Shilan

Six

"You're shitting me, right?"

With a gaze heated enough to light a campfire, Noah glowered down at me, a harsh line forming between his full brows.

I shrugged at him indifferently, forcing myself not to shrink into the couch. "I'm not shitting any--"

"You want us to stay behind?"

His words were enunciated slowly, a strong sign of how thin the leash holding his temper back was. At that moment, I really wished I'd been the one stuck in a straitjacket instead of Adam. I would've at least been in the safety of my locked room and not out here, subjected to Noah's fiery wrath.

Rubbing at my neck, I lowered my voice, "Only the three of you won't be coming along at first . . ." By three, I meant Noah, Russ and Maria for the escape plan we were to execute in a few days.

His hard eyes narrowed further, the bald patches on his skull from where he'd once pulled out fistfuls of hair bright red with his anger. He opened his mouth to commence his rant, the sharp expanding of his chest a clear indication he intended to do so with a much higher tone, but I silenced him with a sharp look of warning.

A finger raised towards the Screamers huddled before the television behind him, I said, "You don't want to get them to start their screaming, do you? Red-Head would get here in seconds." Noah was one of the inmates who identified the attendants by their hair colour.

"I don't give two shits about Red," he countered.

"Even those bloodcurdling screams? I can recall them bothering you just a bit too much?"

I watched as he stabbed the inside of his cheek with his tongue, irritation scrawled over every inch of his flushed face. Flicking a glance over his shoulder, he eventually relented and sat down beside me on the couch with a huff.

With Noah no longer towering over me, I felt a wisp of relief. But the anxiety constantly building in me for Adam still ate at my chest.

He'd been locked in his room ever since the episode here in the common room with the television, only permitted out for supervised visits to the bathroom. No one knew when Pauline would end this crude punishment, and I hadn't dared speak to him through the holes in our walls. Whenever I'd picture him in a straitjacket for long hours, my heart would constrict to the point of pain. Adam might have been the strongest person among us, but the last time Pauline had punished him, it'd .

It was only through Lena that we'd known he'd been put in a straitjacket before being thrown in his room, an eye bloodied. Noah was acting all worked up on a part of the plan he disliked. Frankly though, he should raise his hands and pray we actually got through with this plan at all with the ways things had gone out.

Minutes passed in a silence filled only by the atrocious singing of the fish in the cartoon playing before us, their voice nasally and injurious to the ears.

Alright, little fishies, count with me! Won't you count with me! Raise those fins, now can't you count with me!

The Screamers watched on with their eyes blank and unblinking, staring at those dancing fishies with faces utterly void of emotion.

With his voice grave, Noah turned to me once more, "So the other two are just fine with lounging behind, then?"

I rubbed at my neck, wondering where on earth Lena currently was. Had she known we'd be questioned like this? "You aren't going to be lounging behind," I clarified. "You'll be waiting in that dining room with your ears perked, waiting for a slam of the bathroom door." A nurse appeared by the doorway, eyes briefly scanning the room, so I lowered my voice, "After the slam, you'll all be running for your lives. No lounging behind at all."