Page 8 of The Shape of my Scar (The Unbroken #1)

T hey spilled out of the open door into the daylight.

The mid-afternoon sun stabbed at their eyes.

For a few minutes of panic, eyes that hadn’t seen sunlight in months were blinded before slowly adjusting.

The air was cold despite the clear sky. Everything felt unreal, a dream they had never thought possible when they were crowded together in that rancid hellhole.

Bare feet slapped pavement slick from the morning rain. Torn, blood-crusted clothes clung to their emaciated frames. Their hair, too long and wild, and eyes sunken in their sockets made them look like shadows of the boys they used to be.

Across the road, a cherry blossom tree stood in full bloom, branches dancing and petals trembling in the wind—a beautiful contrast to the atrocities that the house just across the road hid.

Row upon row of identical houses stretched out in every direction. There was no one out and about, and the windows were shuttered.

It was like the lull before the storm.

They ran like their lives depended on it. And it did.

Zel dragged Thane, who stumbled with every other step. The adrenaline was starting to wear off.

It seemed like they had been running for miles before the world began to stir. An old woman in a red dress pulled her curtain shut. A mother grabbed her toddler from the pavement and rushed inside, slamming the door.

Eyes followed them, but nobody came near.

They reached the main road.

A grey van slowed, and the boys froze for a second before picking up the pace.

Zel instinctively shielded Thane, his heart pounding. Was it them? Had they found them already?

The man in the van rolled down his window, revealing a bald head with tired eyes leaning out.

“You alright, lads?” he asked, his voice careful. It was a familiar accent, clipped and low.

Another man crossed the street, eyebrows drawing together “You hurt, lads? Where’ve you come from?”

Too many voices. Too many questions. Too fast.

The boys couldn’t answer. They just stood there with their backs to each other in a standoff.

Everyone was wary about coming too close as if they were a wild wolf pack.

Then, there was the shriek of sirens in the distance. A blue-lit cop car slowed down with lights flashing, and then another followed. An ambulance trailed them, its doors swinging open.

The boys froze as one, like deer in the headlights.

“Put it down, lad,” one officer in navy said in a soft, placating tone. “Whatever it is…just drop it, yeah?”

Thane looked at his hand. He was still holding the taser in a bloodstained, grubby paw.

He let it clatter to the tarmac, blinking like he’d just woken up from a nightmare.

His breath came in gasps. He tried to speak past a throat that had seized up but words wouldn’t form. He looked over his shoulder at Maro, who was holding his shiv up with a shaking hand. His eyes were wide, the whites stark around his irises.

“Stay back!” he growled, panic trembling in his voice.

In a daze, Thane noticed his expression-the shifting eyes, his clenched teeth feral.

He wasn’t about to let anyone near.

Lirian stared at nothing. Then suddenly, like a puppet with its strings cut, he lurched forward. He walked to the ambulance on stiff, mechanical legs.

Then Zel stepped forward with his palms up, speaking through cracked lips. “Where…where are we?”

One of the officers—stocky, older, with a blunt face—exchanged confused glances with his partner. “Wythenshawe. You’re in Wythenshawe, lads. Manchester.”

What happened next happened in a flash. Suddenly, Maro was down on the ground, an officer on top of him. Animal grunts were torn from his throat.

“Let me go, fucker… You fucking cunt…let me…”

“Get off me! You fuckin’ knobhead, I’ll kill you—”

“Calm it down, lad!” the copper holding him down snapped.

Thane grabbed the arm of a woman officer with kind eyes who looked a little like his mum.

“There’s a girl. Dorothy. We left her. We couldn’t open the door—”

Zel—the calmest of them all—stood beside him, nodding. Dried blood coloured the side of his face, and his left eye was swollen shut.

“We were kept somewhere for months. There’s a girl still in there.”

“There was this house…” Thane tried again, eyes wide, breath catching. “We were inside it for ages, like, months, and—”

“We don’t know where exactly,” Zel added quickly, voice hoarse but firm. “It was on an estate. There was a cherry blossom tree.”

“And Dory—her real name’s Dorothy—she’s still in there!” Thane cried. “We tried to get her, we really did, but the door was locked with some kind of number pad, and we couldn’t…couldn’t open it—”

“It jammed. There was no keyhole,” Zel cut in. He kept a hand on Thane’s shoulder. “They reinforced it. She was trapped.”

“We tried everything.” Thane’s voice was like the rattle on an ancient car. “We kicked it and pushed and screamed for her, and she was screaming, too. We had to run because they were coming back, and we didn’t wanna leave her—”

“But we had no choice,” Zel interjected. “They would have killed us. The men had guns and tasers. One was dead. We couldn’t fight them all.”

Thane turned back to the officer, tears streaking through the dirt on his face. “Please, she’s little…she’s nine. She’s got blonde hair and blue eyes, and she reads books out loud, and she was so scared. Please—”

The lady officer with kind eyes walked them to the ambulance and said, “Now calm down. We need this nice gentleman to check if you are hurt. Tell me again…You were saying you all were locked up in a house?”

“Yes, there is this house—we were inside it for a long time, like months, I think—and there’s a girl still in there.

Her name’s Dorothy, but I call her Dory, and she’s still in the room.

We couldn’t get her out, the door wouldn’t open, and we tried everything, but it was stuck, and we had to run, but we’re gonna go bac… We have to go back—”

A lady officer crouched near them, keeping her voice low and soft. “Alright, love. It’s okay. Take a breath. Let’s get you sat down, yeah? You’ve done brilliant, all of you. We will find her.”

Thane sat in the back of a patrol car, still trembling, still babbling. Zel stuck close to him.

Sirens blared in the distance. Cars passed by. An ambulance on the road. The beep of the police radio.

The boys described what they could.

Cherry blossom tree. The church spires in the distance. White fences. The rusted gate with a pattern of leaves on top. The red brick houses.

A man nearby scratched his head and nodded slowly. “Sounds like Firth Street. There’s an estate up there.”

They were loaded into the squad cars.

Thane and Zel in one; Maro and Lirian in the other.

They turned into a large estate.

Firth Street was massive, with dozens of identical homes. They all looked the same.

None of them knew the number of the house. Why didn’t they check the number?

Thane’s breath went in and out in bursts as he scanned the houses for something…anything familiar. He kept muttering… please please …under his breath.

Then, a woman walking her dog nodded.

“Big cherry tree? That’ll be two, three streets down. Near the corner.”

And then they turned the corner. The whine of sirens and the smell of burning plastic filled the air.

Thick black smoke poured into the sky as they got closer.