TAKEN APART
663 Words
They came for Chike before dawn.
Folashade woke to movement—rough hands, hurried voices, the sharp scrape of boots against earth. For a split second, she thought it was another threat, another performance meant to terrify them into obedience.
Then she heard his name.
“Get him up.”
Chike barely had time to sit before he was yanked to his feet. Shade surged forward instinctively, the rope biting into her wrists as she struggled.
“No—wait!” she cried. “Please!”
A rifle swung toward her. She froze.
Chike turned, panic flaring in his eyes. “Shade, don’t—”
“Where are you taking him?” she demanded, her voice shaking despite her effort to keep it steady.
No one answered.
Khalifa stood a few steps away, rigid, his expression unreadable. Their eyes met for half a second—long enough for her to see something crack there.
She shook her head at him, silently begging.
Chike was dragged toward the trees, his footsteps uneven as he fought to keep his balance. “Shade!” he shouted. “Listen to me—whatever happens, don’t—”
His words were cut off as the forest swallowed him.
The silence afterward was worse than the shouting.
Shade sank to the ground, breath coming in short, painful bursts. The space beside her felt wrong—too empty, too quiet. Chike had always filled silence with logic, with plans, with reassurance even when he didn’t believe them himself.
Now there was nothing.
“They’re isolating him,” whispered one of the other captives. “It’s what they do.”
Shade hugged her knees to her chest, nails digging into her skin. Isolation was a weapon. She knew that now.
Hours passed.
No Chike.
No explanation.
When Khalifa finally approached, it was cautiously, as if he expected her to lash out.
“Where is he?” she asked before he could speak.
He hesitated. That hesitation said more than words.
“They moved him to another camp,” Khalifa said. “Temporary.”
“Temporary for what?” Her voice cracked.
“For pressure,” he answered quietly.
Her chest burned. “They’ll hurt him.”
“They won’t kill him,” Khalifa said quickly. “Not unless negotiations fail.”
“Unless,” she repeated bitterly.
He lowered his voice. “Your family is still talking. That matters.”
She stood suddenly, closing the distance between them despite the danger. “You told me to stay alive,” she said. “How am I supposed to do that when you take the one person keeping me human?”
Khalifa flinched.
“I didn’t order it,” he said.
“But you didn’t stop it.”
Silence stretched between them, heavy and accusing.
“I can’t stop everything,” he said finally. “I barely stop myself.”
Tears blurred her vision, but she refused to let them fall. “Then don’t ask me to trust you.”
He nodded once. “I won’t.”
That night, Shade lay awake alone.
Without Chike’s quiet breathing beside her, the forest felt louder, darker. Every sound felt like a threat. She replayed his last words again and again, afraid she’d missed something important.
Whatever happens, don’t—
Don’t what?
Give up? Trust them? Trust him?
Her gaze drifted to where Khalifa stood guard, a solitary figure against the dark. He didn’t look back. He didn’t look away either.
Something had been broken today—not just the captives’ unity, but the fragile balance Khalifa had been maintaining.
And Shade understood with terrifying clarity: separating Chike wasn’t just about money.
It was about breaking her.
As she pressed her forehead into the dirt, a single, cold thought settled in her mind.
If surviving meant becoming someone unrecognizable, then so be it.
She would endure.
For Chike. For herself. And for whatever future was waiting beyond this forest—if she could still reach it.
- Writer
