Page 94 of Tell Me Why
Tell was broken.
And if it broke Tell, Tina had no hope of surviving.
She would fight.
Certainly she would fight.
But if there was no chance of winning?
It was a potential she hadn’t considered, before.
He looked toward the door.
“They know that we are dangerous,” he said. “They know that they have to handle us carefully and with force. But they can’t be sharp every moment. And they can’t anticipate us in our complexity.”
“How many people get away?” Tina asked, and he shook his head.
“I don’t know and it doesn’t matter,” he said, closing his eyes and settling lower as he sat. “They say it’s like cracking an egg. They literally and figuratively soften you on the inside until they come to harvest it.”
That was… horrific.
“Twenty-two days,” Tina said. “Starting from when I got here? Or from when I cave and drink the stuff they bring in to me?”
“I don’t know,” Tell said. He opened his eyes then rubbed his face once, briskly. “Conserve energy. Be quiet, still, waiting. Then be prepared to fight explosively and with violence for as long as you need to, to get out.”
“Okay,” Tina said. “I understand.”
He nodded.
“We may not survive this,” he said. “But there’s still a path. Don’t despair. Despairwillmake you miss it.”
Around midnight,the cup appeared again, the man bringing in a pair of them and leaving one each there at the far edges of what Tell and Tina could reach.
Tell ignored his.
Tina went and got hers, smelled it, then threw it against a new wall.
Tell just sat with his legs crossed and his elbows resting on his knees, his eyes closed and his posture slack.
Tina respected, even admired, that he could do that, but she couldn’t.
She didn’t pace, but mostly only because her feet didn’t have that kind of range. She fidgeted and considered, she occasionally said something to Tell, which he would answer but withoutgiving her any energy back, for conversation. He didn’t scold her - she suspected he knew that she was doing her best - but he was conserving himself, and she knew that he was probably right to.
If he was going to have to fight their way out for her, she appreciated him being strong enough to do it.
The sun came, and where it hadn’t been that bad, before, today it bothered Tina a lot more. She was losing energy.
She never heard Tell lay down, but they were still cycling the lights, so she wouldn’t have been able to see him, even if she’d been watching. When she sat up the next evening, he was exactly where he’d been the entire night before, still slack in a loose, feline kind of way, still waiting.
The door opened, and Tina looked over, expecting the man with the drink cups, but it was four men with gear like they were about to handle a mad dog.
Tell stood.
Tina stood.
They ignored Tina completely.
Tell waited, passive, as they wired and chained him from a distance, then one of them disabled the shackles on his ankles.
