18. Jasmine
eighteen
Jasmine
After Adam’s demonstration, the bunker never got quiet—just less noisy, like the echo after a gunshot in a concrete room.
The blue-white bulbs overhead buzzed like a dentist’s drill, and the air tasted of whatever cleanser Emma had dumped in the drain that morning.
The other women lay down early, whether it was sleep or self-defense, I didn’t know.
It left the whole row dead still. Perfect time for the real monsters to clock in.
I was on my cot, one leg up, hand working the swelling in my thumb, when I heard the first steps.
Not Adam’s walk—he put more hip into it, always announcing himself a beat before he wanted you to notice.
These were lighter, but with purpose, and as they closed in I caught a whiff of something herbal.
Chamomile, maybe, or one of those teas that’s supposed to help you sleep but actually tastes like yard clippings.
Emma appeared at the far end, silhouetted against the low-watt bulb above the main door. She carried a mug in one hand and a folding chair in the other, her robe cinched tight over her pajamas. She didn’t bother checking the other cells. This was a solo visit.
She set the chair down in front of my bars and sat, crossing her legs and balancing the mug on her knee. The metal legs shrieked against the floor. She waited for me to make eye contact before speaking, her gaze so clear it felt like a cold compress to the skull.
“Couldn’t sleep?” she asked. No sarcasm, just curiosity.
“Power nap,” I said. “You?”
She smiled, a noncommittal upturn of her mouth, and sipped her tea.
We watched each other. There was no rush.
I scanned for tells, but she kept everything locked down, not even a finger twitch.
Emma was beautiful in a way that snuck up on you, all symmetry and control and none of the nervous blinking Adam did when he lied.
Her hair was down, parted sharp, no makeup.
Her face was a level horizon. The tea steamed.
She said, “You’re expecting my brother.”
“Figured he’d want an encore after that show,” I said.
Emma snorted—actual amusement. “That’s his style. Me, I prefer conversation.”
She set the mug down between her shoes, folded her hands, and leaned forward like we were in a job interview. “You know, people always assume Adam and I are stepsiblings. It’s easier for everyone. But we’re twins.”
She said it like she was correcting a typo. No drama, just a patch for the official record.
“Explains the jawline,” I said.
“Explains a lot,” she agreed. “We grew up in Litchfield Park. Our mother was a nurse, specialized in psychiatric wards. Father was her favorite patient, which is how we ended up here.” She didn’t look for a reaction.
“He inherited this property from his own father—originally a survivalist’s bunker, built after the ‘80s. Our father didn’t use it for people.
He just hid in it. Would lock himself down here for days, convinced the world was coming for him. ”
She waited. Let it breathe.
“Adam says your dad died when you were kids.”
“He died in here. Heart attack. They found him at the bottom of the stairs, hands clenched around a can of chili and a cassette of, I kid you not, ‘The Power of Positive Thinking.’” She grinned, but the eyes didn’t change.
“Adam spent the whole summer after that sleeping in the same spot. Just to see if he could do it better.”
There was a silence. Not the kind that waits for sympathy—Emma was only interested in context, the why of things. She kept talking.
“Our mother took it hard. She tried to keep us normal: public school, team sports, summer jobs. But Adam was always down here, figuring out how the locks worked, learning to weld, painting over the mildew. I mostly stayed upstairs.” She took another drink.
“He’s never left Kingman. Never needed to. ”
She looked at me, then said: “I know what you’re thinking. We’re not like those other stories. The incest ones, the ones with the step-this and half-that. It’s just us, all the way down.”
I shrugged. “Makes the payroll easier.”
She almost laughed. “True.”
The air now tasted like pure ammonia, with a back note of tea. I stayed sitting, letting the silence work. I didn’t move, didn’t twitch, just gave her the same blank stare she was giving me. If this was chess, she was playing black, and I was content to let her move first.
She did.
“Adam isn’t the real problem here,” Emma said. “He’s predictable. You know the way his mind moves, and you can game out the next five plays. I’m the wild card.”
I looked her over, slow and deliberate. “You’re telling me this because…?”
“Because you’re not like the others. You don’t break down, you break up. That’s why he likes you.” She paused. “That’s why I like you.”
I made a noncommittal noise. I let her keep talking.
She got to her feet—no rush, no show of power, just a simple up-and-down motion. She stretched her arms over her head, spine popping like a zipper. “Do you miss him?” she asked.
The question was a change-up, so fast and sudden I almost missed it.
“Sniper?” I said.
Her smile sharpened. “Marcus. That’s what you call him, right? Never just his name, always the patch. I’ve seen the way you look at the ceiling when you think about him.”
The next line was almost flirtatious: “Is he as good as they say?”
The voice in my head told me to ignore it, let her swing and miss. But my mouth had its own ideas.
“Better,” I said. “He doesn’t waste time talking.”
Emma absorbed this, then set the chair back down and sat again, this time closer to the bars. The mug of tea sat untouched. She laced her fingers, flexed her neck, and then fixed me with a stare that was pure pathology.
“If he comes for you, I’m going to fuck him. That’s not a threat—it’s just math. He’ll want you. I’ll want him. The rest is entropy.”
The way she said it, I believed her.
I gripped the edge of the cot, knuckles whitening. “He’s not coming for me. He’s coming for Adam.”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t care about Adam. He cares about you. But you know what the real trick is? The second he gets here, he’ll be just another animal in the trap.”
She reached through the bars, not a threat, just resting her hand on the inner edge. Her nails were clean, short, painted clear. No jewelry. “You think you’d mind watching?” she asked. “Him on top of me. Or maybe the other way around.”
I launched from the cot, and my hands hit the bars before I even thought about it.
I grabbed her wrist—hard, a full two inches of skin pinched in my grip—and yanked.
She didn’t resist. Her arm hit metal with a sharp crack that echoed down the row.
The women in the other cells sat up, but nobody said a word.
I squeezed, thumb digging into her pulse point, and leaned in close enough to smell the tea and the sweat on her collarbone.
“If you touch him, I’ll rip your throat out. I don’t care if it’s through these bars, through a wall, or with a spoon.” My voice was a whisper, but it carried. “Don’t ever say his name again.”
Emma didn’t even blink. Instead, she leaned forward until her forehead almost touched the bars.
“I like you,” she said, voice low and delighted.
Then, so quiet I almost missed it: “You’re the only one who’s ever scared me.”
She pulled her wrist free, not with force, but with a little twist. It left a white stripe where my hand had been.
Emma stood up, retrieved the mug, and folded the chair. She walked down the row, slippers silent, robe flowing behind her like a priest’s vestment. At the end of the hall, she turned and called back, “Goodnight, Jasmine.”
I listened to the click of the latch, the sigh of the outer door, and the long, slow fade of her footsteps as she climbed to the world above.
I let go of the bars. My hands were shaking. Not from fear, but from the aftershock. There was something in me that wanted to follow her, not to kill but to compete.
I went to the cot and lay down, face to the wall, pulse in my ears. I ran the details back—twins, not steps, the father’s paranoia, the inherited structure. There was a story in there. There was a flaw.
The thought stuck with me all night.
I was almost asleep when Renata whispered, “She came to scare you, no?”
I grunted, “Yeah.”
She waited a beat. “Did it work?”
I thought about the look in Emma’s eyes, the way she’d let me grab her, the math of her moves.
“She told me more than she meant to,” I said.
And then I slept, hands open and steady, dreaming of cinder block and the perfect, diamond symmetry of a puzzle that wanted to be solved.