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REVELATION 22:5

For the Lord God giveth them light. . . .

~ * ~

"I'm sorry," Stephen said again. The woman just stared at him, her face dirty and blank. "You have to understand," he pleaded. "There aren't any keys. She throws them away."

"Then kill us and get it over with, damn you!" a man yelled from the next room. He banged on the wall furiously.

Stephen clapped his hands over his ears, squeezing his skull. God, how he wanted to free them! He'd thought he could help them stay warmer and feed them better, let the women start healing now that Howard was gone. But he had been so terribly wrong. They talked to him like they'd never talked to Howard, and asked things of him that he just couldn't do. He would free them in an instant if he could. Other than that . . .

He was not a murderer.

"Please," he offered the pale woman a cup of hot chicken soup made from supplies he'd found stacked in an empty cubicle. "It'll make you feel better." But she just sat, staring at the skirt and jacket he'd given her instead of putting them on. He was afraid to try and dress her, afraid she would think he was Howard all over again. "You should put those on," he prompted, "so you can be warm." Still, she just . . . sat.

He sighed and went on to the next, and the next, and the one after that. The response was the same: people so numbed to abuse and the cold that they were unable to respond to what little help he so desperately tried to give. One young man grabbed him and shook him, then released him in disgust; another threw the hot soup in his face and told him he was no better than Siebold.

When the brown-haired man and the kid with the bow stepped out of the stairwell, Stephen had slipped into a confused, mumbling prayer.

And he truly believed God had finally heard him.