I can’t kill her.
Because if I do, if I feel the life go out of her under my arm, there won’t be a way back for me. I will never be able to live with myself for taking someone’s life who didn’t deserve it. Even if these people have been cruel to me, they aren’t theones holding me hostage. They arealsoat the mercy of the psychopath leading them.
The cuffs slip from my grip when I let her free. She tumbles and collapses onto the floor in a heap, coughing violently, dragging greedy gulps of air into her lungs. Her hands claw at her neck as though she can scrub the bruises away. The other nurse is there instantly, grabbing her under the arms and hauling her upright. Her glare burns into me, fury and disgust all mixed into one.
Neither of them says a word to me when they quickly scramble to the door. It’s slammed shut, the lock turning, final and merciless.
My body shakes as if I’m still holding the chain around the nurse’s neck. I sink onto the bed, my legs folding up to my chest as I curl my arms tightly around them.
He called my bluff. Worse—hemeant it.That nurse was nothing to him. She was replaceable, just like I am.
Just like Leo is.
My stomach lurches violently, bile clawing up my throat. I press my hand to my mouth, fighting the urge to throw up.
This is the man holding my son hostage.
This is the man who holds his little life in his hands.
I don’t know how long I stay like that, folded in on myself, knees pressed to my chest like they might shield me from the walls around me closing in. The seconds crawl by, melting into minutes, maybe even hours. Time doesn’t make sense here without sunlight or clocks ticking.
No one comes back to chain me to the bed like usual. There are no footsteps outside the door pacing like the guards usually do, just the heavy silence of what I almost did punctuated by the sound of my own quiet, shallow breathing.
Maybe it’s not just Mikhail who is a monster. Maybe he’s turning me into one too.
Eventually, I force myself upright.
My body aches with every movement, still sore from my shower fall, but it isn’t enough to keep me from wrapping the thin blanket around me to pace around and circle the room, scouring every corner of this small hellhole I’ve been trapped inside like I haven’t already done a hundred times over by now.
I check the same useless things—the vent that’s too small for me to crawl through, the window that isn’t a window at all, just a layer of thick glass sealed into the wall with a light behind it to make it look like it is. It’s really just a tease with no latches and no weakness to exploit.
I run my fingers along every seam of the concrete around it, searching for even the smallest gap I could wedge my fingers into and use to pull out the frame of glass. Maybe there’s something behind it like a two-way mirror or a doorway to an old storage closet that connects to a forgotten hallway. Maybe I can use the metal frame to batter against the door sealing me inside this place.
But after a while, I realize it’s molded too well into the wall.
They built this room for one purpose, containment, and now I’ve proven I’m exactly the kind of someone they were afraid of getting out. The kind who turns a pair of handcuffsinto a weapon. The kind who gets desperate enough to threaten to kill someone and actually mean it without ever having a murderous bone in their body before this.
The thought makes bile rise in my throat again.
I press my back against the wall near the fake window, breathing through the sting of my shoulder when it begins to throb in a dull, pulsing ache. The pain radiates down my arm from where I slammed it, all the way to my fingertips. My ribs still pinch a little with every deep inhale but thankfully, none of it is enough to slow me down.
I can still walk. I can still move, stillthink. I didn’t fall hard enough to ruin my chances entirely, and that’s the only saving grace I have to hold onto right now. They’ll have to come back and check on me eventually. There’s no reason they’d starve me out after trying to keep me alive for this long.
So, I need to make the most of the time I’m left alone here to figure out my next moves. What can I use as a weapon?
My eyes sweep the room again, hunting.
The tray from my last meal still sits on the counter. It’s made of a thin plastic that looks too flimsy to do real damage even from here, unless I snap it apart and use the jagged edges to turn it into a crude knife. But then what? Do I jab someone in the neck and pray they go down fast enough before they can wrestle it from me? I couldn’t even choke out that nurse. How could I possibly stab someone hard enough to potentially kill them?
My eyes land on the chair that sits beneath the single table bolted to the floor. It’s lightweight with hollow legs. I couldswing it, maybe knock someone off balance enough to dart out the door, but I’d only get one good hit in before I was overpowered. What if the guard is the one who comes in to visit me next and not one of the nurses?
Then there’s the unused IV pole next to the bed, a metal rod that’s awkward and clunky, but it could serve as a bludgeoning tool. I picture myself lifting it up from the floor, swinging wildly until it hits my enemy. I’d have to have enough strength to take them out and be quiet enough not to draw more attention to my room from anyone passing by in the hallway.
I can’t sneak out of here if I’m overtaken. None of it matters without surprise. But then again… surprise in this place is as dead as my hope.
I slide down the wall until I’m sitting, drawing my knees up to my chest and pulling my blanket tighter around me. My damp hair clings to the sides of my face, a tangled mess half-dried by the stale air. I smell faintly of hospital soap and something sour underneath it.
Fear, probably.