Not responding to her taunt, I tried to finish cleaning up.
“Don’t fucking ignore me,” she growled, drawing attention from people around me.
Silently, I got the rest of the shampoo from my hair.
“I said, don’t ignore me, stupid bitch.” Tess slammed a hand into my back, my face cracking into the tile wall. The blood tingled as it rushed out of my nose.
The taste of the copper substance ignited fire in my veins. Whirling around, my knuckles crunched straight into her nose, pain rippling through my hand and up my arm.
Tess hit the ground with a slap, blood spurting out of her nose. Her shrieks echoed off the walls.
Mio and Dee leaped for me.
All emotion shut down; the only thing left on was my survival mode. Anger, frustration, sadness, and grief tunneled together. I’d had enough. The primal instinct to end the constant threat, to protect myself, rushed down my limbs.
They snapped my last fuck.
I heard the feral cry burst out of me, felt the impact of my fist breaking across Dee’s cheek, then punching again into her neck. She dropped to the ground, her hand at her throat, wheezing for air. A punch burrowed into my side, which increased my anger. Flipping around, I rammed into Mio’s stomach with my knee. Bending her over, my elbow slammed down into her spine, her face slapping against the wet tiled floor.
I saw the guards running for us, yells and whistles blending into white noise.
Tess leaped back up, coming for me. Rage like I had never known before roared up my throat as I barreled into her, taking her to the ground with a smack. I didn’t hesitate as my knuckles broke across her face over and over, her blood turning the water beneath us a deep pink.
“Stop!” Two guards yanked me off her by my arms and pulled me to my feet.
Tess’s head lay limply to the side. Only the slight lift of her ribs told me she was still alive.
I snarled, tugging my arms out of the guard’s grip. Stunned, they watched me walk back to the shower, wash off the blood, and turn it off. Snatching up my kit, I took in a deep breath and twisted around, scanning the blur of faces observing me. The silence in the room teemed with tension and shock. Maybe a little fear.
Without a word, I lifted my chin and walked to the table. I grabbed my pile of fresh clothes, threw them on, and waited for what I knew would come.
The guards were right on me, clutching my arms again, marching me out of the washroom. I didn’t wonder where I was going. I knew.
The notion that I was provoked didn’t matter. “Fair” was not a known word here.
We headed farther down into the earth.
Lynx was right; danger and violence liked me.
And I welcomed it.
Darkness.
Endless night.
They soaked into your mind, driving anyone mad after a time, which wasn’t the cruelty of the pit. Nor was being in isolation. Hell, that was a holiday in my book compared to being with the group upstairs. I actually thought I might be able to get rest in here. Sleep a whole night.
Funny.
It wasn’t the gnawing pain of hunger or your brain tricking you in the pure blackness, the absence of understanding time or how long they would leave you.
No. It was the bouts of noises pounding relentlessly into the tiny space that drove you to the brink of madness. Then it would stop for a while, easing you into stress-induced sleep, just to drive you awake with more. Minutes passed like years in which I lost not only sense of time, but of space. There was no place to go, yet my body still knocked against the walls, my fingers clawing at the surface, trying to escape the torture.
They changed the sounds just enough you could never tune it out to doze off. They reduced me to a sniveling blob curled in the corner. I welcomed death, hoping it would finally give me peace. Finally, for a moment, quiet surrounded me, and I fell into a wearied sleep.
A loud creak sounded as light burned across my lids, popping them open.
Flinching, I scrambled away from the painful light in the same way a terrified animal would. My emotions were torn down to primal responses. Instinct shoved my back into the wall, where I curled myself into the tiniest ball as a looming figure outlined the doorway.