There was no light. Not a trace. Not even a flicker.
And no light meant no openings.
But she searched anyway, because she couldn’t give up, feeling with her fingertips along every surface she could find . . . the floor . . . the walls . . . the corners. They were all too familiar to her now, and her skin was raw from probing the unyielding and punishing metal.
Panic took hold, again, and she screamed, beating her bruised fists against the walls that confined her. The voice that came out of her mouth was foreign, even to her own ears. It was weak and small. It sounded like someone who had already conceded to death.
The darkness closed in on her, filling her lungs until it was hard to breathe and impossible to scream any longer. The sounds of her stranger’s voice rasped and echoed around her until she found herself gasping to catch real air . . . clean air . . . undark air.
She collapsed into the corner, wrapping her arms around her knees and rocking herself.
It was so dark.
And she was all alone. And so very, very afraid.
She cried into the void between her legs and her chest, sobbing at first and then fading to a diminutive, almost inaudible, whimper as she curled into herself.
She wanted to go home.
Violet didn’t wake quickly. Instead she woke on a slow sob, crying into the damp surface of her pillow, clutching it tightly as she tried to smother the lingering terror.
She felt confused, stunned. At first she couldn’t recall the dream, so unlike the ones that had haunted her in the past, or the reason this one had brought her to tears. But as she lay there, struggling for composure, it came back in fragments.
The smothering blackness.
The fear. Sheer panic.
The devastating feeling of defeat.
The glimmer—although pale and fleeting—of hope.
It was as if she’d been buried alive. Entombed in total darkness with no escape. Violet was shaken by the nightmare, even as she assured herself that it was just that, a bad dream.
But this time she didn’t believe it; she wasn’t buying it at all. This was more than just a dream.
And she knew why. It was the voice. It hadn’t been her voice. It was small. Frail. And it belonged to someone else.
She closed her eyes, struggling to give the haunting images meaning. Why had she dreamed she was another person, trapped and alone in the dark?
And why had it felt so real?
But she knew the answer. Of course she knew. She’d known it even in her dream, in the deepest voids of sleep. And now, as she danced between knowing and not wanting to admit the truth, it fractured her tentative grip on her own well-being.
It felt real because it was real.
Someone was in there. Isolated and afraid.
She blinked, trying to make the idea go away, but it refused to budge.
There was a person inside that steel container.
She shook her head, even though there was no one to see her. Still, the voice inside her head refused to be silenced. “No,” she whispered, “there isn’t.”
But saying the words aloud didn’t make them true; even she knew that.
The tears came again, but this time they were hers and hers alone. Because even though she knew what her dream was telling her, that there was a person in there—a dead person—she also knew she had to go back to make sure.
The sky was the shade of polished ebony when Violet crept out of her house, leaving only a brief, and vague, note so her parents wouldn’t be alarmed when they got up and discovered she was gone.
She held her breath, listening to the crunch of gravel beneath her tires as she eased her car out of the driveway with the lights still off. When she reached the road, she double-checked her pocket to make sure her cell phone was in there, and she flicked the headlights on, casting an unnatural glow through the mist that had settled over the deserted back roads around her house.
The air was brisk, and since Violet hadn’t taken the time to let her car idle before leaving, too worried her parents would hear the noisy engine, the interior was frosty. She could see her own breath in front of her face as she drove toward the main highway out of town.
It was early—or late—depending on how you looked at it, and the roads were empty at this hour. Violet felt like the only survivor in some sort of postapocalyptic movie, alone in the abandoned shell of a town. The illusion was shattered when she saw a car coming toward her on the opposite side of the narrow highway. She wondered briefly if they were coming home or heading out like she was.
Because she hadn’t slept much, she was tired. Fatigued was more like it. And the darkness had a lulling effect on her senses as her car moved across the pavement, rocking her gently. She stopped at a small drive-through espresso stand that was open all night to pick up a double-shot vanilla latte, hoping to shake some of the weariness out of her system for the long drive to Seattle.
As she got closer to the city, and night edged toward dawn, the sky gradually shifted from ebony to a deep, smoky charcoal. More cars crept onto the roadways, and suddenly Violet was no longer alone.
But that didn’t mean she was any less afraid. She was terrified about going back to the shipyard, about standing in front of that cargo container for a second time, knowing what might be inside. And she had no idea what she could do about it once she got there.
Unfortunately there was no way she could just ignore it either. This echo would never leave her alone.
She came to a stop, parking her car right outside the tall chain-link fencing that guarded the perimeter of the shipyards. Even from where she sat, it was obvious: The gate was definitely not open this morning.