Shilan

Three

It was as if she knew.

Pauline had held her incisive eyes on me and Adam from the very moment we'd stepped out of our rooms, her gaze not straying from us even for a second. With the way her sparse brows were lifted in arches, it seemed she could truly sense we were up to something.

And she wasn't wrong. But we were up to many things.

Although today definitely wouldn't be the day we'd execute Adam's escape plan, we still had a great deal of work to do. A whole lot to figure out, a little more scheming, a handful of people to convince. After all, attempting an escape from an insane asylum run by a litter of insane attendants wasn't exactly an everyday task.

When briefly discussing his plan last night through the holes in our walls that I'd later stuffed close with cotton from my pillow, Adam had asked me once more if I was certain I wanted to pull through with all this. That maybe this needed a little more consideration.

"If anything goes wrong . . ." He'd shaken his head to himself, as if the thought alone disturbed him. "There's really no second chances when it comes to these nurses. There's no telling what they'll do to us if we get caught."

Though the very thought of getting caught did scare me out of my skin, I shrugged. "At this point, failure has to be better than no attempt at all . .   ." A sigh. "It's been years. We can't just allow ourselves to be held captive here forever."

Adam flattened his lips into a hard line before nodding grimly in agreement. He was as sick of this place as I was; this risk was one anyone would take. I picked at the peeling skin of my fingers as I asked how long he thought this escape would take.

He ran a calloused hand through his hair--a nervous tick of his. "We should be able to be out of this building in a day, if not less." His gaze wandered away from mine as he then added, "If we stick firmly to the plan and . . . if we're a little lucky, I guess."

I gave him a pointed look I hoped he could see in this yawning darkness. "We can't really afford to lean on luck, Adam."

"I know," he said. "But in all honesty, Shilan, luck really is playing a large part in all this." He shrugged. "We're only two people. There's at least nine of those attendants."

Adam was exactly right, of course. We were two young adults who hadn't had a proper meal in years, who hadn't run more than a few paces in months, who hadn't seen beyond these prison walls in what felt like a decade. I shuffled on my feet, fumbling with the neckline of my gown turned a dark brown as I wondered aloud, "Well, should we . . . should we ask one of the nurses for help?"

He chuckled at this almost instantly, failing to contain his laughter.

I shook my head at him. "Like you said, we can't do this on our own. We haven't even been to more than half the rooms in this building."

His narrowed eyes gazing behind him, presumably at his barred door, he snarled, "You're really asking me to trust those nurses, Shilan? Did you not see what Jude did to that girl's skull? What he did to you?"

I'd opened my mouth to volley back when the vibrant squeaking of what sounded like tires on tile sounded from outside my door. My lips immediately sealed shut as they always did whenever we heard this squeaking during this time of night. Adam and I had come to the conclusion that it was trolley of a sort, but seeing as we'd never witnessed a single attendant use a trolley during the day, the assumption was a weak one.

He pressed a hard forefinger to his lips, removing it only once the sound of tires and the attendant's footfalls left us. "Look, what if we tell the others?"