Page 173 of Burn Like An Angel

Beside me, a crimson-soaked lump of meat is trapped at an unnatural angle. Head slumped. Leg pinned. Warner’s breathing is uneven, matching the sobs coming from somewhere behind me.

I dip in and out, too tired to hold myself in the present. The flashes return. Shouts. Car doors. Barked orders. Crunching footsteps. Someone is prising the back doors open.

“Ripley,” I slur semi-consciously.

Hands grab her. Slicing seat belts. Wrenching her struggling limbs. No matter how much I shout internally, I can’t get my body to respond. It’s shutting down on me.

The sound of her screaming our names is the last thing I hear before the world disappears.

CHAPTER 26

RIPLEY

END OF A GOOD THING – CORY WELLS

I’m trapped in a nightmare.A terrifyingly realistic, lucid dream. One pulled from the depths of my traumatised memories. That’s the only explanation for this scene. There’s no way it can possibly be real.

Wrists chained above me, I battle to clear the fog from my struggling brain, hoping my surroundings will change once I wake up. I must be on death’s door to be imagining this place.

A scratched, ancient, padded cell.

Blood streaks marking the concrete floor.

Dusty air vents high above me.

Alone and shackled.

Slamming my eyes shut, I will the nightmare to be over when I reopen them. It’s no good. Nothing changes but the worsening ache in my head. It feels like it’s on the verge of rupturing.

Small details filter in like trickling tar. Like the fact that I’m wearing the same clothes I had on while watching the news reports spill in over morning coffee. It’s tacky with dried blood now. I’m covered in it.

Wiggling my toes, I try to decipher any injuries. The steady throbbing in my skull sure feels like a concussion. I canremember my head smacking into something hard when we flew through the air.

Fuck!

Realisation hits in a heady wave.

The car crash. Being rammed. Flipped over until our armoured vehicle was little more than cotton wool. Lennox slumped over me. Raine’s shouting. Smoke and fire all around.

I was conscious when a balaclava-wearing figure wrestled me from the wreck. My neck aches as I shift, testing my theory. It’s a familiar pain. The result of being jabbed with a syringe.

“No,” I whimper in pain. “Fuck… Xan! Lennox! Raine!”

My shouts are pitiful, barely permeating the old padding that wraps my cell. This can’t be happening. There’s no way I’m back in Harrowdean, locked in a cell. The concussion is fucking with my head.

Yelling their names at the top of my lungs, nothing but abandoned silence answers me. The padded cell absorbs my cries, playing them back to me in a sickening taunt.

When I notice the tally marks that have been painted on the cell walls in crusted blood, my sobs turn to screams. This isn’t the same cell I was previously in.

It’s dirtier, scarred from years of battling to escape by any means necessary. Each day trapped in hell marked in mortality. Perhaps the same cell Patient Three and countless others were held in.

I cry myself to the point of almost throwing up, falling into petrifying hysteria. Any comfort that surviving my last trip here should offer is short-lived. Escaping the Zimbardo wing was a miraculous feat.

One I can’t repeat.

And this time, I’m alone.

For a long time, I simply float. Exhausted and riddled with pain. When I find the energy to rouse myself again, I tug on theshackles pinning my arms above me at such an awful angle, it feels like my shoulders are being ripped from their sockets.

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