Chapter 24
HUNGER MAKES MISTAKES
Everything - SMNM
Snow
Cold isn’t the worst part.
Cold is honest. It tells you what it is the moment it touches you. Hunger doesn’t. Hunger negotiates. Hunger lies. It starts as a suggestion – an empty space behind the ribs – and turns into a voice that speaks over everything else.
They bring me out without ceremony.
No corridor, no escort I can see. A door that wasn’t there opens as if it’s always been there and I’ve only just earned the right to notice it.
Light spills through, too bright after the steady grey of my chamber.
My eyes adjust fast. Too fast. That makes me angry, because my body is still trying to be efficient for them.
I force my blink to slow.
When I step through, the air changes. It tastes of metal and old disinfectant, like a room that’s been cleaned too many times to hide what it’s used for.
The space is larger than any of the individual containment rooms. Circular again – of course it is.
Symmetry is control. The floor is smooth, slightly textured for grip.
The lighting is neutral but harsh enough to leave nowhere to disappear.
There are divisions – transparent panels, low barriers, restraints embedded at intervals like punctuation marks.
And there are people.
Not guards. Not staff.
Them.
I stop, breath catching despite my intention.
Honey sits on the floor with his back against one of the panels. His posture is too still for comfort. His eyes track movement like he’s afraid the room will punish him for looking in the wrong direction.
Hatchet is standing, wrists cuffed to a bar at chest height, body held in the taut line of someone who has already tried every angle. His hands tremble in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.
Bones is on a bench, leaning forward, forearms resting on his knees, gaze fixed on the floor as if he can see through it. His knuckles are swollen, hand wrapped crudely with gauze that’s already stained. He looks…measured. Like he’s counting damage.
Ghost is seated in a corner space that isn’t a corner – an illusion created by barriers. He’s staring at nothing. His mouth moves occasionally as if he’s speaking, but there’s no sound. When his eyes flick towards me, they don’t quite settle, as if he’s looking through two realities at once.
Nightshade is not here. That absence is a weight all by itself.
My body wants to scan for exits. I try to rein in that desire. It does it anyway, because habit is deeper than choice. No doors visible. Panels that can slide, maybe. Ceiling fixtures that are too smooth to offer purchase. Cameras I can’t count, but I can feel.
They want the group dynamic. They want the system of us.
A voice speaks overhead, neutral and neat, as if addressing a classroom. “Convergence protocol initiated.”
No explanation. No welcome. No threat. Just a label.
I step into the space assigned to me – marked not with a number but with an empty restraint bar and a circle on the floor. The bar is at my shoulder height. If I lean into it, it will keep me upright when my legs fail. Practical.
They’ve planned for failure.
“Please remain within your designated zones,” the voice says.
Hatchet’s head snaps up. His jaw clenches. He tests the cuffs again, a small movement, controlled. The metal doesn’t give. Honey’s gaze flicks to Hatchet, then away, as if looking too long might pull him into something he can’t afford.
I look at Ghost. Ghost looks back, and for a second there are two different expressions in his face – one sharp, one distant – before they settle into blankness.
Bones lifts his eyes briefly, meets mine, then lowers them again. Not defeat. Calculation.
I inhale slowly and let my pulse settle. The instinct in me is to become still, to conserve, to reduce variables. But even stillness is data. Instead, I choose a different posture: relaxed enough not to signal panic, alert enough not to invite escalation. The middle line.
The overhead lights shift. Slightly. A fraction. They notice everything.
A hatch opens in the wall and a tray slides into the centre of the room, stopping exactly on a marked point. No person delivers it. No footsteps. Just mechanics.
On the tray: food. Water.
Not much. Enough to be seen. Enough to be desired. Enough to create arithmetic.
My throat tightens.
The smell hits first – simple, warm, maddeningly ordinary. Bread. Something salty. Something with protein. The kind of meal designed to stabilise blood sugar without providing comfort.
Relief rises in me, sharp and involuntary.
I crush it.
The voice speaks again. “Rations will be allocated by compliance.” Silence. Then: “You may begin.”
No instruction on how. No one assigned roles. No explicit rule set. They are watching what we do with scarcity.
My mind begins calculating automatically. We are six, but only five present. One meal. One water source. Either they will deliver one per person, or this is the test: do we fight, do we share, do we decide?
If it is one meal for five men, the calorific content matters less than the behaviour it provokes.
Bones stands first.
Not abruptly. Smoothly, as if he’s already decided. He moves toward the tray. Hatchet strains against his cuffs, a small jerk, then stills. His eyes track Bones like a predator restrained by more than metal.
Honey rises slowly, hands open, palms visible – non-threatening, but his gaze is fixed on the water. His lips part as if he wants to speak, to negotiate. He doesn’t. Maybe he’s learned silence is safer.
Ghost doesn’t move at all.
Bones reaches the tray and pauses. He looks at the portion size, then at each of us in turn, taking in posture, colour, tremor, breath rate. Not judging. Assessing.
He picks up the water first.
My stomach drops.
Then he doesn’t drink it.
He sets it down again, divides the portions with his hands – tears bread into five uneven pieces, splits whatever protein there is with the blunt efficiency of someone who has cut meat on a field plate before. He slides the pieces to the edges of the tray, equidistant, like he’s laying out tools.
A silent offer: take one, leave the rest.
Honey moves first. Of course he does. He picks up a piece, hesitates, then breaks it in half and tries to push half back toward the centre.
Bones shakes his head once. A clear no.
Honey swallows hard and takes the half anyway, clutching it like a confession.
Hatchet’s restraint chain rattles as he leans forward, eyes on the food with an intensity that has nothing to do with appetite. Hunger makes predators. Hunger makes victims. Hunger makes mistakes.
Bones lifts a piece and walks it over to Hatchet, holding it out just within reach of his cuffed hands.
Hatchet freezes. For a moment, the tremor in his fingers is the only movement in the room. Then he takes it. Quick, efficient. No gratitude. No softness. Just acquisition.
Ghost finally stirs. He stands unsteadily, as if his body is remembering gravity.
He approaches the tray without looking at it, gaze slightly unfocused.
When his hand reaches for his portion, it hovers a moment too long, fingers trembling.
Bones gently pushes the food into Ghost’s palm without touching skin.
Ghost flinches anyway.
I move last. Not because I want to be noble. But because I’m still calculating. One meal. One water. If water is limited, dehydration will degrade cognition faster than hunger. They know this. They’ve chosen the lever.
I take my portion and sit, keeping movements minimal.
We eat in silence. Not companionable. Not united. Just…parallel.
The food hits my stomach and my body reacts with gratitude that makes me nauseous. I don’t remember the last time I ate. I’ve no idea how much time has passed. But I guess that’s kind of the point.
A surge of energy, of warmth, shoots through me as I finish my paltry meal. My muscles loosen without permission. My brain tries to soften, to accept this as relief.
It is not relief. It is bait.
I drink only a small amount of water. Enough to moisten mouth and throat, not enough to signal need. My tongue wants more. My cells want more. I deny them.
Time passes. No second tray arrives. No chime. No voice. Just the steady light and the sound of five men breathing. The absence of the next ration is how I know the true test has begun.
Hunger returns with a vengeance because it has something to compare itself to now. The body remembers what it was like to not ache.
Honey begins to shift restlessly within an hour – maybe less.
He glances at the centre where the tray used to be as if he expects it to return if he looks hard enough.
His fingers keep opening and closing, a nervous habit.
His gaze flicks to Hatchet, to Bones, to Ghost, seeking cues, reassurance, permission.
Hatchet paces within the limits of his restraint like a caged animal, chain clinking softly. Each movement burns calories. Each movement is a fight with himself. The tremor in his hands worsens.
Ghost sits again, but now he rocks slightly, forward and back, forward and back, as if motion is the only tether left. His mouth moves silently. Sometimes his eyes sharpen, sometimes they cloud.
Bones doesn’t move much. He watches us all the way Nightshade would, if Nightshade were here. His gaze lingers on Hatchet’s tremor, on Honey’s pallor, on Ghost’s rocking. He swallows hard once, and I see pain flash across his face – injury flaring under stress.
He’s calculating, too.
I try to calculate. Hours since last intake. Fluid loss. Sweat. Respiratory water loss. Baseline needs. I estimate: if they deny water, impairment begins in twelve hours. Severe cognitive degradation in twenty-four to thirty-six depending on exertion, injury, temperature.
I keep my breathing slow to conserve moisture. I keep my body still to conserve energy. I keep my mind busy because if I let it drift, hunger will fill the silence with noise.
But the numbers start to blur.
Not dramatically. Subtly. I find myself recalculating the same estimate twice. I catch the error, correct it, but the correction takes longer than it should.
That is new. Cold never did this to me. Cold made my mind sharp. Hunger makes it…foggy.
I blink, slowly.
Across from me, Honey’s head droops. He catches himself, straightens, forces his eyes open. His lips move as if he’s whispering to himself. A mantra. A promise. I can’t hear the words.
Hatchet jerks against his restraints suddenly, a sharp movement that rattles metal. His breath hisses through his teeth. The tremor in his hands becomes a shake. He stares at his fingers like they’ve betrayed him.
Ghost’s rocking speeds up.
Bones shifts, grimacing, and I see his jaw clench. He raises his wrapped hand to his mouth, presses his lips to his knuckles as if to hold himself together.
The room remains unchanged.
The lights do not dim. The temperature does not shift. No voice offers instruction or mercy.
They’re waiting. For someone to crack. For someone to demand. For someone to hurt someone else to feel less powerless.
I try to anchor myself. I count my heartbeats. I count breaths. I count the minutes by the drift of my own thoughts, measuring time in effort.
It doesn’t work properly.
Time elongates. Or shortens. I can’t tell.
At some point – later – I decide we’re at the twelve-hour mark. Or thereabouts. My mouth is dry. My tongue feels thick. My lips crack when I lick them. I swallow and it hurts faintly, like sandpaper.
I glance at Bones. He meets my eyes. His pupils are slightly dilated. He looks pale. He lifts two fingers and taps them against his thigh: a gesture. A question. How long?
I answer without thinking, because my mind is clinging to structure like a rail. “Twelve,” I mouth silently, shaping the word.
Bones’ expression tightens. He taps again, slower: Are you sure?
My stomach drops. I run the calculation again, forcing the numbers into place. Woke time unknown. Transit time unknown. Meal time…I assumed it arrived three hours after convergence. I assumed that because my body felt like it had been in this room for that long when the tray appeared.
But that feeling might have been engineered. Or it might have been hunger already distorting perception.
I close my eyes for a second, fighting the fog.
When I open them, the lights are the same. The room is the same. The men are the same.
Only my certainty is different.
I look at Bones and shake my head once. Not twelve. I don’t know. The admission tastes like blood.
That is the fracture. Cold never took my timekeeping. Hunger has.
Across the room, Hatchet’s restraint chain rattles again as he strains, shaking now, breath ragged.
Honey flinches at the sound, then edges closer to Hatchet’s zone as if proximity might help, as if empathy is a resource you can spend instead of water.
Ghost’s rocking stops abruptly and his head snaps up, eyes too bright, too focused.
The room seems to tighten, attention sharpening. They sense the shift. The beginning of chaos. And for the first time since waking, I feel something like fear – not of pain, not of cold, but of uncertainty.
I was counting on numbers. Now the numbers won’t hold.
I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth, forcing moisture where there is none, and stare at the empty centre of the room where the tray had been.
Waiting for the next ration.
Waiting for the next rule.
Waiting, and realising I can no longer reliably measure how long I’ve been waiting at all.