking coughs, then a moment of peace. “I’ll tell you… about him.”

Relief rose, as twisted and ruined as the despair nipping on its heels. I had to warn him. Had to tell him… “If they catch you talking to me, they’ll—” My voice broke. An eternity passed before I managed repair it enough to whisper, “It’s not safe.”

“Relax, girl,” he said. “I will… listen. If someone… comes… I’ll know.”

“But—”

“Relax while”—he coughed—“you can.”

There was something in his voice. Something black and broken and so sure.

My eyes burned. My cheeks grew damp. But I croaked out an, “Okay,” and closed my eyes.

I listened.

Smiled.

Cried while new wounds split beneath my skin, preparing for one more hurt, one more scar.

And when the Hunters came for me—long after he’d warned me, long after we’d grown quiet—I couldn’t help but fight.

Couldn’t help but cry and plead and curse my monster—the monster who’d healed me, made sure I was prepared for another round of torture, another eternity of pain.

But their hands were too strong, their grip too cruel.

And when they dragged me past my new friend’s strange cell, a cell made not of bars but of thick, cracked glass glowing with the crimson symbol etched across the fractured surface, all I could see were his eyes. His glowing, angry, sure eyes.

“N-no,” I whispered as the guards grew impatient and yanked me further down the corridor, so far I could no longer see shadows curling around his broad, crumpled form. “Please. Please, please, please!”

But I knew, I knew pleading would change nothing, and a lifetime later, when my throat was once again ruined and my voice was once again gone, the only thing left in the cell next to mine was a pool of blood and another twisted scar.

They threw me into my prison. Closed the door. Let me bleed my anguish out onto the cold, cement floor.

And that time when I splintered, there was no one left to pull me back from the dark.