Thanks to everyone who's reading! Let me know if you're enjoying it. Lots more to come :)
6.
He knows it's futile continuing to struggle but he does so anyway because it's the only thing he can think of to do. He can move his head and he can move his wrists but that's about all. The restraints around him are solid and show no signs of giving way, even when he pushes against them with all the force he can muster.
He could cope with being trapped like this a lot easier if it wasn't for Hanna. He can't stop torturing himself of the things they might be doing to her while he's locked up in here, unable to protect her. It makes him want to scream in frustration, except he tried that earlier and got another blast of the alarm and he couldn't even cover his ears that time.
He keeps thinking back to the moment where he's so naively sat in the chair. If only he'd done differently he might be free to go and find her. He's never forgiving himself for this one. His eyes prickle. He shuts them and swallows, trying to dispel the threat of tears. All he can see in the darkness of his mind is Hanna. Hanna, being tortured in the barn. Hanna, in a wedding dress and crying. Hanna, kissing him last night. Then the visions turn darker, imaging her bleeding and unconscious. He opens his eyes.
He blinks. There's writing on the screen in front of him.
You think you can hack, but can you hack me?
You get in. You find Hanna.
He frowns at the screen. It clearly was CCTV then. He'd heard a tiny bit from Hanna about how there were games when she was in the dollhouse and he suspects this is one of them. He needs to hack into the system, locate Hanna on the screen and then he wins. For the first time since he'd found himself strapped to the chair, a little hope swells in his chest. This was something he was good at. He could do this. He could find Hanna.
"Game on," he mutters.
He extends his arms towards as far as the shackles will allow him. It's not comfortable but he can reach the controls. With a deep inhale, he starts tapping away.
Her head hurts from crying. Her cheeks feel raw and she can hardly breathe for the amount of snot in her throat. She feels disgusting but she doesn't care. Nothing matters any more. Nothing matters without Caleb.
She can barely remember A instructing her back down the corridor to the bedroom but here she is, curled in a heap on the mattress, sobbing into the duvet. She didn't know it was possible to cry this much. She's cried noisily, cried silently and everything in between. Her chest aches. She keeps thinking of how he must have been feeling in the moments before the gun went off. He must have been so scared. He wouldn't have shown it, of course, but she'd have known. She always knew when he wasn't okay. He knew it about her too; no matter how fiercely she pretended otherwise, he always saw through the façade and pulled her into his arms. All she wants is Caleb's arms around her now. She's never going to hear his laugh again or see his smile, or that look of concentration when he was working that she always teased him for but secretly found quite sexy. They're never going to bicker over something as mundane as the washing up. They're never going to stay up until 3am sharing every bit of their lives. She's never going to get to kiss him again or make love to him. It kills her that in his last moments he was alone. He deserved so much better.
The years apart, that already felt like time wasted since they exchanged their true feelings, are now a painful reminder or what it's like without him in her life. They were meant to be starting over. They were meant to spend the rest of their lives together. Without him she has no life. She wishes A had lined them up side-by-side and fired bullets at her too.
She buries her head into the pillow and screams. It's made even worse by the fact it's her fault. It was her stupid plan to try and trap A and she'd dragged Caleb into it knowing he wouldn't say no. He shouldn't have even been here let alone killed for his involvement. Killed deliberately to hurt her. Whatever else A has lined up for her, she doesn't care. Nothing can compare to this.
He's tried all the usual tricks and come up against firewall after firewall, corrupt software, error codes and malware that throws him out completely. There's one last thing he can think of, something that he'd heard about through a dodgy contact of his but never needed to use. He types it in through a mixture of memory and insight and holds his breath as he hits enter. The system whirls. He's sure it's about to crash. But then the screens light up. He's in.
He navigates through the cameras. He quickly becomes aware that there are still things hidden from him, neither the so-called restaurant they were in yesterday nor the office he's in now feature, even though there are cameras above his head. All this CCTV lets him see is bedroom after bedroom through a range of angles. It could easily be the same room each time and if he hadn't seen the number of doors off the corridor, he'd probably have assumed it was. Eventually he finds a room with a difference. Hanna.
She's on her side on the bed, curled in on herself, not moving. His heart clenches at the sight of her. Something's wrong. He skips to another camera and zooms in so he can see her face. Her cheeks are blotchy, a sign that she's been crying heavily. She looks so sad, so defeated, and all he wants to do is take her in his arms and take that pain away from her.
Her shoulders heave and she starts to cry harder. There's no sound on the video but from her open mouth and creased brows, he can tell she's howling. He knows her so well he can almost hear the noise. He sniffs, tries to compose himself so he can think. He's never seen Hanna like this before. This is more than just fear. As far as he can see, there are no injuries, but he knows that often the most painful things don't show on the surface.
He presses a few dials and manages to rewind. It shows him that Hanna's been crying in that spot for hours. Eventually he gets to the point where she entered the room. He taps away. The corridor and anything other than empty bedrooms are still out of his view. He clocks the time he needs to return to and continues to try to hack through the layers of protection. Eventually, a variation on the same technique he used earlier gives him access to the corridor and a few other rooms.
He rewinds until the moment she enters one of the rooms. It's set up with chairs for a congregation and there's a large floral tribute alongside what he presumes is an altar. He changes viewpoint so he has a different angle on each screen and can see her as she moves to the front of the room. He gets a glimpse of the flowers. They spell his name. And when the TV lights up, it's his photograph on the screen. His stomach drops. He watches Hanna's lips move, knowing from her expression that she's arguing. Then, another photo appears. It's him again and he stares at it in horror. His head and the ground around it is covered in blood and he looks dead. It's obviously a fake but it's the best one he's ever seen. He watches as Hanna falls apart. She drops to the floor, screaming, crying, face scrunched up in anguish.
He can't watch any more. He turns off the video history and the screen flickers back to her in the room. It hurts too much to see her like this. It hurts to know how much she cares. He knows how she feels. When they'd found the mannequin with Hanna's face in the church, it had felt like the ground was being ripped from beneath him and the world was falling apart. It had only been a minute before he'd found out the truth but it was the worst minute of his life. Until now.
How dare they do that. How dare they put her through something like this.
"Hanna, I'm here!" he shouts. "It's lying to you, I'm here, I'm okay!"
Hot tears slip down his cheeks. He can't even move to wipe them away.
The crying's exhausted her. It feels like there's nothing left, like someone's removed all her insides and only a hollow shell remains. The tears keep coming but she does nothing to wipe them away. There's no point. There's no reason to fight anymore.
"Good morning, Hanna. It's time to get up."
The voice barely registers. She's thinking about Caleb. She's thinking about how much he loved to travel and how he's never going to be able to do that again. She's thinking about how he'd got emotional every time he talked about his childhood and how she couldn't bear to hear his stories and yet wanted to know every single little thing, and how it made no sense that someone could live that life and still grow into the kind and loyal person he became. He didn't deserve to die that way. He didn't deserve to die. And then she's thinking about the time he promised he'd always be there for her, that he was never going to let her go, and how he's broken that promise through no fault of his own.
"Time to get up, Hanna."
She hears it a little clearer that time, breaking through her thoughts, ruining even the memories she has of Caleb. She hates that voice. She hates it with more intensity than she knew was possible. The person behind that voice has ruined her life. The person behind that voice killed Caleb.
"Time to get up, Hanna."
She pushes herself into a sitting position. The room swims. "No," she says.
Immediately she's hit with another blast of the painfully loud alarm. She uses a pillow to try to muffle the noise. It makes little difference, but she doesn't care; perhaps the sound will eventually drown out the agony in her brain.
It stops. Her ears still ring. The emotional pain hasn't left her either.
"I hate you," she says to the empty room. She's lost her restraint now. No need to behave. A can do whatever it likes to her, she's nothing left to lose.
"I love you, Hanna. You know that."
Something jogs her memory. She frowns. "Charlotte?"
There's silence. Hanna shakes her head. It can't be, Charlotte's dead, that's the whole reason they got into this mess.
"You don't love me," Hanna says. "You don't know the meaning of the word. Caleb loved me." Saying his name out loud makes her chest hurt. It feels like her heart is breaking. Tears return to her face. "Why did you do it?" Her voice has already lost its fire but she continues anyway. "He was a good person. He was a good person!"
"Time to get up, Hanna."
"No, fuck you." She wipes at her tears. Her cheeks feel hot. "You know what, I will find out who you are and I will find out where you are, and when I do that, I'm going to make you pay for hurting Caleb. You're going to wish you never messed with me."
She glares at a camera, hoping she looks fierce but knowing the tears tumbling down her cheeks are having the opposite effect. Crying doesn't mean she means it any less though. She couldn't save Caleb's life, but she's going to ensure he gets what he deserves now. She's going to avenge his death.
Then she thinks of something else that he deserves to be done correctly. A funeral. She tries to take a deep breath but she can't inhale properly for the sobs stuck in her throat.
"What have you done with him?" she asks. "With his… his body? Where is he?" She waits, for the first time wishing to hear the voice. She needs to know nothing else bad is going to happen to him now. "Take him to my friends, okay." If she can't make sure he gets the send-off he deserves, she needs to know someone who loved him will. "To Spencer. To my Mom, she'll look after him."
There's still silence. This matters more than anything A could do to her. It feels right.
"Prove to me you've done what I've asked, and I'm yours. I'll do anything you want."