She’d shuddered through her entire body as the others held her immobile against the wall.

He waited a moment, leaned close.

“Later,” he had said softly.

Nothing else.

And then he’d turned, and his men had released their grip on her, and followed him out the solid metal door of the cage, passing into the black.

That was the first visit.

They had come back often since. Sometimes it was to measure out more violence against him. Sometimes they left trays of bland, greasy stew and water. When they brought the food, it was always without the man she’d assumed to be their leader. He would just arrive for the beatings. None of them ever asked any questions. None of them spoke. It was always the same.

They ate their tasteless food in the blackness, ate to stay alive for however much longer they could. Two prisoners holed away without explanation, without knowing when their sentence would reach its end, or what would happen to them afterward. It was difficult for him to chew or swallow. She’d had to help him take down the unsavory mush, slip little clots of it past his swollen lips with her fingers. After the third round of severe punishment he’d vomited, been unable to hold the food in his stomach for quite a while. Talk of escape arose between them, but neither had any idea how it might be accomplished. They had wondered aloud why they were being held, could only guess that sooner or later their captors meant to question them about the base. There was no way to be sure what they expected to learn, what motives they might have, it was all so baffling. But he told her he’d promised himself not to give anything up to them. Not unless they began to direct their violence at her would he give anything up.

She wasn’t surprised. He was a brave man. She wished she felt that kind of courage on her own.

The beatings continued to alternate with the crude, bare-sustenance meals.

Time after time it was the same.

Until the last time.

That last time they returned, it was to take him away. By then he’d been in desperate shape and could barely stay up on his legs. She remembered panicking as they dragged him off the floor, into the blackness beyond the cage. She had verged on crying out that she’d tell them whatever they needed to know, anything, if they only let him be. But then she’d thought of his vow to defy interrogation, his resolute, unsubmitting heart, and checked herself. She hadn’t wanted to fail him, to fall short, and had bitten down on the words, watching them take him away, watching the door of the cage slam shut behind him—