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MARLEY HAD BEEN SAT, BACK PRESSED PAINFULLY AGAINST THE WALL, FOR WHAT MUST HAVE BEEN HOURS. Her back was hurting; it started as a throbbing at the base of her spine then twisted angrily, higher and higher, spreading through her bones like wildfire.
Tate had somehow fallen asleep. The gun was tucked at his side, by his hip, and for the past hour Marley had been weighing up her chances if she grabbed the weapon and ran. And, for the past hour, she'd been frozen in fear, terrified that if she tried, he'd kill her. And, for half of that time, she'd been weighing up her chances at escape. The odds were stacked against her; she'd never been the fastest — he always managed to catch her every time she'd tried to run from him — and her head was still hurting, pain thumping angrily through her bones. The dizziness had subsided, luckily, but she wasn't sure that her legs would hold her weight. They were trembling, like her fingers, even as she tucked them up against her chest.
In the time since Tate had fallen asleep, she'd only managed to think of one possible way of escape: she'd need to grab the gun — he couldn't shoot her that way — stumble as fast as she could towards the door and hope that he'd be able to make it out safety before he woke and realised she was gone. As time creeped on, crawling by so slowly that it seemed as if everything was moving in slow motion, Marley had been trying her best to work up the courage to run. She was desperately trying to ignore the fear screaming inside her head but it felt as if there were a thousand weights tugging on her aching limbs, stopping her from lifting herself up from the hard mental. Her thoughts just poured over the thousand and one things that could go wrong. She'd probably missed her chance now. Every second she stayed frozen was a second closer to Tate waking up and resuming whatever mind games he decided were fitting.
A silence had fallen over engineering now; save for Tate's irritatingly heavy breathing was the only sound. Before he'd drifted off to sleep — if he even was sleeping, she wouldn't have put it past him to pretend to be asleep to trick her into thinking she was safe for a couple of hours — someone had begun banging on the door, wordlessly trying to get through the door which was locked from the inside. It was quiet, at first, like shuffling and scraping behind the metal, then came the yelling and the hammering of fists against the unyielding barrier. The voices sounded like Raven and Wick, at first, then Elijah, then Bellamy, all screaming for the door to open. The whole situation had amused Tate immensely, especially as the voices grew increasingly impatient as they realised who was trapped inside; he'd sat, gun pointed at her head, hand pressed firmly over her mouth, with a smirk on his lips.
Marley glanced over at the sleeping boy just metres away. Dark curls flopped over his eyes, hiding his oddly content expression. In that moment, now the facade had fallen from his face, he looked peaceful, just like any other of the war torn kids sent to Earth to die. It reminded her of when they were on the Ark; Marley would lie awake at night, frozen or trembling or, sometimes, somehow, both while Tate slept soundlessly beside her, content to act as if nothing had ever happened. Even when she'd thought maybe she'd managed to get away from him, here she found herself again, fear keeping her as still as a statue.
