Page 65 of Defiant Beta

I drop the towels stuffed into a hoodie and sweatpants and whip around.

Someone shut the door.

I rush across the room, but I suspect I know what I’ll find. Cursing under my breath, I shove at the door to get it open, but it won’t budge.

“If someone is playing a joke, this is not the time or the place!” I shout.

The temperature rises as another door slams shut, farther away, and I get the sense I walked into a trap.

Wiping the sweat from my forehead with the back of one hand, I pull my phone out of my pocket and curse when there’s no signal.

I call Xavier anyway, just in case.

My phone beeps but doesn’t dial or connect.

I tap a quick text and hit send as the screen on my phone sweats. There’s a low probability that he will receive that text with no signal, but it's possible.

Then I return my phone to my pocket and scan my surroundings for a way out.

I’m calm.

I’ve gone through things I never thought I would escape from.

“This is nothing,” I mutter.

An hour later, I’ve stripped off my sweatpants, sneakers, and T-shirt, but I’m still cooking. This room wasn’t designed for aperson to stay in for hours, and I feel every bit of moisture in me leaking out in the form of buckets of sweat.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve rammed the door, but I do it again. My shoulder slides off it, and I crash to the floor, cracking my head on the wooden bench. I try to get up but my legs are jelly.

“Two minutes,” I murmur.

Two minutes to rest up and then you get your ass up.

I ponder the banging, the woman’s laughter, and I wonder why someone would draw me into this death trap.

Did I see something I shouldn’t have?

The heat squeezes every bit of air from the room. I fight for each breath, and it burns my lungs.

It’s hitting me that I’ve been down for much longer than two minutes.

“Up, Levi,” I gasp as I suck in more hot, steamy air.

This level of heat is unreal.

There was a time in my life when I never believed I would ever be warm.

Back then, it was freezing cold showers whenever I couldn’t sneak into school to use the gym showers.

No power. Nothing clean to wear. Handwashing clothes in the sink. Tearing off the green, moldy bits from slices of bread to make a peanut butter sandwich to take to school.

All the while, I subtly sniff myself, hoping no teacher will figure out that I’m living alone with no parent or guardian. In short, no one to give a shit whether I live or die.

I thought the cold would kill me.

I laugh bitterly.

Look at me now, cooking from the inside out.