Soulprint by Megan Miranda Read Free Book Online

imagine the air running lower, running out, and I understand in a way I can feel that this is it: this is the last air, and this is the last step, and this pipe leads to something I want desperately.
    I feel something other than water—the absence of water—on my back, and I clamber onto my knees. I pull the mask from my face and shake the tank off my back and suck in air. Humid, dank air, but air. Dom says, “Don’t leave this behind,” so I pick it back up and crawl onward. “You, too, Cameron.”
    â€œWhy not? They know who I am,” Cameron says.
    â€œThey know who
she
is,” he corrects, his voice deliberately quiet, but it still echoes through the tunnel. “They don’t know where we’ve been. They don’t know anything but your face so far, if that. Don’t give them anything more. They don’t know who you are.”
    Cameron laughs. “What I
am
is a dead man walking.”
    But he’s wrong. In fact, what we are right now, crawling through a pipe under the earth somewhere, is the exact opposite of dead.
    The pipe ends, and the room opens up. I see light filtering from somewhere beyond. And I hear water dripping, echoing, along with our movements. There’s stagnant water in a pool in the middle of the room, and we stand, silent, on the concrete ridge over top. There are clothes, in piles, shoved against the walls, curving upward. Clean, dry clothes. Cameron doesn’t speak as he pushes one pile my way with his foot. I’m wobbly on my legs, and my entire body is shaking, so I press my hand against the wall to steady myself as I undress.
    When I pull the wet shirt over my head, the bandage comes with it, and I let out a sound. The wound starts bleeding again, dripping down my stomach, and I wipe it away quickly, hoping nobody else notices.
    I look over my shoulder. Dom, in the wet suit, is facing the pipe we came through, pulling the black material down his chest. Cameron stands halfway between us, and he’s watching me. He walks closer, half-changed, and whispers, “Casey will take care of it. Soon as she’s back.”
    I nod and instinctively look at the untouched pile of clothes against the wall. Cameron finishes changing with his back to me. It’s funny, I think, the things people are supposed to keep hidden about themselves.
    My entire life has been on display since forever.
    â€œI’ll wait here for Casey,” Cameron says, speaking across the room. Dom turns around, his mask gone, and steps outof the shadow. He shakes out his hair, and I freeze. His mouth twitches when he sees that I see.
    I try to grasp my bearings. To grasp the upper hand. But I feel instead as if I’m falling over the edge of the cliff again. I try to mimic his condescending gaze. I weigh the words before I speak them, so that I am sure of them. “Hello,
Ellis
,” I say. Emphasis on the lie he fed me to hide my shock.
    â€œAlways the skeptic,” he says, with a sad smile. He sticks his hand out, as if I would consider taking it. “Dominic Ellis,” he says. “Did you miss me?”
    I sense, but do not see, that Cameron is stepping closer. I wonder if he’s as confused as I am. If he knows that I know this man.
Knew
this man. That he was a guard and I liked him. That he snuck into my room and we talked. And then, when I realized he wasn’t there for
me
, I did something more, something worse.
    Dominic Ellis’s crooked grin turns into a full-on smile, and my heart plummets into my stomach, ruining that fleeting feeling of freedom. And I realize that I have made a terrible mistake.

Chapter 5
    The saddest thing about this moment, as I finish dressing myself, as Cameron watches Dominic Ellis watching me, is that when he says those words, I realize I do, in a way. I did miss him. I missed the very idea of him—that there could be an ally in a prison, that he could see through the
thing
that I am portrayed to