Page 201 of The Games Gods Play
Right. Okay. She is not as relaxed around me as she looked. Yet.
I hold up both hands. “Can I get a change of clothes?” I wave at my bug-gut-and-blood-splattered clothing.
Annoyance crosses her features, but she goes to the door and asks someone outside named Craton. Ten minutes later, I’m brought a white jumpsuit.
“At least it’s not orange,” I tell Nike. “Makes me look jaundiced.”
She frowns.
Daemones. So serious.
With a shrug, I head into the shower.
The only place I can be alone in here. I turn on the water, strip, and step under the spray, then immediately wrap my arms around my middle, crumbling over them as I try to contain my heartbreak.
I don’t know how long I stay in there like that, letting the water both hide the sounds that escape every so often and wash away the evidence.
“That’s enough!” Nike’s voice is muffled by the walls but still distinct.
Damn.
It takes three tries to answer her in a normal-sounding voice. “Bug guts are sticky. I’ll be out in a bit.”
No answer, which I take as agreement.
Even so, I force myself to stop wallowing and actually wash myself off. The toiletries provided are basic but get the job done, and minutes later, I’m back out in my cell, wet hair slicked back and remarkably comfy in the jumpsuit, which is fashioned from some soft, stretchy material.
I’m holding it all in again. So tightly I feel like an overblown balloon. If I so much as brush against the carpeting wrong, I’ll pop.
Meanwhile, it’s still daylight. Probably time for lunch. I can’t lie down and go to sleep and hide myself in the dark.
So now what?
I go to the computer. Thieves of the Order don’t have email or any kind of online presence. We’re digital ghosts on purpose. So there’s nothing to check. Instead, I open up a browser.
And the first thing I see is a giant headline that reads, Two More Dead as Crucible Nears the End.
Meike and Dex’s deaths immediately replay in my head in detail so distinct I hear Dex’s grunt all over again, see the life leave his body. I click away from that fast but not fast enough, thanks to the renewed shaking of my hands. I close my eyes and try not to see the image on the backs of my lids.
“Are you going to be ill?” Nike asks with an indifference that would do prison guards around the world proud. She clearly doesn’t want to deal with the mess.
“No.”
I force my eyes open to stare at the screen, which is now showing the home page of a streaming service—the first thing I saw that seemed neutral to click on. Except the movie they are featuring at the top, the preview already running, is some bloody action film involving murders and purges.
“Nope,” I mutter, then scroll and click the first thing that looks not that.
K-drama. A romantic comedy.
Right. Better.
The sound will be a shield of sorts. The computer, too. I can stare at it like I’m watching to pass the time, and she’ll pay no attention to me. Maybe it will even distract me. Although I don’t think so.
I’m staring down several days to sit in here and think of nothing but…
I shove his name out of my head before I can think it. I don’t want to think about him.
So think about something else.
