Chapter one
The howling wind can be heard as I sit beside the dead body of a girl I was supposed to take care of, to protect. I knew it was going to be impossible to keep my promise, but I still hoped it wouldn't come to this. The dark gray sky is visible through the many holes in the roof.
It's the middle of winter, and all I have on me is a pair of dirty jeans and a sweatshirt so full of holes it's barely keeping me warm. I'd guess it's January . The last time I saw the date before being shoved into this tiny room, it was September. I remember seeing brown and orange leaves fall through the perforated ceiling, which tells me the house is surrounded by trees. Now the cold is relentless, biting into my skin, piercing every inch of my body.
Alissa was here long before me. She was 15 years old when she was kidnapped, and she had been here long enough to go through four winters and falls. That makes her 19 now—or she was. The correction makes my stomach churn, and my eyes burn. Fear consuming me.
Her last moments keep playing in my head over and over again like a nightmare on a loop. Her bloody cries, her throat-cutting screams. Her eyes, which were usually so full of optimism, were wide with terror I couldn't comprehend. She had been taken out of the room for only a few hours—God knows why—before they shoved her roughly back inside. It was the first time they had done this. I was stupid enough to think maybe they were going to release her, but I couldn't have been more wrong.
I should have known by now, but hope was a cruel thing. Tricking me into thinking things would get better, that we would be free eventually. But now, it felt like a lie—like a cruel sick joke the universe is playing on me.
It was just another one of their sick, torturing "games," as they call it. They treated us as if we were less than human.
She came back hysterical, throwing up over and over. There was nothing in her stomach, just clear liquid spilling out of her mouth. Then she started to stiffen, her body going rock-hard, foam bubbling from her lips. Horrified All I could do was curl into a corner and rock back and forth, counting to a hundred ten times, pretending I was somewhere else—by the ocean, maybe. Anything to convince myself this was all just a bad dream.
We had promised to help each other, to be each other's anchor, but the moment I saw her face—the way her features twisted with whatever she saw—I knew that promise was broken. No matter how much I talked to her, no matter how hard I tried to calm her down, it was like she couldn't hear me. Like something had shattered her mind. Her eyes were glossed over. She wasn't there anymore.
I couldn't bring her back, and that scared me to my core. Not knowing what had made her so upset was eating away at me, slowly breaking me apart. Driving me to insanity.
Now, her dead body is here, right in front of me, and I know they're using it to torture me. To remind me that I'm powerless. I don't know how much longer I can take this.