Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

blink, blink, blink. They’re not transmitting anything—just recording our fear and pain for the later enjoyment of strangers. Knowing that doesn’t lessen the feeling of being watched.

Thistle has given up on talking to me. She’s interrogating the other prisoners instead about the movements of the Guards, the weapons they carry, the meal and shower schedules. She must have asked them about all this before, but she’s doing it again, hoping to stumble upon a secret solution that none of them has thought of in all the months they’ve been here. I’ve reached despair, but she’s stuck all the way back at denial.

‘Which ones don’t always do what the others tell them?’ Thistle is asking. ‘Any sign that one of them has a conscience? Or a rebellious streak?’

She’s not getting far. The prisoners are more interested in condemning me than helping themselves.

Hailey, who only days ago suggested she and I could run away together, is throwing granules of concrete in my direction. It wasn’t a problem at first, but her aim is getting better. The granules are blunt and nearly weightless. They don’t hurt, but the impacts are stopping me from sleeping.

‘Will you cut that out?’ I snap.

She leers, satisfied to finally get a reaction. ‘Nope.’ She tosses another stone at me. I raise my hand to block it, but the hand isn’t there anymore. The stone bounces off my hair.

‘Explain to me how this helps you.’

‘You kept me prisoner. You fed my friends into a meat grinder. You watched me shower. That’s how it helps.’

This time, the rock hits me in the eye. ‘Ow! Fuck.’

Hailey cackles.

I doubt it would help to tell her that it was the other Guards who put her friends through the grinder. I try a different tactic.

‘You know what it’s like inside?’ I ask.

‘In the house?’

‘No. The grinder.’

She throws another rock. I twist my head far enough to dodge it.

‘We’re all going in there eventually,’ I tell her. ‘Thought you might appreciate some advance warning. I can describe it. Vividly.’

‘Shut up,’ she says. Clenched jaw, eyes averted. Trying to block out anything else I might say.

You can’t ignore someone and throw stones at them at the same time. The rocks stop. I close my eyes.

Thistle hasn’t given up, though. ‘Hey, Amar.’

A grunt from elsewhere in the room. ‘What?’

Amar, the Terrorist, has a swollen eye and a mangled ear. The skin of his legs bears dozens of puncture wounds. If I had to guess, I’d say he’d been whipped with barbed wire. My fault, for rigging the election. No regrets. That could have been Thistle’s eye. Thistle’s ear. Thistle’s legs.

‘That nail sticking out of the wall behind you,’ Thistle is saying. ‘Can you get it out?’

A pause. I can hear groaning and puffing. ‘No.’

‘Keep trying.’

‘Trust me, it’s not going anywhere.’

‘Okay. Maybe it doesn’t have to. Hold up your hands. Can you get the nail into the lock in the cuffs?’

Some jingling. ‘Now what?’

‘Are they single-lock handcuffs or double?’

‘How should I know?’

‘They didn’t teach you that in Syria?’

‘I’ve never been to Syria.’

‘I thought you were—’

‘I didn’t run off to join Isis, okay? It’s all bullshit. The Guards made it up to get subscribers.’

My eyes pop open. I need to look at Amar as he says this.

Thistle doesn’t believe him. ‘I’m not here to judge you, okay?’

‘It’s all bullshit,’ Amar repeats. ‘I was born on Long Island. I moved to Texas when I was six. I’ve never been any place else. I’m not a fucking terrorist.’

In the dim light, it’s hard to see his face clearly, but I can see his eyes, glowing with frustration and anger.

‘You confessed,’ I say.

‘Stay out of this, Blake,’ Thistle says.

Amar is looking at me now. ‘Yeah, no shit. Whatever the Guards say you did, you have to pretend to be sorry. The things they hurt you with are so much worse if you tell them you didn’t do it.’

‘You stood up for a terrorist online,’ Hailey points out.

‘I said he had a right to a trial,’ Amar says. It sounds like they’ve had this argument before. ‘Do you not get how that’s different?’

I look around at the other prisoners. ‘What about the rest of you?’

‘Oh, so now you care?’ Hailey snaps. ‘You get yourself chained up so you can’t help us and suddenly you care that we’re innocent?’ She throws another rock at me. ‘I was just a podcaster. It was a conservative show, sure, but I was never in the KKK.’

Her contrition seemed insincere before—perhaps this is why.

‘Did you really tell people to murder doctors on your show?’

‘Being pro-life is not the same as being pro-murder, asshole. The opposite, in fact.’

I let that one go. ‘How about Gerald?’

The Nazi, Emily, speaks up. ‘He told us he didn’t attack that woman. But really, how are we supposed to know? He sure seemed like a creep.’

‘Are you really a Nazi?’

‘No.’

‘Not exactly,’ Amar adds, eyebrows raised.

‘No,’ Emily repeats. ‘I shared a meme, okay? It was just a joke.’

‘What was the joke?’

Emily rolls her eyes. ‘Does it matter?’

Thistle is watching her closely. ‘It might.’

Emily sighs. ‘There was a woman removing her nail polish with chemicals. And then it said, “But when Hitler removed Polish with chemicals, people lost their minds.”’

Silence falls.

‘I didn’t make the meme,’ she says defensively. ‘I just shared it. Anyway, that’s what I thought they were talking about when they kidnapped me. I didn’t hear about the attack at the Jewish school until I’d been here for weeks.’

The attack at the school really happened—I knew about it before I got here. But she looks and sounds like she’s telling the truth. She’s not the perpetrator.

I glance over at Ivy. ‘And you?’

She