Finally the little blue light that signaled safety flickered into life and the hallucinations began to retreat. Jay was breathing heavily, trying to fight back the bile in her throat. It was no use. Feeling her head spin, she leaned as far away from where she was sat as she could, straining against the chains, and threw up. There wasn't much to come up; lunch had been a long time ago and she had missed dinner. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and grimaced at the vile taste. She leaned back against the wall of the meat locker and shivered. Her breath curled up into the air in front of her as she tried to forget the memories of the dogs and her old Lieutenant; on the up side, at least Jason had stayed away this time.
Suddenly she realized she was not alone in the Dark. Two meters away, on the other side of the room, also shackled by his wrists and ankles, was a Cheap. He had been badly beaten but he was only a couple of days into his Training; they hadn't drugged him yet or used their more rigorous methods on him. She looked closer. It was the one who had killed Bantam.
By his feet was a metal tray of food, entirely untouched and now stone cold. "If you're not going to eat that, pass it over here" Jay said gruffly. The Cheap just looked back at her blankly. She hissed in annoyance. "Stupid Cheap." She muttered to herself. She caught the Cheap's attention and pointed to herself, and then the tray of food. Finally he seemed to twig and slid the food over to her. Thankfully it came to rest less than a foot away from her side; she couldn't move much further than that in any direction.
She all but lunged toward the food. Although she still felt somewhat nauseous, she knew from past experience that eating helped to speed up the course of the drug through her system. On the plate were two slices of spam, some instant mashed potatoes and some tinned peas. She ate quickly, cramming handfuls of mash and peas into her mouth, leaving the spam until last.
She was just about to move onto the spam when she glanced back at the Cheap. He was staring at her in disbelief. "What are you looking at, Cheap?" She snarled aggressively, before remembering that the idiot didn't know what she was saying. Even so, the Cheap looked away, allowing Jay to make quick work of the spam left on the tray. Just as she was finishing she heard a voice.
"What's a 'cheap'?" the Cheap asked. Jay almost choked on the small mouthful she had been savoring. She looked up at him in shock.
"You speak Russian?" she replied, somewhat stunned, but also a bit suspicious; it was unusual for Cheaps to speak the Ghosts' language.
"Yes" the Cheap said uncertainly.
"Good." Jay replied. The Cheap looked confused. "The more you understand, the quicker you will learn. The quicker you learn, the better your chances of survival. You owe it to Bantam to survive."
"Who is Bantam?"
"The man you killed." Jay said bluntly.
"He was going to kill me. I had no choice." He protested. Jay snorted in derision and shook her head, wondering how he could be so blind.
"There is always a choice. You weighed the value of your life against his. You made the decision to take his life in order to save your own."
"I didn't want to kill him."
"But you did. And now you must find a way to live with that. For his sake." Jay murmured. They stopped talking as Jay suddenly coughed violently, her entire body shuddering. Then as quickly as she started, she stopped, again noting the tiny specks of blood that appeared in her palm. She wiped them away.
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