16. She Was His Daughter
Chapter 16
She Was His Daughter
The Prisoner
Four Years - Two Months Ago
M onths had passed since Nightingale’s last visit. Even longer since he had seen Sparrow.
Were they feeding her? Keeping her alive?
When he had been captured, they had questioned him at length about her mother, about his connection. He had claimed she was his daughter.
And in his mind, Sparrow was his daughter.
How much longer until I get my chance at freedom?
The thought swirled around his mind hundreds, if not thousands, of times a day. Sometimes he guessed it might be a different type of torture. A promise of an escape that would never come .
A possibility that would instill hope, but nothing else. And then every morning when he awoke to the same barren space. The bitter cold. The bruised body. The empty stomach.
He would be forced to remember that he was still trapped here.
He didn’t know if Raven or Sparrow were safe.
They were his only tether to this plane. The only hope that kept him alive.
But his mind was beginning to unravel. He had been in this prison for months .
A bare room with four brick walls, a concrete floor, a solid metal door, and a single window that only served to allow in the elements and pests.
What if the doctor never returns to Raven? What if he does? What if Raven wakes up without her baby?
The Prisoner leaned back against the cold brick, shutting his eyes and willing his anxiety to not swallow him whole.
She’s going to be alone and scared. Her child ripped from her body. And what about the doctor? What will he make her do?
In the middle of his spiraling, a noise cracked.
The Prisoner jumped as the heavy steel door to his room opened.
“There’s no space for your own room, fucking Griffin!” a guard barked out from the other side.
A single beat later, a body was thrown into The Prisoner’s cell. A large male, covered in dirt, their muddy hair covering their face.
The door slammed shut.
Are they even breathing?
The Prisoner reached out as far as he could with his foot and just barely managed to touch the body.
“Urgh!” it grumbled.
“Are you okay?” The Prisoner spoke hoarsely, his throat raw from disuse .
The new arrival shifted before carefully sitting up, groaning as he did so. “Better than you.” The man laughed, casting a look around the decrepit room. “Hopefully we won’t be here much longer.”
“You just got here,” The Prisoner bristled. “Who are you anyway?”
The moonlight shifted, cutting further through the window.
“Wait, I recognize you.” The tattoo at least. It wrapped around the man’s forearm.
“Yes, I’m Gri—”
“Yes! A part of the Griffin gang. I’m Julian.”
The Griffin gang member quirked his lips and his eyes lit up. The green turning nearly fluorescent in the dark space. “You are? Well, Julian. It’s nice to meet you. Now how about I tell you how we’re going to get out of here.”
If The Prisoner was paying better attention, he would have realized this man recognized his name. Knew who he was.
But instead, he allowed another seed of hope to fester.