Icy shock flooded through my body, the words, "...help you escape...," echoing in my brain. I stared up at him, completely frozen, unable to believe the words his lips just uttered. My scrambled and noise blasted brain wouldn't let me except that. My wrists twitched, my body wanting to automatically resume struggling, those survival instincts that I lived off of for so long grappling to the surface. 

         I narrowed my eyes at him. "Why?" I asked. My voice was drowned out by the alarms, but he understood what I was asking. His eyebrows raised, and he opened his mouth, but no words came out, seemingly lost for them. He closed his mouth, only to open it again a second later. 

         But whatever he was about to say was interrupted by the sudden piercing sound of... nothing. The blaring alarms that I had almost gotten used to suddenly shut off, and the quiet felt more piercing then the alarms. His mouth snapped closed, and he scrambled off of me, looked around, and cursed. I sat up, my breath coming fast from the struggling, and followed his line of sight. 

         Right up to the blinking camera in the corner. 

         He quickly grabbed his helmet from the floor, pulled it over his head, then in one fluid movement, jumped onto my cot, grabbed the tiny camera, and smashed it between his hands, letting the particles run through his fingers and rain onto my cot. He stood there for a second, staring at his palm, as if he was surprised by what he did, but eventually, he let the rest of the smashed pieces of the camera fall from his fingers and turned back to me. He jumped back down from my cot, and without wasting a single breath, grabbed my hand and pulled me out the door.

         Or he tried too, anyway.

         I wasn't having any of it. I was sick of people pulling me around without explaining where we were going or what we were doing. I planted my feet, and with a tremendous yank, pulled my hand away from his grip. "I'm not going anywhere with you." He was still a complete stranger, one that was in a guards suit, for goodness sake. And he suddenly wanted to pull me from my prison like a knight in shining armor and he just expected me to sit back and be grateful? That wasn't happening. 

         I was actually feeling proud of my display of independence, but the look on his face when he pulled the helmet off made me check that feeling. He was looking at me like I was a complete moron. And maybe I was, but that still didn't change how I felt. Besides, he could still be a rapist and just dragging me off in guise of rescue so that he could bring me to a more deserted spot. 

         He must have been able to judge what I was thinking because his face turned red, and it looked like he was having a hard time keeping a straight face. It all seemed too much for him. Suddenly, he burst out laughing, the sound ringing off the walls and echoing in my ears, the happy sound blasting against the angry personality of this place. I just stood there, looking at him, thinking about how insane this guy must be, until he finally ceased his laughter. He looked at me, wiping tears from his eyes, and said in a surprisingly serious tone, "Love, you are literally the last person on Earth I would ever even consider doing that with." 

         I felt my cheeks suddenly ring with a blast of scorching heat. But despite my mortification, I couldn't help the frustrating sear of anger that burns through my body. I mean, I know I'm not the greatest thing to look at, but he didn't have to give me that absolute disgusted look, like I was worse than the dirt under his feet. This guy didn't even know me. I opened my mouth, ready to give him a long and heated piece of my mind, but just then the alarms blared again, drowning out my words. I snapped my mouth closed with an alarmed look at the door. 

         He cursed, then grabbed my arm yet again, saying just loud enough for me to hear over the resumed ringing in my ears, "Time to go." This time, when he dragged me out the door, I let him.

         But not for long. 

         When we got out into the hallway, instead of letting him continue dragging me down the passage, I pulled away yet again and rushed to Jordan's cell door, feeling the brush of his fingers against my sleeve as he tried to grab me again. I pressed my face to the bars of Jordan's cell, ignoring the strange guy as he tried to pull me away from the concrete slab. For a second, blinding panic raced through my body when I didn't automatically see Jordan, but then a lump under the used cot moved, and immediate relief flooded my body. "Jordan!" I tried to call, but the blaring alarms drowned out my voice. I shook the bars of the cell, trying in vein to get her attention. I felt the stranger brush my shoulder, and then his voice said faintly in my ear, "What are you doing!" Yet again, I ignored him and focused on Jordan, who I could now see had her hands pressed firmly over her ears and her eyes closed, and her body was shaking with tremors. 

         "Jordan!" I tried yet again, and yet again it was in vein. Jordan was so frightened that she wouldn't move even a single muscle. I spun on the stranger so fast that he took a step back, before I pulled him closer again to yell in his ear, "Unlock the door!" He merely looked at me in confusion, and slowly shook his head. Louder, practically screeching now, I repeated myself. "Unlock the damn door!" 

          The look of regret in his eyes portrayed the message clearer then his words as he said, "I'm sorry, but I can't." 

         "What do you mean you can't?!" I screamed, frantic now. 

         "I mean I can't!" He yelled back. "I don't have the pass-code for her door!"

         I was fixing on saying that it didn't matter, that we would find a way to open the door without the pass-code, but sudden flickering out of the corner of my eye distracted me. I turned my head, eyes widening when I saw what it was that made the flickering shadows. Guards. Dozens of them. Approaching the bend in the hall and steady coming this way. The strange guy turned at the same time I did, and cursed creatively when he saw the guards shadows. He grabbed my arm once again, and this time, his grip was too tight for me to yank free. "We have to go!" He yelled, and started pulling me down the hall, away from the approaching guards. I dug my feet in, not wanting to give up on Jordan, and my fingers clawed at his grip on my skin. 

        "No!" I refused to leave without her. I wasn't going to just abandon her here in this hell.  I needed to help her escape. But we were quickly running out of time.

         Time has always been my enemy.

         I barely got the chance to look one last time into Jordan's cell, to see her still curled beneath her cot, frightened out of her mind, before I was pulled away, kicking and screaming at the stranger, the stranger that was trying to save me but kill my sister. 

         Down the hall we went, further and further away, leaving the only family I knew behind. 

         The only family I knew to die.