Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

‘Oh, shit,’ one of the monsters says. ‘You’re losing him.’

‘I know! Shut up. Grab that, will you?’

Something plastic/iron covers my mouth. Air/poison is forced into my lungs.

‘Just breathe, you fucker,’ someone says.

The world goes dark and quiet once again.

‘Blake. Blake. Blake.’

The voice is like a recorded distress call: once urgent but now automatic, and probably irrelevant. No sense coming late to an urgent problem. They solve themselves, depending on your outlook. Yes, they do.

‘Blake. Blake.’

I try to stay asleep. Whatever they want, it can wait a few minutes. I need to get back to the nightmare I was having. Gotta finish it. If I don’t finish it, the nightmare will still be there when I wake up. It will escape into real life and exist forever.

‘Blake.’

It’s the determination that makes me finally recognise the voice. Anyone else would have given up fifty Blakes ago. Only Reese Thistle would keep going, trying to wake me up.

I blink and try to rub my eyes with a hand that isn’t there. My other hand is cuffed to something. So my eyes go unrubbed. I blink them instead. I’m in an industrial kitchen. No—I’m on a movie set rigged up to look like an industrial kitchen. My wrist is chained to the door of a fake oven. The door is welded shut and the inset window is just a sticker.

I lean sideways, peering between the ingredients on some metal shelves. Thistle is right where I left her, handcuffed to a table leg in a replica of a pharmacy.

‘Thank God,’ she says. ‘Are you okay?’

I swallow a tickle of laughter.

‘Sorry,’ she says, looking at my arm.

A bandage is wound tightly around the stump. Some asshole has drawn a smiley face on it with magic marker. No blood is visible, but I can smell it beneath. And there’s a hot throbbing, which probably isn’t good news. Without antibiotics, I’ll be dead in days.

Of course, depending on what the Guards decide, I could be dead in hours.

Two weeks is plenty. I recognise the voice now. Donnie. He was trying to save me, at least temporarily. Therefore, he’s not Samson’s killer. The killer would want me dead before I could expose them.

Zara tried to save me, too. And I know the killer isn’t Fred, because I was with him when Samson was shot. That only leaves Cedric and Penny.

And Kyle. I don’t want to believe it was him. But I have to accept that it’s possible.

When the Guards realise I don’t actually know who murdered Samson, they’ll put the rest of me through the grinder, followed by the other prisoners. Even if I somehow figure out who the killer is, they’ll still puree us after I tell them.

I touch the bandage gingerly. A flash of pain, and I can feel something pointy underneath. A curved shard of exposed bone. They haven’t filed it off, like a surgeon would, or stitched anything up. They’re not interested in helping it heal properly. Just doing the bare minimum to keep me alive.

How much did my arm weigh? I’ve never wondered before. Ten pounds, maybe? I don’t know why it matters, but I can’t stop thinking about it.

My voice comes out as a croak. ‘How long was I out?’

Thistle gestures at the dark slaughterhouse and the fake clock. ‘Impossible to know. A day, maybe? They fed us. The rest of us.’

I look at my hand, the one I still have. The cuff is too tight to slip off. Almost too tight for circulation. My fingers are swollen and going purple. A few days here and I could lose that hand as well.

It’s the one with the missing thumb. Those sons of bitches didn’t even leave me with my good hand. I’m down to only four digits.

‘Do you have a key?’ The hope in Thistle’s eyes breaks my heart.

‘No,’ I rasp. Samson’s key may still be in my pocket—I can’t reach down to check—but it was for the house, not the cuffs.

‘A hairpin? Anything?’

‘There’s nothing we can do. This is the end.’

‘I get that you’ve been through a traumatic experience,’ she says. ‘So have I, believe it or not. But we don’t have time for you to sit there feeling sorry for yourself.’

‘As opposed to what? I have nothing. I have less than nothing. My arm is gone, I’m probably dying of infection, unless those assholes inside decide to kill me early—’

‘You still have your brain,’ Thistle says. ‘Use it.’

I think, long and hard. Only one solution comes to me.

‘We can kill ourselves,’ I say.

Her eyes are hard. ‘I’m serious.’

‘So am I.’ I swallow the hard lump in my throat and keep talking. ‘It’s our only option. Find something sharp. Cut the radial artery. Bleed out. It’ll be better than going through the grinder alive.’

Thistle looks disgusted. ‘If I had something sharp I’d pick the lock in these fucking cuffs,’ she says. ‘And if that didn’t work, I’d keep it close and stab the next one of those motherfuckers who comes within reach. I’m not giving up.’

The utter helplessness makes me feel sick. My face gets hot, and I turn my face away from Thistle, not wanting her to see me cry. But the tears don’t come. Maybe I’m dehydrated after losing so much blood.

Or maybe it’s a sign that things could still get worse.

CHAPTER 37

The people of this nation shine. Who are we?

Hours pass. Maybe days. I find myself thinking of Abbey Chapman, the young woman I rescued from Lux’s homemade prison. She described to me the sense of hopelessness that came from being so totally at someone else’s mercy. I thought I understood, at the time. Now I realise that I understood nothing.

The cameras above us