Chapter 3
CAP
Ariel’s scream tore me awake.
“Let me go! No, Cap!”
Metal sang when I jerked and hit wire instead of her. The cage rattled; on the other side of the seam her fingers slammed into mine, ice-cold, locked tight.
“Hey,” I kept it low. “I’ve got you. You’re dreaming.”
A breath hitched, then another. “I,” She swallowed. “I’m okay. Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I leaned my shoulder into the seam so she could feel the weight of me. “You’re safe for the moment.”
Above us, footsteps crossed. A door moaned. Then the quiet that hurts your ears fell back over everything.
Her voice settled, but the echo of it, let me go, ran the same track as earlier, when they’d tried to haul me upstairs. Same pitch. Same break. It hit the part of me that keeps time and opened a door I’d been keeping shut.
The last thing before this room had been her on the phone, thin through static, Cap, and then tires, a scream, nothing.
I’d chased her ping into the industrial zone and told myself I wasn’t walking into bait.
Lie. The grab hit fast, black van, burned-rubber turn, someone saying “take the guy alive.” Then concrete, bleach, and her voice again, my name, breaking.
I should’ve waited for backup. I didn’t. That’s on me.
“I’m here,” I told her now, because it mattered twice. Once for the nightmare, once for the way the memory sat on my chest. I threaded our hands tighter through the seam. “With you.”
I let the quiet settle and listened. Damp concrete. Old bleach losing to iron. A cheap duct pushing thin air that never got serviced. Buildings talk if you know what to hear.
Her grip eased a notch. I slid my fingers between the diamonds until she could hook mine in her palm. We couldn’t really reach, but skin is skin. You take what you can.
“You, okay?” I asked.
“Not really.” Small, steady.
Dust clung to my mouth. I spat rust and took stock. The bars were welded ugly; the frame showed drag scars where someone had dropped it and called that good. Along the front seam, a shallow groove like the whole unit had been shoved and set wrong. Sloppy leaves edges. Edges become openings.
Voices upstairs, low and lazy. One bored, one trying to sound calm and missing it. A phone buzzed on wood and died. Half a whistle fell apart.
A light snapped on over the stairs, shadow cutting the crack under the door. It opened, and a thin man came down with a flashlight and a toolbox on his hip. Not one of the regulars. Jeans and a work shirt. Maintenance on his face, regret in his eyes.
He took the steps like a routine, four, pause, three. The beam swept the ceiling first like he knew where everything lived. He stopped two cages past Ariel and swore under his breath.
“Outlet’s loose again,” he told the wall. The box hit concrete. Knees creaked. The light threw his hands long on the floor. He worked fast, not careful, like if he hurried enough the cages would stop being cages.
Ariel’s thumb pressed mine once. I answered the same. Different man. Different job. Men who hurt for fun don’t bring tools.
He tightened a plate, wiggled a plug, tugged a floor bracket. The bracket squeaked. When he shifted, a screw pinged off the lip of his kit and rolled for the groove under my cage.
I didn’t look. I let my hand hang in the wire while the screw ticked forward like a beetle. It caught grit, nudged when he moved again, and settled by my boot.
“Come on,” he told the outlet, and went back to it.
Standard steel screw. Shallow head. Worthless to most. Worth something to a man who needed a pick, a shim, a wedge. I shifted like I was trying to get comfortable and tapped it with my toe into the shadow under the frame.
The lid squealed shut. “Done for now,” he said. He raised his voice toward the landing. “Line is sketchy. If the compressor trips again, call it. I’m not eating that.”
A grunt answered up top. The light went with his back. The door bit and latched.
“Cap,” Ariel whispered.
“I’ve got something,” I said. “Small.”
“What?”
“A maybe.”
She didn’t push. She knows not to make a thing bigger than it is yet.
The dark felt different after that, like it remembered we weren’t furniture. The woman to our right made a thin sound that wanted to be a cough and failed. Not good. Not new. She wouldn’t be quiet long. Noise draws the wrong eyes in places like this.
“Hum,” I said softly.
“What?”
“That song you do when you grade. Under your breath.”
A breath of a laugh. “You noticed.”
“I notice everything.” I kept my gaze on the seam where cage met floor. “We’ll use it to cover work. If I say clear, you stop. If I say heads low, you keep going even if they light us up.”
“Heads low?” she echoed.
“You told me you liked riding behind me, head tucked, wind doing most of the talking.”
“That was a stupid story.”
“It was a good one,” I said. “Hum.”
She did. Soft enough the wire had to carry it. Nothing melody. Perfect cover. I drifted my boot along the groove until the screw lifted into the arch of leather. A slide of cloth, a quiet breath, metal in my palm, then up my sleeve. I pinched it in the cuff seam so it wouldn’t click.
Upstairs, voices spiked then flattened. Drawers and cabinets opened. Chips poured into a bowl. Faucet for a slow twelve. Every normal sound sat wrong down here.
A dry voice across from us traded words low enough they only reached our cages. “They missed pickup yesterday.”
“Meaning?” I asked.
“They hate holding stock overnight,” she said. “They push to first light. Fewer eyes.”
Ariel’s hum steadied. First light matched the kind of men we were dealing with.
Boots hit the top step. Keys. A different man came too fast. The door slammed open and bounced. Flashlight lit midair, sloppy. Not the maintenance man.
The beam skimmed my cage and stopped on Ariel’s.
“Right where we left you,” he said. “Reach for her again; see what it buys.”
He shoved the light under the wire and crooked a finger at her. “You. Stand up.”
She froze. The hum faltered.
He liked that. “Don’t make me come in there.”
A voice two cages down, rough and hoarse from thirst, cut through. “Leave her, pig.”
He swung the light toward the sound. “Who said that?”
“Me,” the woman said, louder now. “You want to swing on someone, swing on me. She’s new.”
The beam pinned her, small at the bars, chin up like defiance could be taller than a body. He crouched to get an angle. Ariel’s breath hitched. My knuckles hit steel so hard it sang.
“Big mouth,” he said, pleased. He slid his baton through the gap by the latch and jabbed once, fast, under her ribs. She folded but didn’t drop.
“Here,” she panted, daring him. “Hit where it counts.”
He obliged.
Keys scraped; he popped the pin and shouldered her door.
Chain-link screamed. He went in half a step, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and bounced her head off the cinderblock like he’d practiced it.
Once, hard. Twice, harder. A wet, wrong sound followed the second hit.
She slid down the bars, cheek smearing along the diamond, and hit the floor in a boneless sit that turned into a spill.
He looked down at what he’d done and smiled small.
“Anyone else?” he asked, voice gone lazy again.
Before he could turn back to Ariel, a radio coughed on his belt.
“Bring your ass up,” a voice snapped through static. “Boss wants the floor clear.”
He hesitated, still looking at Ariel’s cage. His fingers twitched around the light.
“Now,” the voice barked. “Inventory’s here early.”
He spat, disgusted, and stepped back. “Lucky,” he told no one in particular.
The cage door swung shut on its own weight. The light cut. Boots pounded up the stairs.
Silence followed like a tide. I could hear the drip where her blood found the seam in the concrete and kept going.
Ariel’s breathing hitched, then tried to smooth.
Sunshine choked a sound down to nothing.
I didn’t move. I watched the dark where the woman had been and started a count, waiting for breath to come back.
It didn’t.
“Cap, she was trying to,” Ariel’s voice frayed.
“I know.”
The air in the room turned heavy. The wire pressed cool into my palms. Every cell in me wanted out, wanted to rip. But wanting doesn’t open doors, plans do.
I set my forehead to the mesh until it bit skin. “Not her,” I said to the dark that kept taking. “Not again.”
The screw cooled against my wrist bone, small, sharp promise. We had a weakness in the weld and a hand that could make use of it.
We were getting out.