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I back farther away, so does the piken, disappearing into the dark of its cage.
    I know I am safe for the moment. But I also know this animal, this foul, fearsome creature, may be pitted against me in the coming days or weeks. My stomach turns in fear and helpless rage: I don’t know whether to vomit or pass out or both.
    I nestle my damp head against Katarina’s, wishing this nightmare away.
    I fall into an agitated half-sleep, awoken only by Katarina’s voice.
    “Six. Wake up. Six.”
    I snap to.
    “Your gag?” I ask.
    “I worked it off. It’s taken this whole time to get it off.”
    “Oh,” I say stupidly. I don’t know what else to say, what good it does us to speak. We are caught, without defense.
    “They bugged our car. Back in Texas. That’s how they found us.”
    How stupid of us, I think. How careless .
    “It was my job to think of that,” she says, as if reading my thoughts. “Never mind that. I need you to prepare for what’s coming.”
    What’s that? I think. Death?
    “They will torture you for information. They will . . . ” I hear Katarina succumb to weeping, but she pulls herself together and resumes. “They will inflict unthinkable torments on you. But you must bear them.”
    “I will,” I say, as firmly as I can.
    “They will use me to make you bend. You can’t let them . . . no matter what. . . . ”
    My heart freezes in my chest. They will kill Katarina in front of me if they think it will make me talk.
    “Promise me, Six. Please . . . they can’t know your number. We can’t give them any more power over the others than they already have, or power over you. The less they know about the charm, the better. Promise me. You have to.”
    Imagining the horrors to come, I can’t. I know my vow is all Katarina wants to hear, but I just can’t.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
     
    I have been in my cell for three days. I have nothing in here with me but a bucket of water, another bucket to use as a toilet, and an empty metal tray from yesterday’s meal.
    There is not a speck of food left on the tray: I licked it clean yesterday. When I woke up in my cell three days ago it had been my intention to mount a hunger strike against my captors, to refuse all food and water until they let me see my Katarina. But two days passed with no food or water from them anyway. I had begun to imagine I’d been forgotten in my cell. By the time the food arrived, I was so far out of my mind with hopelessness that I forgot my original plan and wolfed down the slop they shoved through the little slot of my cell door.
    The odd thing is that I wasn’t even particularly hungry. My spirits were low but I didn’t feel weak from hunger. My pendant throbbed dully against my chest during my days in the dark, and I began to suspect the charm was keeping me safe from hunger and dehydration. But even though I wasn’t starving, or dehydrated, I’d never gone so long without food or water in my life, and the experience of being deprived drove me to a kind of temporary madness. I wasn’t hungry or thirsty physically, but I was mentally.
    The walls are made of heavy, rough stone. It feels less like a prison cell and more like a makeshift burrow. It seems to have been carved out of a natural stone formation instead of built. I take this as a clue that we’re in some natural structure: a cave, or the inside of a mountain.
    I know I may never find out the answer.
    I have attempted to chip at the walls of my cell, but even I know there is nothing I can do. In my attempts, all I accomplished was to wear my nails down until the tips of my fingers bled.
    The only thing left now is to sit in my cell and try to hold on to my sanity.
    That is my sole mission: to not let my solitary confinement drive me to madness. I can let it harden me, I can let it toughen me, but I must not let it make me crazy. It’s a strange challenge, staying sane. If you focus too hard on maintaining your sanity, the slipperiness of the task can only make you