Killer One ✓

Chapter 04

Lacey.

At six a.m., the lights came back on the cells but it didn't matter, I hadn't slept at all. At six thirty a.m., Cameron returned to the cell and looked like he'd gone ten rounds with a meat pulverizer and lost. Ben and I both sat up in bed but didn't move to get off of it as the guards let him back in. Dread filled me as I looked at how absolutely broken Cameron's body looked. They had him for seven hours and it looked like they used every single minute to hurt him some way. The guards left after they locked the cell and Cameron hovered by the door. His body looked like it was going to collapse on him any second but his eyes were trained on Ben and I with such ferocity I couldn't look away.

"You look terrible," Ben pointed out as Cameron headed in our direction.

Cameron's eyes cut to him and he nodded.

Ben let go of my hand and got of the bed for Cameron, who practically fell down onto it. I moved to the end of the bed to give him more room.

"I mean, really terrible," Ben added.

Cameron shrugged and I could see his chest stuttering as he breathed in and out.

Ben and I gave each other pointed looks because Cameron was brushing this off like it was nothing.

"Who did this to you?" I asked.

Ben waved in my direction as if he could erase my words from the air. "How did they do this to you?"

Cameron, sitting on the edge of the bed with his feet on the floor, only leaned forward to put his hands on his knees. He looked at the ground and I scooted a little closer, not too confident that he wasn't going to fall forward and face plant into the ground. If he did, I could at least try to catch him beforehand.

"Did you even fight back?" Ben continued on.

This time, Cameron sort of answered by lifting one of his hand and wobbling it as if he was saying sort of. He sort of fought back.

"What?" I asked at the same time Ben said, "Why not?"

Cameron moved so that he was fully on the bed, pulling his feet up onto the mattress. He shuffled on his knees towards the white cinder block wall behind us. One hand reached into his pocket while the other pushed me rudely out of his way.

He brought a pencil would of his pocket and began drawing lines on the wall.

"Stay behind me," he said. "Don't make it obvious."

"What are you—" I began, propped behind him on the bed.

"Shh," he cut me off. I frowned.

After a few minutes he pulled away from the wall and sat with his back against it. The lines he'd constructed were next to his shoulder. I squinted at it, tilting my head to the side. There was a square with a star on it and from it came lines that split off in many different directions. Every now and then there was another square. He wrote 'video', 'interrogate', and 'travis' inside three different squares.

"Is this a map?" I asked, eyes stuck on Travis' name.

"This is all I know so far from where they took me," Cameron explained. "They took me to this room first to interrogate me but really just had a bunch of people waiting to jump me. I fought back a little but I didn't want to use up all of my energy fighting them for no reason. We don't know where the exit is yet and we don't know what's waiting for us when we get there."

I studied the map again, recalling earlier when Cameron had told me about the crap his father used to put him through. How he used to have to survive for a week by himself and make it back to the Casey house where his father or others would be waiting to try to beat him up. Cameron said he always had to make sure he had enough left in him to survive that last part.