Chapter 16
Brooke
They drag me upstairs like a corpse.
My heels scrape along the stairs. Every jolt sends a lightning bolt through my spine and tears something fresh open in my back. By the time they shove me through the physician’s door, I can feel warm blood sliding beneath my dress.
The physician doesn’t bother greeting me. He doesn’t bother acknowledging I’m a person.
His gaze goes straight to the wound like it’s a puzzle he’s impatient to solve.
He touches the torn edges with two fingers. He isn’t gentle. Just clinical pressure that sends a hot shock ripping through my torso so violently my knees nearly buckle. Something metallic floods my mouth, copper and spit and the instinct to bite down on my own tongue before I scream.
“She tore several sutures,” he gestures. “Hold her still.”
The guards seize my arms, forcing me still, back exposed. My shoulder joints scream. My breath stutters.
The physician threads a needle the length of my damn finger. The metal flashes under the light. A thin, silver threat that promises nothing but suffering.
He doesn’t say a word before he pushes it in.
The needle punches through torn skin and muscle, sliding through me like wire through raw meat. The sting is immediate, hot enough to make black spots burst behind my eyelids. My spine pulses, nerves firing in frantic, wrong directions. The pain isn’t sharp, it’s invasive.
He pulls the needle through in one long drag. I feel every millimeter of it scraping through tissue that isn’t ready to be touched.
My jaw locks so tight my teeth ache. I breathe through my nose.
He stitches me with cold precision, tightening each pass until it feels like my skin is being cinched shut with barbed thread. A butcher treats meat with more respect than he treats me.
“You have excellent tissue integrity,” he says dryly.
“Good, she won’t die before tomorrow’s events.” Elliot’s voice drifts from the corner.
“She’s a fighter, I like that,” he says. “Fix her properly. I need her functional tomorrow.”
The physician finishes the final stitch and wipes the blood away with antiseptic-soaked gauze. It burns like acid. My vision blurs hard enough to double the room.
“She’s stable. Take her back.”
They drag me down the hall and throw me back in the basement as if dropping off a piece of equipment.
The others look less like people and more like shadows pretending to still be alive. Bruises have bloomed into thick, mottled purples. Lips split. Eyes sunken. Every breath seems like it costs them something they can’t afford.
Miles shifts first. He crawls toward me slowly, one palm dragging across the concrete, his other arm wrapped around his ribs.
“Are you okay?”
I let out a brittle laugh that scrapes my throat raw. “As okay as I can be in this hellhole.”
He gives a weak nod.
“I’m pregnant.”
Miles blinks. “How far along?”
“I don’t know.” My voice wavers despite myself. “I didn’t even have time to find out. We barely knew before we were taken.”
“Does Seth know?”
“Yeah.”
Pregnancy had never been part of the plan.
Years ago my gynecologist warned me that PCOS might make it impossible.
I convinced myself that was a blessing. I told myself I would never bring a child into a world where I had watched my parents die in front of me.
Now the possibility of a baby growing inside me feels even heavier, because if I survive this place, that child will be born into something far darker.
The thought tightens painfully in my chest.
“What if I’m still here?” I whisper. “What if Seth never finds me?”
Miles shakes his head immediately. “Don’t think like that. From everything you told me about Seth, he’s coming.”
I wipe at my face, irritated by the tears that have slipped free, and force myself to nod.
“I love him so much. I miss him. This is the longest we have ever been apart.”
My voice cracks despite my effort to steady it.
“He's a murderer,” I say with a weak breath of laughter. “He's also a little psychotic. But he's the most kind, considerate, affectionate man I have ever been with.”
“My husband’s name is Alonzo,” Miles murmurs. “We're both nurses. We met during residency at the same hospital on the same shift.” A faint smile appears and then fades. “All we ever wanted was to help people. That was the whole dream.”
Miles looks down at his hands.
“Alonzo hates horror movies,” he says. “He says they stress him out too much. He cries during medical dramas. He overcooks chicken because he is terrified of food poisoning.”
His voice softens.
“I used to tease him about it.”
He looks toward the wall instead of at me.
“I just want to see him again.”
“You will.”
The silence between us grows thick and suffocating.
After a moment Miles speaks again, his voice steady but quieter.
“If I don’t make it out of here, I need you to tell him what happened. I don't want him sitting at home wondering if I'm still missing or thinking that I left him.”
My throat tightens.
“Tell him that I died with him as the last thing on my mind,” Miles continues. “I want him to know that I never stopped loving him.”
He swallows and then speaks carefully, making sure I hear every word.
“Our address is 24781 Riverbend Lane in Eugene, Oregon.”
I repeat it immediately under my breath.
“24781 Riverbend Lane. Eugene, Oregon.”
Again.
And again.
I press it into memory like it is code I will need later. I keep repeating it softly, lips barely moving.
I start to say my own address, in California. The house Seth and I were not even finished settling into.
I stop.
The thought lands quietly and hurts more than I expect. We were already planning an escape. A different place. A clean slate. A future that now feels like something from another life.
If I die, Seth will hunt down everyone responsible. And then he will kill himself, because living without me is not something he believes in.
The image hits me hard and sudden. Seth alone. Seth bleeding. Seth choosing death because I’m not there to stop him.
I bite down hard, forcing the tears back. I refuse to let that future take shape.
Miles reaches out before I can pull away, his hand closing around my wrist.
“Hey, look at me.”
I do.
“We’re going to figure out how to get out of here,” he says. “Okay? I don’t know how yet. But we’re not just waiting to die.”
I nod.
But I don’t believe it, not really. This place isn't built for survival. It's built for spectacle. For blood, for endings people watch.
But there is one thing I know with absolute certainty.
I’m not going out quietly.