“Joy?” He sounds stunned that someone witnessed his misdeed. “You saw Joy?”
Elian is on a roll now as she turns towards the nearly dead man next to her. “And him – he was the man helping you!” She flicks her head back to Lev, not scared that she is locked in a room with two killers, just suddenly furious that men like them the world over think they can do whatever they want to women, use them, use their bodies, attack them, kill them– She forces her thoughts down as the adrenalin reaches her head and she feels it spinning. But now, for the first time, her head is as clear as a bell, her mind feels sharp and focussed. Now there are no gaps in her brain. Now she feels everything. It is exhilarating.
Lev is aghast as he listens to the mad girl raving at him. It is her, its Niko’s girl from the forest, the black one, the one who, when he looked at her closely (once she was unconscious, because awake she’d been a wild cat), he could see clearly the resemblance between her and Afia and Niko. Back then he’d likened her more to Afia, the same finely boned face, same petite figure. But now, now she is angry she is all her father. Those eyes, those eyes … His heart lurches in his chest as he wonders if she knows. Because something, something about her, tells him that she doesn’t. And if she did …
But that is not what matter now, getting some childish revenge on a girl who has come all this way for him. No. Right now, survival matters, just getting out of here alive. And to do that, they need to help each other.
“Look,” he says, “I didn’t kill those other women, I swear it. I was with them, I … wanted to …” he pauses, wondering how to put into words his fantasy that he cannot even explain to himself.
“What?” she demands. “What did you want to do?”
“I wanted to cut them.” His words are simple.
She screws her face up and he knows how it sounds. Depraved. Perverted. Disgusting.
“I wanted to try it, I just needed to, I’d seen Niko doing it back home, to the girls, to Afia, he got such a rush–” He stops talking. At the mention of Niko she has paled beneath the glorious brown skin. She has turned grey.
Frantically he twists his fingers around the ropes that bind his wrists. He needs to get himself out of this, because now, now that he has mentioned the man that spawned her, now he has lost her.
She doesn’t want to listen to Lev anymore. She won’t – can’t – be reminded of him, Niko. Not now, not at this time. Maybe never.
“Who bought you here? Was it the same man who put me here?” Lev demands.
Elian frowns in concentration. She was in the doctor’s office, she drank the drink that would prepare her for the M.R.I scan. Was it the drink? Had the doctor spiked it? And if so, why, when he’d showed her nothing but concern and kindness before now? Had he been attacked in his own home? Burgled, perhaps, for his medication or money. Maybe the intruder hadn’t expected him to have a patient with him so early in the morning …
“Did the doctor bring you here, or was it someone else?” she fires the question back at Lev, but he stares at her blankly.
“He’s no fucking doctor,” he replies scornfully.
She turns her head to look at the other man, the one whose head is hanging low so his chin is touching his chest. The man with the livid purple marks around his white neck. The man who is whimpering ever so quietly.
“Hey, you, wake up,” she demands. Stretching out a foot she kicks at him with a canvas covered foot. “I know you’re awake, look at me.”
He screws his eyes shut, shakes his head emphatically.
Like a child, thinks Elian.
Still she persists in poking him, until eventually he raises his head and looks at her.
“You’re pretty,” he says, his fears and tears seemingly momentarily forgotten.
Elian pulls back when he speaks. His words are not those of someone who is normal. Now she comes to think of it, neither is he. Just by looking at him she can see there is something amiss.
“Who are you? Why are you here?” she asks, roughly, because she senses that is the only way she will get through to him.
“I did a bad thing,” he whispers before shooting a look over at Lev, who is looking at the man, intrigued. “It was his fault, he was shouting.”
“You mean Joy?” Elian edges as far as her ties will allow her in his direction. She thinks fast, she needs him to help, she mustn’t upset him. They are three people, they need to work together, in spite of how distasteful she finds the thought. “It sounds like it was an accident, like it wasn’t meant to happen.”
He flicks his head up and stares straight into her eyes. “Yes, yes, an accident, I’d never hurt Joy, I liked Joy!”
“What’s your name?” she asks.
“Roland. His name is Roland,” says Lev.
Both Elian and Roland shoot him a look. Elian pulls back. She hates him, but she might need him.
“All right, Roland. My name is Elian.” As she speaks her name she sees him forming the word with his lips, but it is a struggle for him. She smiles, or she hopes she does, to her it feels like a grimace. “You can call me Ellie, all my friends do. Can you tell us where we are? Why we’re here? Who put us here?”
He shakes his head, flaps it from side
