brutal

Chapter 39

The plan was going to work. For all their efforts and suffering, the plan of their escape just had to work.

All Four could think about was that. Of course, she'd been riddled with worry ever since they were walked back to their cells, but she decided it was time to think about the things that could go right.

They'd be free, all of them.

But then she remembered that Kai promised her that he'd take care of her, and that made her suddenly all the more ready to leave with him.

"Pssst! Four!" Kai called her from the cell next to hers. She saw him grip the bars with a smile, an odd thing to see in such a grim place. "Look! Look what I made you."

Four waited patiently as Kai took something out of his pocket and held it out for her on his palm. She inched forward to admire it up close. Hesitantly, she took it from him and stared at the object in awe.

"It's a ring," Kai said almost shyly. She couldn't read how he felt; a blur of happiness and fear appeared on his face. "I found the wire in the box of scraps in the weapons room earlier, and the gem's a dark stone I stole from one of the doctors in the lab. I snagged it from her necklace when she wasn't looking."

Four felt her breath hitch when Kai gently grabbed her wrist and splayed her fingers, taking back the ring from her hold to slowly fit the handmade band around her ring finger. It was a bit loose, but the wire was malleable enough for him to easily adjust it to fit perfectly.

She admired how it looked on her hand. Her fingers were chipped and far from clean, and the skin on her hand was littered with dozens of cuts and scars. Four never really paid much attention to how her hands looked like because she never really had a reason to care.

But this? The ring that Kai made just for her? She never had the urge to cherish something so small until now.

"I promise you, we'll be getting out of here. You can stay with us in Vermont and you can get the room next to mine. I'll tell you all about Batman. We can ask for so much chocolates and candy. My mommy might get mad, but that's why we'll ask my dad instead."

She giggled in excitement at the thought. She didn't want to get her hopes up, but she also did not want to go back to the way she was before. Pessimistic. Negative. Unloving.

She had Kai, and no one could split them apart. Not even the Professor. She was not going back.

The plan is going to work, she told herself all over and over again in her head like a chant. She needed to reassure herself to manifest it into reality. She needed the confidence to make it real.

She needed all the help she could get to make it out alive.

「＊」

They struck at midnight, right at the moment the guards switched and rotated shifts. One minute. She had one minute to move.

Four pushed off from the cold cement and gripped the bars of her cell. Pulling out the makeshift key Five had given to her just hours before, she inserted it into the hole from outside and prayed a silent wish as she turned it.

Click! She had no time to lose as she pushed it open. Four eyed her and Zero's cell one last time before she ran down the hallway.