Page 47 of Beg the Night

Her expression lit with anger. Good. I liked her angry.

I liked it a little too much.

“I know you think I’m an idiot, but I do possess a basic need for survival. If I didn’t, then I would have left this world a long, long time ago.”

Her words created a pit in my stomach I didn’t want to examine.

“There are always reasons to fear death. Even if you don’t know what they are in this moment.” It took me a second before I realized I said that aloud.

New Girl only shrugged. “Sometimes they’re hard to figure out.”

Footsteps echoed off the stone walls, growing quicker and closer with every second.

We both froze, watching the door to our cell, waiting for what came next.

A woman dressed in black tactical gear approached. She was young, with her hair pulled away from her face in a way that made her look almost innocent.

But she was one of them. Regardless of her looks, she was far from innocent.

“Here,” she motioned, passing a glass jug through the bars. “More water. You’re going to need it.”

“Why are we here?” I asked. “What are you doing with us?”

Her eyes softened a fraction as she looked from me to New Girl. “Prepare yourselves. Drink the water. I’m sorry, I tried to stop this.”

Then she was gone, retreating as quickly as she’d come.

“Okay,” New Girl said. “That was suspicious. I’m going to try really hard not to panic right now.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, even as unease wormed its way through me. “She probably has no clue what she’s talking about.”

Silence fell between us, though New Girl studied the door, then me, as if dying to ask more questions. Questions I didn’t have the answers to. I tried to relax, and I tried to forget about the strange woman who had come to warn us.

If she was one of them, why would she have bothered? And what were we supposed to prepare ourselves for?

A few hours later, after we’d both pretended to relax, our questions were answered.

It started slow—a tendril of smoke creeping down the hall and into our cell, but before long, the smoke grew thicker and filled the room.

I scrambled away at first, but it was no use. Whatever this fog was, there was no escaping it.

“Oh my god,” New Girl gasped. “What is that?”

“Stay calm,” I said, not that I felt at all calm. “We don’t know what this is yet.”

“Stay calm? Are you kidding me? There’s a strange gas filling our cell, and you want me to stay calm?” She scrambled back onto the bed.

It was pointless. Within minutes, we were completely engulfed in the gas. We had no choice but to breathe it in, to move in it, to become part of it.

“They’re trying to kill us, aren’t they? This is how we die!”

“You are really not helping right now.” Panic crept into my voice, regardless of how I tried to hide it. They wouldn’t kill us like this, would they? With gas pumped into the room while we were trapped here like fucking dogs?

They were cowards, yes, but they needed us.

I held my breath for as long as I could, then covered my nose and mouth with my hands and tried to keep that gas out of my lungs, but it was no use.

We were pawns in the game of the Ministry, and there was nothing we could do about it.

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