What might have been a few minutes later, a big hand nudged at my knee. “Get up, eat your bar, drink water, and use the bathroom,” he said above my head. “We need to go.”
We need to go.
Because he hadn’t left me even though he easily could have.
I wouldn’t forget this. I would never forget this. I took in the crabby man’s jaw and swore to myself right then that I owed him my life. That I would stand by him for the rest of mine in any way I could.
Slowly, I rolled off his thighs, accidentally balancing myself on one of them, noticing just how hard it was. I counted to three, then tucked my feet under me and tried to get up.
My thighs said no.
Taking a deep breath, I planted my feet and tried again.
A push on my butt had me standing up straight.
My legs shook, everything hurt, and suddenly the urge to pee was a punch to my stomach that had me waddling straight for the toilet, ignoring every urge in my body that had me wanting to be shy about going in front of him now that he was awake. But what the hell did I have to be embarrassed about? He’d already seen everything, hadn’t he? And that’s why I dropped my pants and took the absolute longest pee of my life.
And I was in the middle of releasing half my bodyweight in fluid when a huff had me lifting my gaze to the man still up against the wall. He was focused on the ceiling.
Was he smirking?
“What?” I asked as loudly as I could, in basically still a whisper.
Alexander started shaking his head slowly, looking… amazed? “How do you still have anything left in you?”
I was still going. I tried to smile. “At least my organs aren’t failing.”
A solid five seconds more had my body continuing to release at least another half-gallon of pee before it was finally over.
With a sigh, I winced at the lack of toilet paper and waited before pulling up my sleep pants.
With any luck, we’d be out of here soon, and I’d have access to a shower and toilet paper. Real food and—
“Would you hurry up?” the impatient voice across the room asked.
I guess some things hadn’t changed.
I was weak, and we both knew it.
But I’d done the best I could and eaten a nutrition bar slowly and drank as much water as possible despite my wrecked throat.
I could tell he was antsy to get out of there, and I was too. He knew things I didn’t and didn’t feel up to asking about.
The truth was, I was nervous. Or more like practically scared shitless. But I hoped like hell everything went smoothly. It was some kind of miracle that those people hadn’t come back, and I knew it. Despite everything else wrong, my stomachache hadn’t started up again, but I couldn’t trust that to be enough of a warning sign that something bad was about to happen.
If I had ever needed to keep my shit together, it was now, and I would put one foot in front of the next for a thousand miles if I had to.
And that was how I struggled to my feet too when he finally stood and gave me a serious nod. The man who had joked with me about stinky breath and not talking because of his bad mood was gone. It was time to fucking go.
Gathering all my will, I followed him stiffly to the big, metal door.
He turned to me, dropping his voice. “Wait here. Let me deal with the guards, and I’ll come back.”
I blinked, my chest going instantly tighter than it already was. “Can I come with you?”
He started to shake his head before his gaze swept over my face, maybe sensing my fucking panic at the idea of him leaving me behind. “It’s safer for you to stay,” he explained slowly.
I understood, but I really, really didn’t want to get left. “I’ll stay out of the way. Promise.”
Alexander, The Defender, hesitated, really not looking all that happy about it, but after a second, he nodded reluctantly. “Let me see your wrist. I don’t know what these will do, but I don’t want to risk it.”
I held it out to him. He took it carefully, and in the blink of an eye, I watched his fingers curl a millimeter closer around the band on my wrist. It cracked into three pieces and fell to the floor, and in the time it took me to blink again, he’d ripped the ones on his wrists off and threw them beside mine. Only then did he place his hand in the corner where the door met the frame, and he pushed. The door popped open like it was nothing.
Like taking candy from an ant. Not even a baby, an ant.
Then he reached over, wrapped his fingers around my forearm, and started pulling me behind him.
If he felt the way I started shaking at the thought of being left, he didn’t react.
The hallway was exactly the way I remembered it. Long and straight, reminding me of a storage facility except for the normal-sized doors instead of the big, garage-style ones. My brain had been too busy panicking before, and I hadn’t paid enough attention.
And that’s when I thought about something.
“Psst?”
He turned to look over his shoulder, giving me a hard glare as he let go of my arm to press his index finger to his lips.
I mouthed, Is there anyone else here?
No, he mouthed back instantly.
That was a relief. If I didn’t have him, I would have wanted someone to think of me. To save me.
I was so lucky he was here. This whole situation was so fucked, but it could have been a million times worse, and I was grateful, so damn grateful, even though none of this should have happened.
And it must have been the emotion, or the remnants of being sick, that made me reach out and grab the first thing I could—his pinkie finger. I gave it a light squeeze, half expecting him to shake me off. To ask me if my hand had gotten lost.
He didn’t.
All he did was turn and lead us forward. He didn’t make a single peep even on those big, bare feet. I hadn’t noticed or processed until now that he didn’t have shoes.
We moved, going in the same direction they had taken me. Suddenly, he stopped, and I barely managed not to bump into him. The Defender glanced at me over his shoulder and put his index finger against his mouth again.
I nodded.
A lot more gently than I would have expected, he slipped out of my hold, set his hands on my shoulders, and moved me to the side, halfway between two doors. He gestured for me to stay where I was, and I nodded again. Cover your ears and don’t move, he mouthed.
I gave him a thumbs-up, wondering what the hell was about to happen, then put my palms over my ears.
He pressed those same big hands against what seemed like a heavy door and pushed it.
I was too far off to the side to see what was in there, who was in there, but one second he was there, and in the next he was inside.
A loud crack made me flinch a moment before the wall by my shoulder shook. There was a thud and an even louder crack that had me jerking in place. He was fine. He had to be fine. Maybe a minute later, the door opened and Alex came out, a backpack over his shoulder. I dropped my hands.
“Are you okay?” I asked him, my eyes landing on the hole in the hoodie by his shoulder. A hole that hadn’t been there before he’d gone in.
Now I knew what that crack had been about.
He didn’t even glance at what should have been a gunshot wound… if his body couldn’t repel bullets. “Fine.”
What in the hell had happened in there? I wondered before deciding it didn’t fucking matter. Not when he held his hand out, a small white bottle in his palm. “Take two.”