City of the Fallen - unedited

Chapter Forty-Four

It's dark in here, only the moon illuminates the space around me. I lie on my side, my knees curled up towards my chest to warm me up. My legs are covered in dirt from the floor.

I'm hungry, so much that my stomach stopped growling. My body stopped trying to tell me to eat hours ago, it gave up.

I told myself I would come up with a plan to escape, but I'm too tired to think, yet too scared to sleep. It has to be about four in the morning, it feels like I have been isolated with my thoughts for weeks.

I spend most of my time thinking about Nick, hoping he will be saved and that the fate of our journey will have a happy ending. Although I'm rotting in my cell, suffering in the dirt and lack of food, I bet Nick has it worse. With the trauma of his death as well as the trauma of being in the Underworld, it would be hard for him to recover.

"Shall we take the girl now?" A voice echoes off of the walls, causing my eyes to pop open. I don't even realize they're closed.

"No, it's too risky. We take her once we have more goods to sell. That way we don't waste money on transportation." Another replies in a sharp voice. It's a woman.

"Yes boss. What do we do with her for now?" The man returns, but I miss a few words after that. It sounds like they're walking away, and I can't understand her response.

So I am being trafficked. This is just fantastic.

I never imagined that being kidnapped was going to be an obstacle when I was up in the Afterworld. Nor did I know that I only had two weeks to be "alive" again or else I would be stuck on earth forever.

It does kind of satisfy me knowing that ghosts are actually real, but not for the reasons I expected. No wonder they like to haunt people, I don't blame them for being irritable and petty. They can't live up in endless paradise like everyone else.

A slight ray of sun fills the room, and I have the urge to wake up and be productive. There's no way to be productive in a cell with no way to escape.

I didn't get a single hour of sleep last night, I feared somebody coming into my cell and killing me or taking me elsewhere.

For all I know I'm in Greece or something. There were several hours where I wasn't conscious and anything could have happened in that time. Colton could be dead right now and I would have no idea.

I force my eyes shut at that thought. I want him to be alive. I need him to be alive, not just for Nick or the emeralds or his guidance, but for me too.

I don't know if it's better that I leave this rotten room to go wherever the traffickers want to take me now or later. Leaving now would give me an opportunity to escape, but it would also move me further from any gate. If I leave today, it would bring my chances of ever seeing Colton again down to zero.

The door handle tilts downward and I scoot away from the door, but the handcuffs are restraining my movement.

"Eat." A voice says as a bowl is pushed into the cell. It's in a styrofoam dish instead of a ceramic one.