The Ghost in the Game (4/8)
Title: The Ghost in the Game
Author: EmmyAngua
Rating: 15
Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Darkfic
Warnings: Implied minor character incest. Implied torture. Bad language.
Ships: Implied Sherlock/John, Molly/Other.
Summary: Moriarty has a secret. When Molly Hooper gets closer to it than anyone has before she knows her chances of survival are zero. But what is it? And how does it involve a missing scientist, Irene Adler, a deserted Manor House, and some mysterious hauntings at 221b Baker Street?
A/N: This is a longer chapter for you. Thanks for all the comments! Hope it lives up to your expectations.
Part 1 II Part 2 II Part 3 II Part 4
--
Chapter 4
Molly knew that she should have run. Even if Moriarty tracked her down in minutes, she would have at least been caught on her own terms. But she’d spent too long living in a helpless stupor under his power. He just had to touch a mobile phone button to wipe out her everyone she knew.
So she went home. She got up in the morning. She spent slightly longer in the shower than usual and told the Polish builder to go fuck himself when he got up in her face about it.
The door slammed behind her. The 27 wobbled. She neared the bus stop.
The goons attacked.
Molly surprised herself. When they tried to bundle her into a van, she finally came back to life. If they took her, she’d have no chance of survival. And she wanted to live, only now did she realise how much.
She scratched, and clawed, and screamed and tried to raise help in the middle of bleakest part of London. A train rumbled past. Horns could be heard in the distance. No one saw her and no one came to help.
The van she was bundled into was black and the air was so stuffy and hot that it burned her lungs. For a minute or two she had visions of being gassed to death, but as the van rumbled on nothing happened other than the cut on her cheek weeping down her face. She was tossed about as the van swept around roundabouts.
In desperation she began to count to seconds to figure out how long the journey was taking. After two hours, she was too bored to carry on.
They stopped for about ten minutes as what she guessed was a petrol station, but no one opened the door. Occasionally she heard a distant voice as if someone was walking past the van. She screamed. No one responded.
--
When the van finally switched off the engine again, Molly was nearly asleep. She’d thought, at first, that she’d be alert for the whole journey. But it’d been hours and hours of nothing and it was exhausting.
The men yanked her out into the weak light of the afternoon. Her first response was to shriek, to try and break free, but the men were strong and one clamped a hand over her mouth.
“You can scream all fucking day if you want,” he snapped, “but there ain’t anyone within ten miles who’ll come and help you. Now move.”
He removed the hand and shoved her towards a stone building in front of them. They were in a courtyard of an old building… not just any building, one that brought Jane Austen novels to mind. There were windows everywhere she looked. Birds chirruped. A whole forest of tree branches could be heard rustling in the wind.
“Welcome to the Estate,” snorted another of her captors. “Pretty ain’t it? Don’t think you’ll be living in the lap of luxury though.”
The first held her fast as the second unlocked a metal door. She was so weak that the first was practically holding her up, and when the door was fully open the smell sent her reeling backwards into his chest.
“They’re fucking animals,” spat the second as he gagged.
That was all they had to say on the matter. Between them they gave her an almighty shove through the door and slammed it after her.
--
It took Molly what felt like hours to find the steps up to the first floor. She seemed to be in what was, once upon a time, the pantry and kitchens of an old, grand house. But there were no lights and the windows had been boarded up. She had to tiptoe forward inch by inch; half terrified of tripping over a dead body (admittedly, she’d be more able to handle it than most, but even in her job the idea wasn’t a pleasant one.)
She fell up the first step and bashed her shin, but she was so grateful to find a way up into the light that she didn’t care about jolt to her leg.
And it was bright, so much that it hurt her eyes. Sun streamed in through the windows and she stumbled through the rooms trying to figure them out. She eventually reached a grand entrance hall with a sweeping staircase and though she struggled with the door it was locked and barred.
The floors were filthy, covered with dead rodents and insects. Cobwebs had obscured the higher levels of moulded plaster. Miss. Havisham would have been right at home.
The windows could no more offer the comfort of fresh air than they could offer escape. A layer of plastic glass was bolted over the inside of the windows, meaning that she could neither open nor smash them. She went from window to window in the hope of seeing someone outside to call for help, but they only offered views of a deserted country estate.
Not a living person for miles, she realised.
As if the house had heard her thoughts there was an almighty scream from somewhere above her. It was male, and as she scampered towards the staircase she realised that it wasn’t a scream of pain…not physical torture or injury…it was a scream of mental anguish. The scream of the madhouse.
“I wouldn’t go up there if I were you,” rasped a voice.
Molly - her foot still on the first step - shrieked and staggered backwards. The voice had come from her left. There! In a corner she had assumed to be filled with lifeless rags there was an old man. He was huddled on the floor and Molly wondered how she had not seen him at once.
“Someone needs help,” was all she managed to say.
“You can’t help him,” shrugged the man. “He’s locked up in one of the rooms.”
“I could talk to him,” she swallowed. “Let him know that someone is trying to help him.”
“If you could help him you wouldn’t be a prisoner like we are.”
Molly crept forward to get a better look at the man. He was old, anywhere between sixty and ninety. She guessed that living here probably aged one. His cheeks were hollow and grey, which made his hooked nose look even sharper than it was. His grey beard looked like it had dried up years before. A firm brow hung heavily over filmy grey eyes. He was blind.
“What’s your name?” she asked. “I’m… I’m Molly.”
“Don’t have a name,” he wheezed. “He calls us by our number. I’m Two. He-” Two jerked his head up towards the screaming, “-is Five.”
“What about One, Three, and Four?” Molly asked. Her eyes darted around as if expecting more men to creep from the shadows.
“Four is dead. Years ago. Got sick. Three dead too.”
“He got sick?”
Two shook his head jerkily. “One killed him. He’s no more than an animal.” He smiled, as if he could see the terror on her face. “Don’t worry. I’ll show you how to deal with him before he does you any damage.”
“You said ‘he calls you by number’,” said Molly. “Who does?”
The man snorted. “If you hadn’t crossed his path already you wouldn’t be here now.”
“Moriarty?”
As he talked Two struggled slowly to his feet. He batted her away when she tried to help. “James Moriarty. Only two of them left now, brother and sister. When I was a young man there was a whole family of the bastards. They’re always called James. ‘Cept the girls. I don’t think they bother giving girls names.”
He was standing now and limping towards the stairs. It seemed each leg had a different injury, so it looked like each one was trying to out-limp the other.
“I’ve heard a voice like yours before,” he said thoughtfully. They were about halfway up the stairs now and he had given in and allowed her to support him. “A man. He was a prisoner for a while too.”
“He was American? Did he tell you his name?”
“Mmm…it was…Hedley.”
Molly stilled. “What happened to him?” She knows what happened, of course, she just doesn’t know how. Or why.
“They took him downstairs. They have a…lab down there. After that who knows what happened. It was the same for all of them.” He took another achingly slow step up.
“There were others?”
“Oh yes. There were two men after the one who sounded like you. They were only here for a few days before they were taken downstairs. There was a woman too - old, scared - she wasn’t here long either.”
They reached the top at last. She had many so many questions.
For the first time in a very long time, she felt like Meredith again. This man was a real connection to her husband. Proof that he was taken and proof that, whatever happened afterwards, he was alive in this building for a while.
“Did he… did Hedley ever mention his wife?” The question bubbled up before she could stop it.
“No. He never talked about any wife.”
Molly lowered her head and breathed out. “Yeah. That sounds like him.”
--
He shuffled along the corridors until he reached the door that housed Five. The door was made of steel, and yet the screams were loud enough to make her wince.
There was no lock or any indication of how the door opened, beyond a small metal flap that she guessed was for food to be shoved through. It opened outwards, and when she tested it she realised it was built like a sanitary towel bin - there was no way to see in or out of the room through it.
“Who is he?”
Two shrugged. “He’s just like me. A lab rat.”
She bit her lip. “Don’t you try and talk to him… soothe him?”
Two shrugged again. “All that would achieve would be to keep him sane for longer. Give him hope. Me and him. We’re the same. If I was in there like he is… well I’d want to sink into madness quick and get it over with.”
“Is he? Insane?”
“He’s been in there for sixty years. No windows. No sounds. Nothing but a hole for waste, a dripping tap for water, and food shoved in every two days. I hope to god he is insane, girl, at least you can’t get bored with hallucinations.”
He set off in his shuffle again. It was strange - like her presence was slowly waking him up.
“Come out!” he yelled, as he walked. “Come here!”
She could only guess that he was calling to the other prisoner. One.
At length, she heard the sound of shuffling footsteps and a figure appeared in the distance corridor. He was an ancient man, like Two, only he was practically bent double and he dragged one of his legs after him. As he got close she saw that his face was a mass of scars - like he had scratched at his skin over and over.
“Didn’t you say he was a killer?” she whispered as he hobbled closer.
“What? Oh he is. Not his fault. Brain surgery turned him into little more than an animal. He listens to me though, when he can be made to understand.”
One stopped in front of Two. He was so bent over that it looked almost like he was bowing to him, but when Molly saw his eyes she saw the look of the caged animal in them.
That wasn’t what captured her attention though. What she stared at was his nose. It was identical to the other man’s. And - now she looked for it - she could see the same basic resemblance.
“This girl,” intoned Two, “is not to be hurt. Do you understand?”
The eyes swivelled to look into her face and up and down her body.
“Do you understand?”
One grunted.
“You are not to play with her. Do you understand? No playing.”
One grunted.
“Good. As you were.”
One hobbled off again with a resentful look back at them.
“He’ll forget in a day or two,” murmured Two. “Best to avoid him. Barricade your bedroom door at night as well. If all else fails you’re young. You can outrun him.”
--
Three months have passed. Molly is in hell. Her life bears so little resemblance to the life she lived as Meredith, and even the comparative luxury of Molly’s existence, that she toys with picking a new name. Mildred, maybe, that’s the sort of depressing name for a place like this.
Her bedroom was, once upon a time, the Lady’s bedroom. It probably hasn’t seen use since 1900 and the bed is crawling with spiders and cockroaches. Instead she sleeps on a mouldy armchair which hurts her neck. She has ripped down the curtains in her room and wraps them around herself for warmth. There is no power, which means no light or heat. She wakes up when it gets light at four or five, and goes to sleep when it gets dark.
There are bathrooms, but the pipes don’t work. If she wants water she must walk down to the empty kitchen and use the single working tap. There are no cups, plates, and certainly nothing as weapon-like as a knife. She has to drink water cupped in her own grimy palms and no matter how hard she turns the tap she is never rewarded with more than a trickle.
There is a single toilet, which she shares with One and Two (the irony of the names has not escaped her, as there is a liberal amount of number ones and twos all over the bathroom). She doesn’t think the toilet has been clean as long as the prisoners have been alive. She hovers over it rather than sits.
At first she dreaded the idea of being starved as there is not a morsel of food anywhere in the house. Two reassured her that they would be fed every two days, and he is right. The food - overripe fruit and three loaves of bread is pushed through a flap in the door like feeding time at the zoo.
She and Two gather up a share of the food and leave the rest for One to find. They push some of it through the flap in the door to Five’s prison, and when they close the flap it drops onto the floor inside. Five doesn’t notice it for a couple of hours, which is the only time he stops screaming other than when he’s unconscious.
Her days are spent sitting on the floor next to Two. They talk. He tells her his story - that he woke up in the laboratory downstairs when he was sixteen with no memory of his life before that. They performed experiments on him for months and months. Maybe even years. And when he stopped being useful, they left him and his ‘brothers’ to rot. Moriarty - the old one - loved to torture them.
“But I won…” Two leaned in confidentially. “When the young one comes here…they thought they left me deaf and dumb and blind and lost in my own world. They never knew I tricked them into thinking that.”
“You mean Moriarty - the young one - he doesn’t know that you’re as sane as I am?” she breathes.
Two smiles. “I promise you, if it’s the last thing I do, that mistake will be his downfall.”
He tells her the same story over and over again, and makes the same promise every time. He likes telling it, and she likes hearing it.
In return she tells him her story. Meredith. Molly. How Moriarty forced her to do his bidding.
“He had my cell phone,” she explains. She tells him about how Moriarty had rigged it. Doing this takes several hours because the concept of a cell phone is new to Two. He is interested.
“So you can send messages with it? To people you know?
“If I had it, yes. To anyone.” She smiles indulgently at the enthusiasm on his face.
“What does it feel like?”
It’s an odd question and she tries to explain. “It’s about the size of your palm. But flat, and smooth, like glass or metal. It’s rectangular, and thin, and…cool to the touch.”
He holds out his hand, as if he can feel the cell phone under his fingers.
He makes her repeat the story as often as she makes him tell her how he tricked the Moriartys.
When it begins to get dark she bids him goodnight and scurries up the stairs in the hope of avoiding One. Then she shoves the dresser to block the door and huddles in the nest she has made herself. If it is a non-food day, her stomach aches from hunger, and if it is a food day, the rotten fruit makes her stomach ache even more.
Eventually she falls asleep. Her neck aches. Five’s screams wake her up. She nods off again. She wakes up in the sunlight.
The day begins again.
Part 5
---
A/N: I promise that next chapter you start getting answers! And the chapter after that...it all makes sense!
Please let me know what you think!
Author: EmmyAngua
Rating: 15
Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Darkfic
Warnings: Implied minor character incest. Implied torture. Bad language.
Ships: Implied Sherlock/John, Molly/Other.
Summary: Moriarty has a secret. When Molly Hooper gets closer to it than anyone has before she knows her chances of survival are zero. But what is it? And how does it involve a missing scientist, Irene Adler, a deserted Manor House, and some mysterious hauntings at 221b Baker Street?
A/N: This is a longer chapter for you. Thanks for all the comments! Hope it lives up to your expectations.
Part 1 II Part 2 II Part 3 II Part 4
--
Chapter 4
Molly knew that she should have run. Even if Moriarty tracked her down in minutes, she would have at least been caught on her own terms. But she’d spent too long living in a helpless stupor under his power. He just had to touch a mobile phone button to wipe out her everyone she knew.
So she went home. She got up in the morning. She spent slightly longer in the shower than usual and told the Polish builder to go fuck himself when he got up in her face about it.
The door slammed behind her. The 27 wobbled. She neared the bus stop.
The goons attacked.
Molly surprised herself. When they tried to bundle her into a van, she finally came back to life. If they took her, she’d have no chance of survival. And she wanted to live, only now did she realise how much.
She scratched, and clawed, and screamed and tried to raise help in the middle of bleakest part of London. A train rumbled past. Horns could be heard in the distance. No one saw her and no one came to help.
The van she was bundled into was black and the air was so stuffy and hot that it burned her lungs. For a minute or two she had visions of being gassed to death, but as the van rumbled on nothing happened other than the cut on her cheek weeping down her face. She was tossed about as the van swept around roundabouts.
In desperation she began to count to seconds to figure out how long the journey was taking. After two hours, she was too bored to carry on.
They stopped for about ten minutes as what she guessed was a petrol station, but no one opened the door. Occasionally she heard a distant voice as if someone was walking past the van. She screamed. No one responded.
--
When the van finally switched off the engine again, Molly was nearly asleep. She’d thought, at first, that she’d be alert for the whole journey. But it’d been hours and hours of nothing and it was exhausting.
The men yanked her out into the weak light of the afternoon. Her first response was to shriek, to try and break free, but the men were strong and one clamped a hand over her mouth.
“You can scream all fucking day if you want,” he snapped, “but there ain’t anyone within ten miles who’ll come and help you. Now move.”
He removed the hand and shoved her towards a stone building in front of them. They were in a courtyard of an old building… not just any building, one that brought Jane Austen novels to mind. There were windows everywhere she looked. Birds chirruped. A whole forest of tree branches could be heard rustling in the wind.
“Welcome to the Estate,” snorted another of her captors. “Pretty ain’t it? Don’t think you’ll be living in the lap of luxury though.”
The first held her fast as the second unlocked a metal door. She was so weak that the first was practically holding her up, and when the door was fully open the smell sent her reeling backwards into his chest.
“They’re fucking animals,” spat the second as he gagged.
That was all they had to say on the matter. Between them they gave her an almighty shove through the door and slammed it after her.
--
It took Molly what felt like hours to find the steps up to the first floor. She seemed to be in what was, once upon a time, the pantry and kitchens of an old, grand house. But there were no lights and the windows had been boarded up. She had to tiptoe forward inch by inch; half terrified of tripping over a dead body (admittedly, she’d be more able to handle it than most, but even in her job the idea wasn’t a pleasant one.)
She fell up the first step and bashed her shin, but she was so grateful to find a way up into the light that she didn’t care about jolt to her leg.
And it was bright, so much that it hurt her eyes. Sun streamed in through the windows and she stumbled through the rooms trying to figure them out. She eventually reached a grand entrance hall with a sweeping staircase and though she struggled with the door it was locked and barred.
The floors were filthy, covered with dead rodents and insects. Cobwebs had obscured the higher levels of moulded plaster. Miss. Havisham would have been right at home.
The windows could no more offer the comfort of fresh air than they could offer escape. A layer of plastic glass was bolted over the inside of the windows, meaning that she could neither open nor smash them. She went from window to window in the hope of seeing someone outside to call for help, but they only offered views of a deserted country estate.
Not a living person for miles, she realised.
As if the house had heard her thoughts there was an almighty scream from somewhere above her. It was male, and as she scampered towards the staircase she realised that it wasn’t a scream of pain…not physical torture or injury…it was a scream of mental anguish. The scream of the madhouse.
“I wouldn’t go up there if I were you,” rasped a voice.
Molly - her foot still on the first step - shrieked and staggered backwards. The voice had come from her left. There! In a corner she had assumed to be filled with lifeless rags there was an old man. He was huddled on the floor and Molly wondered how she had not seen him at once.
“Someone needs help,” was all she managed to say.
“You can’t help him,” shrugged the man. “He’s locked up in one of the rooms.”
“I could talk to him,” she swallowed. “Let him know that someone is trying to help him.”
“If you could help him you wouldn’t be a prisoner like we are.”
Molly crept forward to get a better look at the man. He was old, anywhere between sixty and ninety. She guessed that living here probably aged one. His cheeks were hollow and grey, which made his hooked nose look even sharper than it was. His grey beard looked like it had dried up years before. A firm brow hung heavily over filmy grey eyes. He was blind.
“What’s your name?” she asked. “I’m… I’m Molly.”
“Don’t have a name,” he wheezed. “He calls us by our number. I’m Two. He-” Two jerked his head up towards the screaming, “-is Five.”
“What about One, Three, and Four?” Molly asked. Her eyes darted around as if expecting more men to creep from the shadows.
“Four is dead. Years ago. Got sick. Three dead too.”
“He got sick?”
Two shook his head jerkily. “One killed him. He’s no more than an animal.” He smiled, as if he could see the terror on her face. “Don’t worry. I’ll show you how to deal with him before he does you any damage.”
“You said ‘he calls you by number’,” said Molly. “Who does?”
The man snorted. “If you hadn’t crossed his path already you wouldn’t be here now.”
“Moriarty?”
As he talked Two struggled slowly to his feet. He batted her away when she tried to help. “James Moriarty. Only two of them left now, brother and sister. When I was a young man there was a whole family of the bastards. They’re always called James. ‘Cept the girls. I don’t think they bother giving girls names.”
He was standing now and limping towards the stairs. It seemed each leg had a different injury, so it looked like each one was trying to out-limp the other.
“I’ve heard a voice like yours before,” he said thoughtfully. They were about halfway up the stairs now and he had given in and allowed her to support him. “A man. He was a prisoner for a while too.”
“He was American? Did he tell you his name?”
“Mmm…it was…Hedley.”
Molly stilled. “What happened to him?” She knows what happened, of course, she just doesn’t know how. Or why.
“They took him downstairs. They have a…lab down there. After that who knows what happened. It was the same for all of them.” He took another achingly slow step up.
“There were others?”
“Oh yes. There were two men after the one who sounded like you. They were only here for a few days before they were taken downstairs. There was a woman too - old, scared - she wasn’t here long either.”
They reached the top at last. She had many so many questions.
For the first time in a very long time, she felt like Meredith again. This man was a real connection to her husband. Proof that he was taken and proof that, whatever happened afterwards, he was alive in this building for a while.
“Did he… did Hedley ever mention his wife?” The question bubbled up before she could stop it.
“No. He never talked about any wife.”
Molly lowered her head and breathed out. “Yeah. That sounds like him.”
--
He shuffled along the corridors until he reached the door that housed Five. The door was made of steel, and yet the screams were loud enough to make her wince.
There was no lock or any indication of how the door opened, beyond a small metal flap that she guessed was for food to be shoved through. It opened outwards, and when she tested it she realised it was built like a sanitary towel bin - there was no way to see in or out of the room through it.
“Who is he?”
Two shrugged. “He’s just like me. A lab rat.”
She bit her lip. “Don’t you try and talk to him… soothe him?”
Two shrugged again. “All that would achieve would be to keep him sane for longer. Give him hope. Me and him. We’re the same. If I was in there like he is… well I’d want to sink into madness quick and get it over with.”
“Is he? Insane?”
“He’s been in there for sixty years. No windows. No sounds. Nothing but a hole for waste, a dripping tap for water, and food shoved in every two days. I hope to god he is insane, girl, at least you can’t get bored with hallucinations.”
He set off in his shuffle again. It was strange - like her presence was slowly waking him up.
“Come out!” he yelled, as he walked. “Come here!”
She could only guess that he was calling to the other prisoner. One.
At length, she heard the sound of shuffling footsteps and a figure appeared in the distance corridor. He was an ancient man, like Two, only he was practically bent double and he dragged one of his legs after him. As he got close she saw that his face was a mass of scars - like he had scratched at his skin over and over.
“Didn’t you say he was a killer?” she whispered as he hobbled closer.
“What? Oh he is. Not his fault. Brain surgery turned him into little more than an animal. He listens to me though, when he can be made to understand.”
One stopped in front of Two. He was so bent over that it looked almost like he was bowing to him, but when Molly saw his eyes she saw the look of the caged animal in them.
That wasn’t what captured her attention though. What she stared at was his nose. It was identical to the other man’s. And - now she looked for it - she could see the same basic resemblance.
“This girl,” intoned Two, “is not to be hurt. Do you understand?”
The eyes swivelled to look into her face and up and down her body.
“Do you understand?”
One grunted.
“You are not to play with her. Do you understand? No playing.”
One grunted.
“Good. As you were.”
One hobbled off again with a resentful look back at them.
“He’ll forget in a day or two,” murmured Two. “Best to avoid him. Barricade your bedroom door at night as well. If all else fails you’re young. You can outrun him.”
--
Three months have passed. Molly is in hell. Her life bears so little resemblance to the life she lived as Meredith, and even the comparative luxury of Molly’s existence, that she toys with picking a new name. Mildred, maybe, that’s the sort of depressing name for a place like this.
Her bedroom was, once upon a time, the Lady’s bedroom. It probably hasn’t seen use since 1900 and the bed is crawling with spiders and cockroaches. Instead she sleeps on a mouldy armchair which hurts her neck. She has ripped down the curtains in her room and wraps them around herself for warmth. There is no power, which means no light or heat. She wakes up when it gets light at four or five, and goes to sleep when it gets dark.
There are bathrooms, but the pipes don’t work. If she wants water she must walk down to the empty kitchen and use the single working tap. There are no cups, plates, and certainly nothing as weapon-like as a knife. She has to drink water cupped in her own grimy palms and no matter how hard she turns the tap she is never rewarded with more than a trickle.
There is a single toilet, which she shares with One and Two (the irony of the names has not escaped her, as there is a liberal amount of number ones and twos all over the bathroom). She doesn’t think the toilet has been clean as long as the prisoners have been alive. She hovers over it rather than sits.
At first she dreaded the idea of being starved as there is not a morsel of food anywhere in the house. Two reassured her that they would be fed every two days, and he is right. The food - overripe fruit and three loaves of bread is pushed through a flap in the door like feeding time at the zoo.
She and Two gather up a share of the food and leave the rest for One to find. They push some of it through the flap in the door to Five’s prison, and when they close the flap it drops onto the floor inside. Five doesn’t notice it for a couple of hours, which is the only time he stops screaming other than when he’s unconscious.
Her days are spent sitting on the floor next to Two. They talk. He tells her his story - that he woke up in the laboratory downstairs when he was sixteen with no memory of his life before that. They performed experiments on him for months and months. Maybe even years. And when he stopped being useful, they left him and his ‘brothers’ to rot. Moriarty - the old one - loved to torture them.
“But I won…” Two leaned in confidentially. “When the young one comes here…they thought they left me deaf and dumb and blind and lost in my own world. They never knew I tricked them into thinking that.”
“You mean Moriarty - the young one - he doesn’t know that you’re as sane as I am?” she breathes.
Two smiles. “I promise you, if it’s the last thing I do, that mistake will be his downfall.”
He tells her the same story over and over again, and makes the same promise every time. He likes telling it, and she likes hearing it.
In return she tells him her story. Meredith. Molly. How Moriarty forced her to do his bidding.
“He had my cell phone,” she explains. She tells him about how Moriarty had rigged it. Doing this takes several hours because the concept of a cell phone is new to Two. He is interested.
“So you can send messages with it? To people you know?
“If I had it, yes. To anyone.” She smiles indulgently at the enthusiasm on his face.
“What does it feel like?”
It’s an odd question and she tries to explain. “It’s about the size of your palm. But flat, and smooth, like glass or metal. It’s rectangular, and thin, and…cool to the touch.”
He holds out his hand, as if he can feel the cell phone under his fingers.
He makes her repeat the story as often as she makes him tell her how he tricked the Moriartys.
When it begins to get dark she bids him goodnight and scurries up the stairs in the hope of avoiding One. Then she shoves the dresser to block the door and huddles in the nest she has made herself. If it is a non-food day, her stomach aches from hunger, and if it is a food day, the rotten fruit makes her stomach ache even more.
Eventually she falls asleep. Her neck aches. Five’s screams wake her up. She nods off again. She wakes up in the sunlight.
The day begins again.
Part 5
---
A/N: I promise that next chapter you start getting answers! And the chapter after that...it all makes sense!
Please let me know what you think!