3: Gavin
Chapter 3 in Book Three of the E.L.A. series
In the hours when the world holds its breath, memories have a way of slipping through the cracks. Before daylight arrives, he finds himself trapped between where he is and where he came from—and discovers that freedom sometimes begins with remembering.
Night settled unevenly around the cage, the kind of darkness that pooled where the torches didn’t reach. Ela had long since curled into her jacket on her side of the darkness, her breath soft, steady. Gavin couldn’t sleep—not with the grit pressed into his skin, not with the smell of rust and the faint metallic sweetness of fear hanging in the air.
He leaned his head back against the cold metal and let his eyes drift upward. Above him, the piece of sky he could see through the narrow slit was a grey wash, clouded over, as if hiding on purpose. He preferred it when the stars were visible. The stars made sense. Patterns. Predictability. What happened down here—what people did to each other—rarely did.
He exhaled slowly, trying to loosen the knot between his shoulders. A night in confinement was nothing compared to what he’d survived as a child, but captivity still found old wounds and pressed.
He rested his hands on his knees and let the memory unspool.
…
He’d been eight the night the marauders came. He remembered the air horn first—one quick burst, then another, cut short. His mother’s hand had shoved him and his sister into the hall closet. Leslie’s arms wrapped around him, tight and shaking. The door had shut, the world outside swallowed by running, shouting, and the unmistakable sound of things breaking.
He remembered the way Leslie’s breath stuttered against his ear when boots thudded past. They stayed like that for hours, until even exhaustion couldn’t pry them loose.
