Ruby

Chapter One

Pain. Needles. I am screaming. I want it to stop. It does. I lie there, on the cold metal table, breathless. But it comes back just as quickly as it left. More needles. More pain. More screaming. Black spots swirl around my vision.

Just let me die!!! I scream into my mind.

But they won't. Not yet. They're not finished with me. I wish they were.

Suddenly, the needles stop.

"That's enough for now. take her back to her cell," a voice says, low and gravelly.

A final needle slides beneath my skin. This one doesn't hurt so bad. I feel groggy, and my mind begins to fog up. The last thing I see before I black out is a pair of ruby eyes.

***

My eyes drag open, only to be met with the disgusting view of decaying cell walls. Water drips from the ceiling, and rot is slowly crawling upwards. I sit up, and a wave of nausea hits me. My broken body slips off of the grimy cot and I shudder on the floor, coughing and heaving. Slowly, I climb to my feet and walk over to the cell door. Leaning my weight against it, I peer out of the bars, looking for any of the other prisoners.

"Matt? Lucy? Cinda? Anyone?" I call out softly into the darkness.

"Veronica? You're alive?" a voice I recognize as Cinda's calls back to me. "We thought for sure they had killed you!"

"No, I'm still here. Just barely, though." I sigh and slip to the floor. "I'm glad all of you are still here."

"What did they do to you this time?" Matt asks weakly.

"Needles," I answer. Last time, they had forced some vile serums down my throat that burned my stomach. When I refused to swallow, they beat me until I did. I shudder at the memory.

"Well, at least you survived," Cinda whispers.

"Yeah," I say. "Where's Lucy?"

I hear Cinda begin to whimper.

"They took her while you were knocked out. One of the guards said she wasn't coming back," Matt says quietly.

"Oh." I say. The news hits me like a kick in the gut. Another one of us is dead. Who knows who will be next.

A guard comes stumbling into the hallway. I can tell by the way he smells and walks that he is drunk. Finding safety in the shadows, I slip into the back of my cell, away from the door. I don't want to be the victim of his beating if he decides to satisfy his need to cause pain.

As I suspected, he yanks someone out of their cell. I don't know the prisoner very well, and I can't recall his name. The guard begins to pound on him. I flinch every time a fist comes down.

Something falls out of the guard's pocket and skids to my cell. I slowly crawl forward and reach out for it.

Please be the key please be the key please be the key.

I wrap my fingers around the object and pull it inside.

It isn't the key.

It's a fork.

Bitter disappointment floods through me. I was so close. The fork tumbles from my loosely curled fingers and clatters across the floor until it rests underneath my cot. Sighing, I use the final bit of my strength to yank myself up onto the cot. Exhausted, I descend into sleep, the sounds of death and torture chasing me through my dreams.