A grooming tool?
She turned to Evan, who held something of his own.
“Nail scissors,” she said, holding up the small tool and looking with confusion at what he was holding.
A hammer with a rubber head? “What is that?”
“It says on the side it’s a chime mallet,” he told her. “Like, an instrument or something.” He turned it over, staring down at it for a few seconds, and then tapped it on his open palm. It looked light, less than two pounds. The head was rubber, solid but unlikely to hurt anyone. And it would definitely lose against a Taser and a gun. Disappointing.
Evan raised it uncertainly and paused before dragging it along his bars. He let out a small huff that might have been a laugh. “Ah,” he said, “accompaniment for our songs. Someone enjoys our singing.”
Or is mocking us for it.
She looked down at the scissors. They were small and flimsy. They wouldn’t successfully go up against a Taser either. Even if she managed to hide them and bring them out at an opportune moment, they’d probably break when they struck something solid. Not that the guard ever got close enough for them to do something like that anyway. They were useless. Except . . .
Noelle sat down, inspecting her long, dirty fingernails. She’d chewed a few off, and another couple had broken. But those ones were jagged and bothersome. Yes, she had aches and pains and had suffered in ways great and small, but her instinct was to groom herself, and the fact that she could not had stolen a bit of her humanity. She took a few minutes to trim them all while Evan experimented with the sounds the chime mallet made on the different bars of his cage.
She turned toward him. “Here,” she said, sliding the small pair of scissors across the floor. “Clean yourself up.”
He scoffed. “Not exactly running for prom king here.”
God. The thought of school or dances hadn’t been something Noelle had thought about for what seemed like forever. Prom. Ha. How ridiculously simple. Maybe she’d even have worried about it in her old life. Would someone invite her? Or would she pretend not to care and make plans for a girls’ night with Paula? She’d never even considered being prom queen. But Evan . . . Evan had been a shoo-in for prom king.
King.
All those half-drugged girls, naked and draped in gems. They made him feel like a king.
His voice. Unbidden. She pushed it aside and mustered a chuckle. Evan put the mallet on the floor and sat down to trim his own nails. She watched as he did it, seeing that the small grooming errand was making him feel, if not like a king, at least a tad more human too. That was good. Perhaps whoever had sent them had done so understanding the small pleasure. Or maybe it was worse than that. Maybe whoever had sent them had been given some advanced notice that their fingernails would be torn from their fingers in the morning, and this was a sick inside joke. She swallowed, refusing to let her mind go there. In any case, she had a specific use for them in mind, and it wasn’t just to trim her nails.
Evan started singing low and slow, mostly under his breath, as he focused on his chore. She turned away from him and pretended to pick at a scab on her arm but listened intently to what he said.
Her heart raced as he sang and then plummeted as he explained what he was going to do.
Evan . . . no.
Yes, he insisted. Yes.
Oh God, oh the sacrifice. She clenched her eyes shut, picturing what he’d described in fewer than five words. She couldn’t allow herself to grimace, in case they were watching closely and her expression tipped them off that they weren’t merely mumbling nursery rhymes. She lifted her shoulders and let them fall. Okay. They had no choice.
She turned and he looked up, their eyes meeting. He picked up the mallet and dragged it over the bars, certainty in his gaze.
Oh, Evan.
On a silent exhaled breath, she turned away. He was right. The plan must be enacted now, before things got bloodier. Before they were each missing parts of themselves that would make an escape attempt impossible. These two new tools had made the decision for them. They had what they needed to try.
It was now.
Or never.
Noelle came to her knees, and so did he as she joined him in song. They sang loudly, belting out their certainty, Evan dragging the mallet along the bars. They sang on and on until their voices were hoarse, laying out their plan, the entirety of it.
This was it. Things would only get worse from here. They would break free—or not—after the lights had gone out.
There would be cameras on them, just as there were now. They had to act quickly and without hesitation.
Exhausted, they sank down on the floor, reaching for each other, fingers linking, gazes locked as they waited for the darkness.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It seemed forever until the darkness came. And even longer that they lay still and silent, feigning sleep. A small squeeze of her fingers, and then Evan sat up and crawled to the front of his cage, and she watched as he reached for the mallet.
Oh God. She was so scared she was shaking, her heart in her throat for him, for herself, for the risk they were about to take and the possibility of failure—when failure was not an option. Go time.
Evan’s deep yell broke the silence, and he picked up the mallet, pounding on the bars and grabbing hold, shaking them as much as possible.
If you’re watching, you sickos, watch Evan.
Just long enough . . . just long enough . . .
She pulled herself to the back of her cage, cringing and letting out a small whimper when Evan placed his hand flat on the cement floor and slammed the mallet down on his knuckle, howling with pain. The benign-looking instrument wouldn’t pose too much threat to another person, but oh, the damage it could do to one singular hand . . . all those tiny bones.
Noelle took the small hidden piece of graphite from her pocket, the one she’d extracted from the pencil, willing her hands to stop shaking. She heard the hard smacks of the mallet and the wet sounds that told her Evan was pulverizing his own hand. He was screaming, but he wasn’t stopping. She wanted to cry for him, but there was no time for that.
You’re up, Noelle.
Watch him, creeps. Don’t you want to see his pain? Doesn’t it excite you, you sick fucks?
She pressed her body to the bars of the cage, her heart galloping and a bead of sweat rolling down her cheek as she brought out the tiny pair of scissors as well, and the handful of rose petals. Gifts. Tools. The lights came on, and though she squinted, she did not pause.
The countdown had begun.
She had counted each time she was taken from her cage and brought to one of the men upstairs who had rented her. It had taken four minutes to make the walk down the long hallway and up the metal steps to another series of hallways above. If someone was in a similarly placed room upstairs, watching them, sending food down through the dumbwaiters, if they ran, it would take them a third of the time it’d taken her. One minute. Maybe a few seconds more. That was it. If they got very lucky, whoever was upstairs was in a room that was farther away—maybe even sleeping—and it would take them even more time. But they couldn’t count on that. They had no real idea of the layout. They only knew of the one room where they’d been taken.