The sound reached me before anything else did. Doors opening somewhere above us — heavy ones, a long way up — and then the echo of them coming down the stairwell, metal on metal, bootfalls finding the steps in a rhythm that meant more than one person.
I was on the floor with my back against the wall and Azure beside me. Her shoulder near mine.
First time anybody had come down to that basement since they put Ingrid on the floor of it.
No trays. No knocks. Nothing through that steel for the better part of ten hours.
You notice the first missed meal. You wonder about the second one. By the third you've stopped wondering and started understanding, because there's only one reason a man stops feeding people he's holding, and it isn't cruelty and it isn't forgetfulness.
It's arithmetic. You don't spend food on a body you're not going to need working tomorrow.
