Chapter 1 #2
One might assume that there's not much to take away, but I know from experience that there's always something. They can make things much worse for me than it seems like on the surface. They're very good at it.
In the lounge, I glance around. Six of the residents are in here at the moment. Some of them are my age or a little younger. I don’t know all of them.
I glance to the side and see Colin. He's sitting at the table in the middle of the room writing numbers on a piece of paper. This is what Colin does most of the time, and, to be honest, I find it relaxing. The slow scribble of his pencil on the paper is methodical and constant. It doesn’t change.
He doesn't usually speak either, and he doesn't hum or mutter to himself like Angela. She’s currently sitting in the corner rocking as she does most of the time despite the fact that it’s against the rules.
They've been trying to get her to stop for years, but she won’t and the Blanks have largely given up.
I sit at the table across from Colin. I take a piece of paper out of the tray in the middle and begin to doodle, mostly because it's expected, and if I just sit there staring blankly, I'll be given something to occupy me.
Colin doesn't look at me, just keeps writing the numbers. There's a sequence, but it's very long. I'm not sure what it is, but he seems to know because he writes the same numbers over and over and over again every day. It only usually changes at the end, I’ve noticed.
The room swirls a little. I'm feeling the drugs start to kick in.
'Five months, six days, fourteen hours, thirteen seconds.'
My eyes find Colin, and then they pan around the room to see where the Blanks are. There's not one close enough to hear above the noise from the TV. Colin doesn't usually say anything to me, and I think he's only actually spoken twice when I’ve been in earshot, never a full sentence.
'What did you say?' I murmur.
'Five months, six days, fourteen hours, thirteen seconds.'
Stoke’s calendar said it’s February fifth today and if I’ve been here less than two weeks…
My heart begins to thump. He repeats it again.
Allowing for a week or so here, five months and thirteen days ago would have been around the end of August or early September.
I let out a hard breath. Is Colin telling me how long I was gone from the Heath from the day I left to when I was brought back?
‘Is that how long since I left The Heath to now?’ I whisper.
'Five months, six days, fourteen hours, twenty-four seconds.'
I let out a shaky breath and look across the table at his sequence, at the number that only usually changes at the end, and a suspicion forms in my now sluggish mind.
‘Is that…how long you’ve been here?’
‘Seven years, three months, twelve days, four hours, three seconds.’
A sudden pang of compassion takes me by surprise. I try not to do that in here. Having empathy makes things more difficult. But Colin is literally counting the seconds since he was brought here. It’s sad, and it makes me feel hopeless.
'Colin, I’m going to get this place shut down,’ I say quietly. ‘I promise.’
He doesn't look at me, but he repeats his number again.
Then, one of the Blanks comes closer and he stops speaking. His pencil doesn’t falter, he writes his numbers while I doodle absently as if we weren’t just communicating. Neither of us speaks again.
My brain is getting very groggy from the pills, I realize, and I swallow hard. I hope I remember this.
If I’m right about what Colin’s numbers might mean, then this could prove that I was gone all that time. The Heath has been lying to me.
But why? Why bother? Why pretend? What’s the point? I’m here regardless of if I know the truth, or not.
When I next come back to myself, I'm in my bed and it’s late.
I don’t remember how I got here, and there’s only a vague recollection of yesterday, punctuated by the extra fun trip to the OBGYN that I can, thankfully, barely recall.
It's like waking up from a dream, but something niggles at me.
Something important that I needed to remember.
I sit up straight with a gasp. Colin! The numbers he said!
All of this is a lie and Stoke is in on it…and the Bandervilles as well. Doctor Lansdon, my ass!
Does Joseph know that I killed Joe, his eldest son?
Is this some kind of revenge for what I did?
But, no, the timing is wrong. I was taken from Sauvage’s club just a few moments afterward.
No one knew Joe was dead yet. Even if Jacob, Joe’s bodyguard, had told someone that quickly, there wouldn’t have been a plan to kidnap me in place because of that. This was something else.
But what comes to me next and makes tears come to my eyes is the fact that Shade, Blake, and Mav aren't figments of my imagination. They're real. They're out there and they care about me.
A sob bubbles out of me and I cover my mouth. I can hear a Blank coming down the hall. I glance at the clock. It's past lights-out, so I lie down and close my eyes.
I need to start acting more like myself, so that they stop drugging me. Perhaps if I can make Stoke believe that I want to be here, so that I'll get better, so that I'll be cured, he'll stop having them give me all the meds that space me out, and then I can find a way to get the hell out of here.
My mind is already awash with plans. If I can get them to let me out on a jog, I might be able to slip under the perimeter fence.
There's a small pond about two miles east, and I know that the fence there has begun to rust heavily where it floods its banks in the winter.
There might be a way that I can get out there.
I hear the Blanks talking in the hallway and then laughing in their break room close by. I hear someone scream down the corridor, and I wince when I hear some of the Blanks snickering. They're taking bets on who will wake up with the loudest yell when they’re hit with the Stinger.
They did this to me a couple of nights ago, but I didn't give them the reaction they wanted. They haven’t bothered with me again.
It doesn't stop me from being scared to go to sleep, though.
Being woken up with a zap is no fun. At least I haven't been punished badly…
Not like some of the others have been. Especially William.
At least, I think his name is William. He's young, maybe fourteen.
I don't know him. I think he's new. I don't know what he did, either, but they strapped him down on the wooden board.
The Board is one of the worst corrections in this place.
When one of the Blanks saw my horrified expression as I passed the door, I was told that he's being corrected for not listening and doing what he's told.
They shocked him at least four times before the Stinger stopped working and they had to charge it.
He was begging for them to stop, asking for his mum.
One of the Blanks laughed at him and told him he’d never see her again.
I made myself listen and watch everything, and the Blanks let me, I guess as a deterrent. It sickened me to the core.
I realized with a certainty in that moment that it doesn’t matter if Stoke actually thinks he’s helping us. If I can get out of this place, I need to do everything in my power to get The Heath shut down. How could any of this be good…for anyone? How could pain and cruelty cure anyone of anything?
After they were finished with William, they put him in his room. He was practically catatonic. The next day, I saw him and his eyes were dull, and it wasn't just from the drugs. They're systematically breaking him.
I started to recall the similarities of the treatment I was given when John first brought me here. The rules, the corrections. They did much the same to me, chalking it up to helping my development. To curing me. To helping me.
They torture in the name of medicine, of Stoke's ego, perhaps.
And now I see them for what they are. They never cured me, just made me act the way they wanted me to. They broke me and molded me into the shape of a normal girl, but the conditioning was only skin-deep.
And I need to make sure they can’t do this to us anymore.
However I can.
Shade
I'm trying not to pace, but I can't help it. It's been over a week since Daisy disappeared off the dance floor in Sauvage's club, and we haven't had any leads. We don’t know where she is, or who took her. No one has contacted us, not even the stalker. Sauvage has heard nothing from his many contacts either. We’re doing everything we can think of to try to find her, but it’s like she dropped off the face of the earth and it’s making us crazy.
'Where the fuck is she?' Blake snarls low under his breath for probably the millionth time.
I glance at him worriedly. He’s sounded increasingly unhinged over the past week.
I feel the same, but at least I'm trying to hide it. Though, to be honest, I think I'm wearing a hole in the carpet in Blake’s room in the KIP house from all of the pacing I'm doing. We’ve barely slept. I don’t remember the last time we ate.
Our Frat brothers know there’s something wrong, but we’ve kept Daisy’s disappearance a secret so no one connects her with Joe’s death.
Her name hasn’t even been mentioned as far as we know because, for all intents and purposes, she ‘disappeared’ weeks ago when she escaped Joe and that bitch of a nurse.
Detective Anders appeared at the KIP house with two uniformed officers yesterday, asking me questions about Joe, her bright and suspicious eyes watching me very closely. She didn’t stay long, though. Mav, Blake, and I already worked out our story with Sauvage.
The lies came easier than I thought they would and Sauvage has pulled a witness out of nowhere who will say he saw me and the guys at a bar in Richmond the night that Joe died if I need an alibi.
The French fuck and his relationship with Daisy is annoying, but even I can admit he’s a strong ally to have in our corner.
I get a message on my phone and let out a long breath.