“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. I can feel her heaving with quiet sobs as I help her to sit up. She falls into me, shaking and weeping. I let her fold into my arms, her frame crumpling into the fetal position as I hold her.
“Those guys… they must have taken us,” she chokes out between sobs.
“Yeah. I think you’re right,” I concede sadly, forcing myself not to cry, too. At least one of us has to hold it together, and it might as well be me. I have the feeling that if we were to both fall apart there would be no hope at all. I have to be strong, for both our sakes.
“Do you hear that?” Maggie gasps suddenly, clutching at my arms. We sit stock-still and silent, listening intently. There’s a faint rustling, scraping, squeaking sound. Rats.
“Oh, gross,” I breathe, shaking my head. Maggie, however, is inconsolable.
“I hate rats. Oh god, oh god. What if they crawl on us? Or bite us? They carry rabies and other diseases, you know. And oh my god, if there are rats there are probably cockroaches, too,” she rambles, trembling as her voice gets higher and higher.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. They won’t mess with us, I’m sure,” I tell her quickly. But I pull my legs in close just in case, trying to minimize the space I take up. I just wish we could see something, anything at all. But it’s so dark.
Even with my eyes trying to adjust to the lack of light, I still can’t even make out shapes in the darkness. As cold and smelly as it is here, my mind starts going crazy trying to figure out where we could be. Maybe we’re underground? The atmosphere and total lack of light seems impossible for a house or building above ground. We’ve got to be subterranean.
“What is this place?” Maggie whimpers. I can feel her tears dampening my arms.
“I —I think we might be underground or something,” I answer. She shivers, her shoulders shaking with sobs. “Listen, we’re gonna figure this out, okay? I promise everything is gonna be alright. Do you have your phone or anything, or did they take it? I think they took mine.”
She shakes her head. “No, no, they have everything. I’ve just been lying here in the dark. I didn’t even know you were down here until you made a sound. I thought I was alone.”
“Well, let’s be grateful they didn’t separate us.”
“Yet,” she adds ominously.
“Hey, don’t talk like that. Let’s see, what do you remember about how we got here? About last night?” I press, trying to take a more proactive stance.
I can feel Maggie shrug. “Not much. I remember… being in the cab and getting to that bar in the eleventh arrondissement. With the graffiti.”
“Zero Zero, yeah,” I agree, the memories trickling back to us both.
“Oh god, Liv. This is all my fault. I’m the one who made us go there. You just wanted to go back to the flat like a good girl and I — I got us into this mess. I’m so stupid,” she cries, sitting up by herself. I can feel her withdrawing into a tight ball, rocking back and forth slightly.
“No, I could have stopped us. I wanted to go, too,” I lie, trying to assuage her guilt. It’s true that I didn’t really want to go to the bar. I’d had my suspicions before we even arrived on Rue Amelot last night, but I ignored the warning bells in my head and went along anyway. And besides, I’m the one who was gullible enough to get involved with a guy like Will. So the guilt is equally shared between Maggie and me. We’re both to blame.
“I’m so sorry, Liv,” she weeps. “What if they kill us?”
“Stop! Don’t say things like that. You don’t know what they’re doing or what they’re planning, but you can’t just keep assuming the worst. You’ll fall apart if you give in to that kind of thinking, Maggie,” I protest, reaching out to pat her shoulder. She flinches at my touch.
“My parents were right. I can’t handle the real world on my own. My first time striking out by myself and this happens,” she whimpers, clearly too distraught to heed my advice.
“Well, what about me? My parents trusted me enough to let me go off to another country on my own and I allow something awful to happen! But it’s not our fault, okay? These guys… they clearly know what they’re doing. I don’t think this is their first rodeo. In fact,” I continue, realizing the truth of my words with a painful jolt as they come out of my mouth, “I bet that Will started hunting me the second I walked onto that plane. How was I to know he was a bad guy? And how were you to know a get-together at a public bar would end up this way?”