My heart pounded as I took my place in front of my bunk. Williams burst through the door, and a handful of other guards joined him, crowding the small space. His gaze found mine, and he smirked. I stared back, refusing to flinch.
I waited for him to say something, but instead he remained silent. As the seconds passed, my chest tightened, and I dug my nails into my palms. The other girls all shifted nervously, some hanging their heads so their hair obscured their faces. I glanced at Noelle. She raised her chin as if she wanted them to see her.
Half a minute passed. At last heavy boots echoed against the steps that led to the front door, and Mercer stepped inside the bunkhouse. Towering over us, he scanned each face, his eyes lingering only on mine. To my surprise, he smiled. I didn’t smile back.
“I think you’ll like your pick here,” said Mercer, and at first I thought he was talking to Williams—until a second set of footsteps clunked against the stairs, and Knox walked through the door, his black wool coat dusted with snow.
My entire body tensed. Rage burned through me, setting me on fire, and it took everything I had to remain still. Standing at the head of the aisle, Knox was less than an arm’s length from me. Close enough for me to see the stubble forming on his jaw. Close enough for me to smell his soap. Close enough for me to reach out and snap his neck in the seconds before every single guard put a bullet in me.
My fingers twitched. It would be worth it if I knew I could do it, but I didn’t have the upper body strength Knox did, and I was still sore and bruised from the day before. If I killed him—when I killed him—I would need to be alone with him if I wanted any chance of succeeding.
“A great selection,” said Knox quietly. He strode slowly up the aisle, eyeing each girl as he passed. “They’re strong?”
“The strongest Elsewhere,” said Mercer. “Fast runners, too, I’d imagine. They’ll be the challenge you’re looking for.”
My stomach turned, and if I had eaten anything the day before, I had no doubt I would’ve been sick all over Mercer’s shoes.
Knox was going hunting.
“This one,” he said, tapping a redheaded girl on the shoulder. “And this one.”
The black girl beside her let out a strange choking sound, and I turned away, biting my tongue to keep myself from blurting out something that would only get more killed.
“One more, I think,” said Knox as he leisurely meandered back up the aisle toward me, now examining each girl on my side of the room. I would be the last.
I forced myself to relax and accept what was coming. My building hadn’t been chosen at random; Knox was here for one person and one person only. Me. This was how he would finally kill me.
Let him try. If I was going down, I was taking him with me.
Knox stopped in front of me exactly as I expected him to, and our eyes met. I saw no hint of familiarity in his—no indication that we knew each other at all, much less that he regretted how things had come to pass.
For a moment I wondered if he, too, had been Masked. I wouldn’t have put it past Daxton, especially if he had discovered the role Knox played in the Blackcoats. It would have been a perfect in into the rebellion. And it would have explained why Knox suddenly seemed to have no desire to keep a single promise he had made to me.
But then his lips curled into that secretive smile no one could have possibly duplicated, the same smile I had once thought was meant to reassure me that I was doing the right thing. Now all I could see was a mocking smirk.
He parted his lips as if he was about to speak to me, but instead he said nonchalantly, “This one.”
He raised his hand to claim me, and rather than playing it cool the way I desperately wanted to, I flinched as if he were about to knock my teeth out.
Instead, he never touched me.
The girl beside me let out a choked sob. When I opened my eyes, Knox’s hand rested on her shoulder, not mine.
“You three, with me,” barked Williams. “The rest of you, get to work.”
Knox stepped back, his eyes locked on mine until he turned away. Silence seemed to permeate the cabin as the three girls walked down the aisle to join the guards. Two of them were crying, but the third glared at me as if to say this is your fault.
She wasn’t wrong, and I couldn’t watch anymore. This was just another sick, twisted game I could never win, and the more Knox tortured me, the more I wanted to rip his throat out and feed him to the wolves.
More heavy footsteps echoed against the porch steps as the men exited, leaving us three fewer than we had been before they’d come. Before I had a chance to move, Scotia slapped the wall beside her, startling half the bunkhouse.
“You heard him,” she called. “Dining hall now, and if any one of you is late for work, you’ll have to answer to me.”
The girls grabbed their coats and began to filter out. As I pulled mine on, someone took my elbow, and I looked up to see Noelle standing beside me, her wide eyes glassy with unshed tears.
“I thought for sure he was going to take you,” she whispered.
“Me, too.” Judging by the way everyone glanced at us, we weren’t the only ones who thought so. I stepped into my boots, too shaken and furious to bother being annoyed by the fact that they were still damp. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she said. “This isn’t your fault.”
Yes, it was, but there was no use trying to convince Noelle, who only seemed to be able to see the good in people. “Is this how it always is? You wake up with twenty girls, and by lunch, you’re down to fifteen?”
“By dinner, we’ll be back to twenty,” said Scotia from behind her curtain. “Get out of here, both of you.”
Together Noelle and I ducked out the door and into the snowy street. The sun strained to shine through the clouds, leaving a weak light to fall on us as we trudged toward the dining hall. Others joined us, and Noelle slipped her arm into mine. At first I thought she was trying to comfort me, but when she hugged my arm to her chest, I realized it was the other way around. I was her security blanket.
The dining hall was only marginally warmer than the bunkhouse. I shivered as Noelle and I stood in line with the others, waiting our turn and soaking up what little heat crept toward us from the hot plates and ovens in the kitchen. As a woman served us pale pancakes and limp bacon, I tried not to think about the room beneath my boots, stockpiled with more weapons than I’d ever seen in my life. If one of those grenades went off, we’d all be dead. As if we weren’t already.