The steel door to the prison block appeared ahead, the guards outside already opening it. In a blink, Chris and his captors were through, and they were marching him down the rows of cells. Only a few faces remained now to watch Chris's return.
On first glimpse, Chris thought his cell was empty. He felt a second's relief, that he might not yet have to face the accusations of his cellmates, but as the guard drew the door open, he glimpsed movement from Liz's bed. Her haggard face poked into view, and she watched in grim silence as the guards propelled Chris inside.
Steel screeched behind him, followed by the clang of the locking mechanism. Footsteps retreated down the corridor, fading until another clang announced the guards' departure from the prison block.
Standing there, Chris's legs began to shake. Gasping, he gripped the metal bar of his bunk, struggling to stay upright. He closed his eyes, waiting for Liz to speak, to hurl her accusations.
You killed him.
The words screamed in his mind, but Liz remained silent. Only the distant whisper of other prisoners could be heard. He took a deep breath, tasting the bleach in the air, the blood from a cut on his lip.
"Are you okay?" He jumped as Liz finally spoke.
He looked up then, finding Liz's big eyes watching him, and saw his own pain reflected in their sapphire depths. She sat on her bunk, knuckles white as she gripped the metal sidebar. Her eyes shone, and a single tear streaked her cheek.
"No." Chris's shoulders slumped. "You?"
She shook her head, looked away, but he had seen the guilt in her eyes. The truth hung over the room like a blanket, smothering them.
They were alive. And that could only mean one thing.
Chris took a better grip of his bunk and hauled himself up. Crawling across the sagging mattress, he collapsed into his pillow. Then he turned and saw Liz still watching him. Her lips trembled. There was no sign of the proud, defiant girl he'd first seen in the cages. The last few days, last few hours, had broken her.
Broken us both, a voice reminded him.
Chris pushed himself up and twisted to face Liz. "Did you…?" His voice trailed off. He couldn't finish the question.
Her crystal eyes found his. "Yes," she whispered.
A chill went through Chris at her words. He stared at her, noticing now the purple bruise on her cheek, the dried blood on her lip. His eyes travelled lower and found the swollen black skin beneath her collar. He shuddered. Her struggle had been far more real than his. He remembered the boy Joshua, guessed he was the one…
"What happened?" he asked.
Liz closed her eyes. "I didn't mean…" She sucked in a breath, and her eyes flashed open. "I didn't want to," she growled.
Chris nodded, leaning back against the concrete wall. "You did what you had to."
"He would have killed me," she continued as though he had not spoken. "I had to do it. He left me no choice…"
Chris felt a sudden urge to wrap his arms around the young woman, to hold her until the pain left her. This was a side of Liz he had not seen, a vulnerability beneath the armor she'd worn from the first moment he'd laid eyes on her. Gone was the hardness, the distant air of superiority. The foulness of this place had consumed everything else, had reduced them both to shadows of their former selves.
He could almost feel his humanity fading away, slipping through his fingers like grains of rice. With each fresh atrocity he witnessed, with every awful thing they forced him to do, he lost another part of himself, took one step closer to becoming the animal they thought him to be. One way or another, soon he would cease to exist. Nothing would remain of the boy his mother had raised.
"It doesn't matter," Chris said. Liz looked up at his words, and he continued, his voice breaking. "Whether you killed him or not, only one of you was ever walking out of that room. After my…after William fell, he couldn't stand, couldn't defend himself. A doctor came. She executed him."
A sharp hiss of breath came from Liz, but it was a long time before she replied. "Who are these people?"
Monsters, Chris thought, but did not speak the word.
Across from him, Liz started to cough. A long, drawn-out series of wheezes and gasps rattled from her chest, going on and on, until her face was flushed red and her brow creased with pain. Finally, she leaned back against the wall, panting for breath.
"Are you okay?" Chris whispered.
Liz opened her eyes and stared at him. "Of course, city boy. I can take a beating."
Chris winced. His own anger rose but he bit back a curt reply. There was no point taking offense. He could see her pain, knew where the anger came from. He had not missed the coldness with which she addressed himself and their cellmates at times, her hesitation to join their conversations.
Another rattle came from her chest as she laid her head back against the wall.
"We're not all bad, you know," he said at last. "Not all rich, either. There are a lot of people who disagree with the government now, even in the cities. There have been protests…"
"Protests?" Liz coughed, her voice wry. "Well, nice to hear you're getting out."
Chris sighed. "I understand—"
"You don't," Liz said, cutting him off. "You think you do, but you don't. You can't. Because while you lived your cozy life in the city, I was forced onto the streets. Not because I wanted to, not because I had a choice, but because everyone I knew was dead. Slaughtered."
Shivering, Chris opened his mouth to reply, then thought better of it.
Liz eyed him for a moment before continuing: "I had nowhere to go, no one left to turn to. I thought the police would help, that they would protect me. But when they came, they looked at me like I was nothing, like I was an inconvenience to them. They would have arrested me, thrown me in some place like this if I hadn't run."
Chris looked away from the pain in Liz's eyes. He stared at his hands, the bruises on his knuckles. His stomach clenched with guilt.
"I'm sorry," he whispered at last. "You shouldn't have been treated that way. It's not right." He paused. "Was it a Chead?"
Liz flinched at the word. When she did not reply, Chris went on. "Mom always said something needed to be done, that her father would have been ashamed with what's happened since the war. We should never have let things get so bad." He took a breath. "But that doesn't change what I said. We're not all evil, Liz. Some of us want to fix things, want the government to be held accountable."
"So I should just give all of you the benefit of the doubt? For decades you ignored the Chead, let them terrorize the countryside. You only cared when they came for you." Liz snapped.
"No," Chris replied softly. "You should judge us by our own actions, not those of others." He breathed out. "A long time ago, I might have hated you too, Liz. Feared you for being different, for speaking with a rural accent."
"But not now?"
He shook his head. "No…" He trailed off, remembering a time long ago. "When I was younger, I was running late getting home from school. It was getting dark, and we don't live in a good neighborhood. When I was nearly home, a man stepped out of an alleyway. He had a knife."
"Let me guess, he was from the country too?"
Chris laughed softly. "No, he spoke like a normal person." He couldn't help but tease her for the assumption. "But I think he was an addict of some sort—his eyes were wild and his hands were shaking. Before I had a chance to reach for my bag, he swung the knife at me, caught me in the shoulder. I still have the scar…"
Liz nodded. "I saw."
Chris glanced across at her, his cheeks warming. He remembered his embarrassment when they'd been forced to remove their clothes. Apparently, Liz had allowed her eyes to roam more than he had.
"What does this have to do with anything, Chris?"
Chris shrugged. "I think he would have killed me if someone else hadn't come along." He paused, looking across at Liz. "I don't know where he came from, but suddenly there was a man standing between us. He spoke with a rural accent, told the mugger to leave. When the man didn't listen, my rescuer took his knife away and sent him running."
"And this suddenly changed your mind about us?"
Chris shrugged. "Not overnight, no. But the man walked me home, right to my front door. He even helped mom with my wound. He didn't have to help me, could have left me to die, dismissed me as some spoiled brat who deserved it. But he chose to help me instead. Since then, I've tried to do the same. To give people a chance, whoever they are."
Liz let out a long sigh. "And you want the same from me now?" she asked. "Because some man from the country saved you from a mugger?"
Chris chuckled. "It would be nice to start with a clean slate."
"After today, I'm not sure that's possible for us, Chris. Joshua's blood is on my hands…"
"No," Chris replied firmly. "It's on theirs."
Liz nodded, but they both knew the words meant little. They might not have had a choice, but that did little to lessen the burden.
"We're all in this together now, aren't we?" Liz repeated Ashley's words from all those days ago, on the day they had arrived.
Chris's gut clenched as he realized that she and Sam still had not returned.
On the other bed, Liz continued, her voice hesitant. "Okay, Chris," she whispered. "I'll give you a chance."
"Thank you," he said after a while.
Silence settled around them then. Chris stared up at the ceiling, struggling to resolve the emotions battling within him. William's face drifted through his thoughts, his eyes wide and staring, but the guilt felt a little less now. Liz had faced the same question, given the same answer.
Somehow, that made things just a little easier to bear.
Long hours ticked past and the others did not return. Chris and Liz waited in the hushed stillness of the cell, listening to the thump of the guard's boots outside, the whisper of voices from the other cells. Liz's breath grew more ragged.
Finally, the bang of the outer door announced the arrival of newcomers. The soft tread of footsteps followed, moving down the corridor. Metal screeched as cell doors opened, and the footsteps continued on towards them.
Chris sat up as shadows fell across the bars of their cell. Relief swelled in his chest when he saw Ashley and Sam standing outside. Hinges squeaked as the door opened and they stumbled inside. Sad smiles touched their faces as they saw Chris and Liz.
"So," Sam breathed. "You're alive."