Everything hurt. Her head. Her face. Shoulders. Arms. Body.
But through the haze, one word remained: rocky.
It played on repeat in her head. Rocky. Rocky. Rocky. Rocky.
What was rocky?
The floor was hard and awful, yes, but it wasn’t rocky. Her head pounded. What had happened? Everything ached. She pitched herself onto her stomach and moaned. She rested her cheek on the cold ground. It was soothing.
“Samara.” The name drifted over her, soft and lilting. Almost reverent.
Sam didn’t move. No one had called her that for—
A while.
She remembered light touches on her hair that soothed her, words murmured that built her up, arms wrapped around her in comfort and encouragement. Her grandma, maybe.
But this wasn’t her grandma. There was no comfort here, no soothing touches. Her grandma was… not here. Her brain fuzzed. The old lady? No. If her grandma was the old lady, Sam would have felt something, the way Sam remembered Amy. She needed to find her grandma. The cold seeped into her skin. She’d find her grandma after she could move without pain.
Sam lifted her head, angling where she thought the sound had come from—deep within her cell, far beyond the slit of light filtering across the floor. Hiding from the cameras.
“Next time, drink the water I bring you.” Coop. She heard the humor in his voice and recalled the blue of his eyes, the way his smile overtook his entire face.
“Maybe—” She coughed. “Maybe I wanted a bath. A girl has to have priorities.”
He chuckled. “I brought you more.”
“Why?” She blew air out. His gifts didn’t come without their consequences. Not that she would turn down water—she was suspicious, not idiotic—but if she had to pay the price, she wanted answers.
“You need it.”
“Everyone needs water.” She put her cheek back on the ground and sighed when some of the pounding receded. “You should keep it.”
“Samara.” The urgency in his tone gave her pause.
“You know my full name. How do you know my name?”
“Everyone knows your name now with that stunt you pulled. Rocky.” He laughed, the sound bouncing off the walls of the cell. His laughter reminded her of her grandma and uncle, the way they always found something to laugh at. It gave her hope. She could find her way back to her family.
“What’s rocky?” she asked.
His laughter cut off. “You don’t remember?”
She didn’t answer. Of course she didn’t remember. He swore.
“Tell me what you remember, Samara.”
“Nothing.” Not wholly a lie. She remembered Coop. Knew he wasn’t someone she could trust completely. But everything else? Nothing.
“You remember me,” he said, impatience creeping into his voice.
“Do I?”
“The food, the stealing,” he explained. “You passed out. I fed you. Gave you a blanket.”
“They know you’re helping me, you know.” Without the light to see his expression, she had no idea how her words affected him.
“They know someone is helping you. They don’t know it’s me. The distinction is keeping us both alive.”
“They don’t know it’s you yet.”
“If you haven’t told them already, you’re not going to.” The way his words came out short and clipped told her he was getting impatient.
Lying on the floor, she had all the time in the world.
But he was right and that made her fists curl in anger. Sam wanted to know more about Coop and he’d called her bluff. She wasn’t going to tell anyone because she trusted Reed even less. Reed. Rocky. The memory tumbled out of the recesses of her brain. She sucked in a breath. So Rocky’s nickname had traveled. Good.
Sam smiled.
“What?”
“I think you should leave.”
He was silent for a moment. “They moved your friends.” She heard him walk past her, and light stung her eyes as he opened the door. “They’re testing on the old lady.”