Swamp Murder

Swamp Murder. 57

Zhan's Pov.

The light doesn't change in here. Whether it's 2AM or 2PM, everything's the same shade of cold grey.

Max Unit. Maximum security, maximum silence, maximum hopelessness.

I don't know how Dre and I ended up here. One minute I was walking through Gate 12 at the airport, phone in hand, mid-laugh, and the next we were waking up in a transport van with cuffed wrists and no memory of the in-between. My tongue was dry. My jacket smelled like airport pretzels and sweat. Dre was groaning next to me. Confused, groggy, scared. Just like me.

They don't let you ask questions here.

The prison is a fortress carved into a mountain. High concrete walls laced with coiled razor wire. The windows aren't windows—they're slits. Like the place was designed for ghosts. We're only allowed out of our cells once a week for exactly two hours. The guards don't speak unless it's a command. There's no sunlight, just flickering fluorescent bulbs and the hum of surveillance with concrete walls and shattered reality.

That first night, I used my one call. Not to a lawyer, not even to my grandma.

I called Mia.

She picked up, bleary-eyed. "Zhan?"

I grinned like an idiot. "Guess what," I said, trying to sound breezy like I wasn't sitting in a cement coffin. "I'm eloping with Wang."

Mia blinked. "What?!"

I laughed. It echoed too loud in the steel-walled cell. I was shaking. "Yeah... we're running away, low-key."

She didn't laugh. "Zhan... what happened?"

"Wang's mom won't let us be," I said, finally honest. "We decided to run away."

The first year nearly broke Dre.

He stopped eating. His cheeks hollowed out, ribs showing even beneath the standard-issue uniform. He cried when he thought I wasn't watching, muffling the sound into his thin mattress. Some nights, he'd just sit on the floor, back against the cold wall, staring at nothing like his mind was slipping out through the cracks in the concrete.

But we made a pact—we were not going to die in this place. Not like this.

I started dragging him into workouts—pushups, sit-ups, burpees, even shadowboxing. We built routines with the tight space we had in our cells. Not to look good. But to stay alive. To stay sharp. Whoever did this to us... they weren't amateurs. This wasn't a mistake. It was precision. A message.

They took our freedom. But they wouldn't take our fire.

I doubt Wang even knows where I am. I imagine him pacing, looking for answers in places that don't exist. I hope he hasn't given up. But if I'm being honest, I stopped hoping for rescue a long time ago. I'm just glad Dre made me send the money to my family before everything went dark. Told them to sell the house, change their names, and disappear. He said, "If they're after us, they'll go after them next."

That thought keeps me up at night. But I sleep a little easier knowing they're gone, hidden.

And now... now we wait.

We've learned everything there is to learn in this cage: the guards' rotation, the timing of the lights, and how long it takes for backup to respond. We know when the cameras glitch when the generator kicks in during a blackout, and how long it takes before power fully restores.

We're not guessing anymore.

We're planning.

Because this place is not the end of our story.