ZAYNE POV

“Survival becomes instinct when your father wants you erased.”

I wake to a salt taste in my mouth and the slow drum of my heart.

For a while my head is a fog of bad air and softer sounds; then the rope burn on my wrists pulls me sharp back into the room.

Concrete. Low ceiling. A narrow slit of window up near the roof that gives me a strip of gray sky and nothing else. The light is the color of a bruise.

“Zayne?” Tatiana’s voice floats through the thin wall. It’s small but ...