The Girl Who Broke Free (Death Fields 5)

Chapter One

As far as jails go, this one is pretty nice. Not that I’m super familiar with jail cells but I did spend time in a cage, so I do have a little reference.

The cells are more like small, unfurnished dorm rooms and there’s a nice selection of books to read. The door is locked between me and the scary things outside, which is a nice perk, although it makes me nervous to not have more appropriate shoes. I know it’s the paranoia from living in the new world for the last year and a half, but a good pair of boots can save your life. I look down at my feet, toes pointed at the ceiling, and frown at the flimsy slip-ons supplied to me by the guards. These shoes will get me killed.

The patch of hazy sunlight on the wall signals the approaching start of my day. I think it means it’s about 7 a.m.. Clocks have lost meaning. A few people cling to the past and wear battery-powered digital, but they’re still just guessing. Most use other measures to track time. Right now, I’m waiting for the sound of the guard outside my cell. That’s when my day starts, but the few minutes before they arrive, that’s the worst part of the day. The few moments I’m left alone with my thoughts and memories.

I roll to my side and close my eyes, making one last attempt at going to sleep. All that I get is a sharp pain from the bruise forming on my ribs, which inevitably leads to the memory of the gash Wyatt got on his abdomen during the first days we met. How his eyes are hazel with flecks of green. How cocky he looked long ago at Fort PharmaCorp with his mohawk and defined jaw. How months later, what his lips and hands felt like when we finally acted on our feelings with one another.

I blink and stare at a spot of sunlight on the wall, trying so hard not to think about him bleeding and crumbled on the ground outside the farmhouse in Kentucky. His strong, able body taken from him by an army of genetically altered soldiers.

I try but fail every time to forget the way the gunshot sounded as they dragged me away from him and extinguished Wyatt Faraday’s life and soul from this world for good.

That night, Chloe and her Hybrids also left my friend Jude with him, beaten and possibly dead on the porch floor. I was captured with my sister Jane. In the house, they found Jane’s fellow scientist and more-than-friend Avi Yeun, and the two Mennonites we’d rescued from an Eater attack, Finn and Mary. They brought us to the new Hybrid headquarters, a small college outside of Lexington, and separated us. I’d had zero contact with them since.

This tiny former office in the security building is my cell. Besides being isolated from the other captives, I’ve heard nothing about the other group consisting of Walker, Davis, Jackson, and Parker that left the farmhouse a day before. I know nothing about General Erwin’s army or my friend Paul who stayed to fight for the southern Death Fields, other than that the Hybrids planned to come here after they demolished and dismantled the group. I have to assume Chloe’s army was successful and they, too, are dead.

The spring of the door lock frees me from my painful memories. I sit up, cradling my weak side, and wait for the tray of food to slide across the floor in my direction. Like clockwork, it appears, and I eat quickly because he’ll be back to take me to the bathroom. Then it’s time to start my day.

*

The bucket and rags wait for me in the closet, beneath the note with my chores. I glance at the list, wondering whose clunky script is behind the instructions. I doubt it belongs to Chloe. It seems too trivial. The commander of a massive army shouldn’t be hand-writing chores for her prisoner, even though she clearly has taken a special interest in me.

I pick up the heavy bucket filled with semi-clean water from an outside source and grimace. The bruise on my ribs hurts and I shift hands, hoping the weight of the bucket won’t bother as much on the other side. It works. Sort of.

The murky water sloshes against my pants, soaking my knee. I pass the main office and two Hybrids in quiet discussion and stop at the front door. It’s window day and unfortunately, I’m awful at it.

My job consists primarily of cleaning, scrubbing the security office top to bottom. I wipe baseboards and cobwebs in the corners. I’m given a toothbrush to clean the grout between the tiles in the no-longer-fully functional bathroom.

Occasionally there will be some outside work. Washing window sills or plucking weeds from the grassy areas between the parking lot and the office. Every bit trivial and completely tedious. Nothing something I would consider a priority during the fall of society. But I’m being punished. She wants me to know I’m good for one thing: whatever the hell she wants me to do.

I’m at her mercy.

I dip the rag in the water and wring it out and start the process of cleaning the small square panes by the front door. I catch a hint of my reflection and stare for a moment, trying to identify the woman. Yes, I’m a woman now—nineteen. Long gone is the tidy hair I used to wear in perky pigtails. My hair is long and thick. I mostly wrangle it into a ponytail at the back of my neck to keep it out of th

e way. My eyes are gray, but look more blueish due to the ever-present dark purple circles, if not actual bruises from taking a punch to the face. I’m pale from not enough sunlight. When I pass by a mirror sometimes I think I’ve just seen a ghost.

In many ways, it’s probably true.

I wipe the rag across the window pane, pretending to wipe away the woman I’ve become.

Chloe decided on making Asbury College her new base of operations. It’s beautiful here. Rolling green hills. Lots of trees and plenty of room for the Hybrids to live and sleep. Out the window I see the green leaves shifting color. I missed the warm days of summer while being locked up in here and now fall has arrived and I’ve little doubt I’ll miss it too. I’ve been here for months, toiling away under the close eye of Hybrids who plot and plan world domination as though I’m nothing but a gnat.

I move to the other side, wringing out my rag again. Wash, rise, repeat. Although I can’t tell from my view out the window, I know the world is falling apart out there as well as it is in here. There’s nothing I can do but wait and watch.

*

Afternoons are the real challenge. The tedious chores end and then my real punishment begins. I change out of my janitor uniform of soft, scrub-like pants and a shirt, and put on the workout clothes I’m allowed to wear during this specific portion of the day. Heavy duty sneakers, spandex pants, and a tank wait for me on my bed when I arrive back in my room. After a quick lunch I’m escorted down the hall to what used to be a conference room.

The walls and floors are padded and a massive bolt locks the door behind me when I enter the room where my sparring partner waits for me, day in and day out.

You’d think Chloe was crazy (well, she is crazy but even this is a stretch) giving me time to flex and work my muscles. But I’m not here to gain speed and skill. No, I’m here as a mental and physical punching bag for her biggest disappointment and failure.

Her brother, Cole.

The first time I walked in the training room and found Cole waiting for me, I actually did have a breakdown. I’d been in isolation for days. Ignored and starved. I cried for my sister. I bawled over Wyatt. Hybrids showed no interest in quelling my emotional pain. They showed no interest in me at all for those first days and when the door finally opened, the guard didn’t show up with food. No, he brusquely told me to follow him. I did so with hopes that Chloe may be ready to negotiate.

It was a cruel joke when they brought me to the padded room and left me with him.

He looked worse than I did, with deep circles under his eyes. His lips were chapped and raw and I wasn’t entirely sure he recognized me. I felt my hair and cheeks. Maybe I was unrecognizable.

“No! Guard!” I screamed to him the minute the door shut with a resolved click at my back. I banged against the surface, beating with my fists. “Get me out of here!”

“They’re not coming back,” he said quietly.

I spun, kicking the door with the heel of my foot. He just stared at me with hollow, vacant eyes.

“Don’t you dare touch or speak to me.”

“Both of those are going to be a challenge. My sister obviously wants us in here together.”

“To what? Kiss and make up?”

His eye twitched when I said it and I forgot how sensitive he was now. The genetic alteration made him edgy and irrational. He thinks I betrayed him with Wyatt, forgetting that he set us up in the first place. He was consumed with misplaced but very real paranoia.

His attention snapped to me and a chill ran down my spine. “There’s no getting out, Alex. Not out of this room or away from Chloe. Don’t you think I’ve tried?”