The air smelled of musk. Stepping outside onto the hot brick, Adam’s feet blistered. He hadn’t eaten in days: the hunger didn’t fill him anymore. He’d been moved, from one windowless building to another, spending nights sobbing and vomiting out guilt. It was hard not to feel guilt. He didn’t sleep at night. Instead, he lay awake to stare at the ceiling, wondering where he was, wondering if he’d ever make it home alive.

Curled into a ball on the bathroom floor, Adam retched. There was nothing inside him, but his stomach burned with hunger and fear. It was always yellow-green, and left him shaking. At nighttime, the streets were barren. Jude was working with other men, meeting up with them late at night, always masked. He was thorough, and this frightened Adam. Once a day, he was given a small amount of warm water. This wasn’t refreshing: but a person couldn’t survive without water. Adam longed to run, or to visit the ocean, or to hear his sister’s voice. Perhaps he would never again get the chance to do any of these things.

“Get up.”

Jude had a gruff voice, which anyone who knew him would recognize. Perhaps this was why he’d fled the country. Back home, he was wanted, and many people in his city knew of him. He stood before Adam, dressed all in black, his face almost entirely obscured by a black balaclava. Adam had never trusted him, even when Jude was a friendly, sociable member of the church.

There was no telling how long Adam had been gone. He grumbled, wiping a shaky hand across his mouth. “Jude, I’m starving. When can I have something to eat?” It was scary how different people could become. Jude didn’t speak to him, unless to make a demand. They’d recently moved to a new building; it was dark and echoed loudly.

After a long enough period of hunger, a person didn’t feel hungry anymore. Adam was thin and always dirty, rarely allowed to change his clothing or take a shower. He was used to neglect. This made it easy to survive.

By now, he knew how things worked. He ate when Jude said he ate, and ate what he was given. The only way to survive here was to be obedient, and Adam had been doing this his whole life. There were many ways to get people to do what you wanted: sweet-talk, bribing, blackmail. Jude had done all of these things and more.

Stop calling me by my name, Jude had said, throwing Adam through a doorway, you don’t know me here. Got it?

After taking Adam from work, Jude had forced a small sleeping pill into his mouth, so that the boy slept until they arrived at an unknown location. “What are you doing with me, anyway? Are you planning on killing me, too, the way you killed Alma?” Adam wasn’t stupid. Jude was cold and calculated, but he was predictable, and he’d been bitter ever since Alma turned him down for a date. He wasn’t afraid of Jude. It was easy to act tough, but few people could actually back up their words with action. The last time Adam saw Mara, she’d lectured him for his disobedience and nerve, swearing that he was a disappointment to his father. He had few good memories of his mother. If he tried hard enough, he could recall them.

Somewhere in the distance, there were police sirens. Adam was very cold and very tired, and the building was warm. His hands shook badly, so that he couldn’t get a glass of water to his mouth without spilling it. Water didn’t make a difference. Adam’s shirt hung off him, wrinkled and dirty.

Everything was sore. Adam’s feet were calloused and hard from weeks of going barefoot. He wondered how long it took to starve to death. Maybe, letting this happen would be easier than trying to fight. He’d lost a lot of muscle (but it wasn’t as if there was a lot to begin with), and a lot of dexterity, hardly possessing the energy to lift his feet off the floor. It was hard to stay awake, and even harder to sleep.

In the small, dark building that Jude forced Adam inside, there were three empty rooms, and a very small window. When Adam looked outside, he saw nothing but empty space: no buildings, no people. He hadn’t dared ask where he’d been taken. If there was any chance of escape, he needed to gain Jude’s trust. This was hard to do. Even the most hardened people had a kryptonite.

“You guys did what nobody else had the guts to do.”

It was either very smart or very stupid to try and find Jude’s humanity. It had to have existed: at some point, anyway. He stared at Adam, confused or suspicious, or both. The doors were locked; there was no way out unless Jude let you out, and this would never happen.

When Adam stood, his legs wobbled. He could have fallen asleep, and not woken up for days. Jude stood over him, perhaps curious to see what he had to say. Like a lot of people, the man had a deep fear of being inferior. It was easy to pretend you weren’t scared. “I always wished I could be as brave as you.” He had no plan, beyond the impulsive decision to attempt to appeal to Jude. Escape would be very difficult, but not impossible. The only way to do it was to gain your captor’s trust.

It had taken Adam a very long time to understand that everyone had demons, in some way or another. Having older siblings helped. Having a dysfunctional family helped, too. Jude said nothing, just stared, his eyes easy to read above his mask. “I think we all daydreamed about my dad’s death at some point. You were the only one who was brave enough. You got away with it for so long: much longer than I could’ve. You even killed my mom, right? She wasn’t really much of a mom at all.”

Jude scowled. “Shut up.”

He presented himself as cunning and superior. Adam had begun to suspect this was just to cover up his feelings of inferiority. No one knew the motives behind the crimes, and this had been bothering Adam. He wanted to call himself an honest person. This wasn’t as true now as it had been in the past. The room spun around him: unwelcoming and dark. “Dad was a bully. I’m glad he’s dead. You saved us.”

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It would take a while. There was a system that came with escape. Jude was suspicious. He had every right to be. “He was a sinner. I spent years watching him act like a man of God, knowing he was the furthest thing from it.”

Growing up came with loss: mourning the person you once were, mourning the experiences you never got to have. Growing up came with change, and sometimes this meant leaving loved ones behind. As a kid, all anyone ever wanted was to be a grown-up. As a kid, Adam had no idea what he was missing out on.

“Sebastian should have put you in charge.”

He was in dangerous territory: trying to humanize a killer. Adam supposed even the worst criminals had been human at some point. He was bluffing, but it seemed to calm the man down. “He’s the one who did it, but you’re smarter. You got away with killing, and he didn’t.” A shadow danced across the wall at the other side of the building. There was someone else here; the hallway creaked briefly as the shadow moved. Adam was thirsty. He’d been given a small amount of warm water that morning, and it hadn’t been refreshing.

Jude had been driving a grey van with tinted back windows. Everything was blurry. Being alone with Jude might have brought fear to others. Adam knew there was a possibility he wouldn’t go home. It was better him than one of the younger children. Adam knew how to protect himself, and he wasn’t afraid to do so.

There was a commotion outside, and then a loud blast. Jude fell to the floor abruptly, bleeding profusely from the leg, landing with a thud that shook the walls. A shadow danced once more, falling over Adam’ face. When someone brushed his arm, he shrieked.

I don’t know why you try so hard to make Mom and Dad proud. They don’t care about you. Their opinions don’t matter.

It was easy to be disagreeable. The thing Adam always fought most with his siblings about was his father. He grew frustrated with his siblings sucking up to the man, as if Orion had been anything more than a brainwashed bully. He pretended not to fear his father. It was foolish to be fearful, anyway. Fear made you vulnerable, and vulnerability made you controllable.

“I shot him.”

Mind tricks were a funny thing; they could make you believe almost anything, even without reason. Samantha had disappeared almost a year ago. By now, mostly everyone assumed her to be dead. Light had begun to flood in through a very small window, so that Adam saw, faintly, the outline of the woman speaking to him. He had travelled in Sebastian’s van many times. There had always been hints of the presence of another person. It was hard to put hints together when you were focused on staying alive.

“I can’t believe I actually shot him.”

Samantha was a blonde woman whose attitude had always been decided by Orion’s mood. At one point, she’d presumably been a person with her autonomy and opinions. Like everyone who lived with Orion, she’d eventually become a mindless shell. She wasn’t his mother. Despite this, she’d always felt more like a mother than his own. The difference between the women was that Samantha was only harsh when Orion was nearby, and Mara seemed to have forgotten how to be gentle at all.

Adam never disliked Samantha. She was kind when alone, but feared Orion the way most people did. This was what he wanted: to be feared. There was nothing Adam’s father would have hated more than knowing his children could think for themselves. There were few things Adam knew about his father’s past. Orion had met Mara online, an ironic fact about a man who swore the Internet did nothing but brainwash people.

Samantha stood in front of Jude, holding a semi-automatic pistol with shaking hands, aiming it at Jude. He’d been shot with his own gun, taken from the trunk of his stolen van, probably used to kill before. Samantha didn’t shoot to kill. She shot to disarm, and to escape. Jude crawled, though his wound bled on the floor beneath him. He didn’t seem to fear the weapon pointed at his head, or the dark look in Samantha’s eyes. She shot again, hitting Jude in the shoulder; the man grunted, falling backwards onto the hard floor, where he lay motionless.

“I thought you were dead.”

Adam had too many questions. There was little time for explanation. Jude was covered in his own blood, and groaned in pain. Adam felt little pity for him. He was surprised by Samantha: a woman who had always advertised for peace and compassion, and now stood with blood on her hands in the middle of a large, dark room.

“I saw them kill Lillian.” Samantha threw the gun down, her face crumpled, as though she were disappointed in herself. “Jude drugged me, forced me into that stolen van, and drove me somewhere.” She spoke softer than usual. Perhaps the adrenaline of shooting a man was wearing off, and she was beginning to realize what she’d done. “I stole the gun during one of those long journeys he took us on. I hid it in my shoe.”

It was a miracle Samantha was still alive. Adam wondered what would become of her when she returned home. She was innocent in regards to the murders, but had nowhere to go. This wasn’t particularly a bad thing. Starting over was intimidating and unpleasant, but it was also freeing. After everything that had happened, Samantha could leave somewhere and never come back.

“Do you think he’ll die?”

It wasn’t as if Adam cared either way. Deep down, he was fond of Samantha, and knew that she had been a victim of Orion in the same way he had. She stepped over Jude, looking down at him briefly before grimacing at Adam. “He’ll be fine. Assuming he doesn’t bleed out before someone finds him, that is. Now come,” she said, taking him by the arm, “quickly!” He followed quickly, careful not to squeak when he stepped. He was taller than Samantha, but struggled to keep up with her. For a woman who had been starved and neglected for nearly a year, she was impressively spry. There was no way to know where she was taking him. Maybe she had a destination in mind. Maybe they were just wandering. The ground was very hot, covered with rocks and bumps that poked Adam’s feet.

When the sunlight hit Adam’s face, he squinted. After weeks in complete darkness, daylight hurt his eyes. After following Samantha out a small window, he chased her down the street, his feet bare and dirty, slapping on the ground.

She hadn’t been the best mother. She would probably never be one again.

“Where are we going?”

Samantha began to run again. “Far away from here.”

Sirens seemed to follow them. If Adam was lucky, he would be found before he starved to death.