His sweat ran down both hot and cold at the same time, soaking his clothes, his hair, and his soul. He himself didn’t even know where he had found the courage to follow him. Deep down he admired him, and now, these last few days, he had come to respect him even more. Because in tough times, the real tough guys showed themselves. And that’s exactly what he was; calm, logical, methodical, fearless, a real tough guy. In the most difficult conditions of all. In those where he himself and the others, all those who had been acting tough for so long, had broken. From the very first moment, in fact, even if he was ashamed to admit it even to himself. Never before had he been so scared, never had he felt that his life was hanging by a thread, never had death whispered in his ear that it was there, lurking. Waiting. For when, not if. That was a given.
They had already started thinning out. Two of them—the inmates—were no longer among them. They would wake up one morning to discover—not immediately, and that was perhaps the scariest thing of all—that someone was missing. Someone who would never return. The first time, they wondered if maybe that person had escaped, if he had found a way to get out, and hope swelled inside them only to deflate like a balloon a little later. After breakfast, a video was shown on the communication screen—that’s what the “monster” called the white, worn-out wall. A video that left no room for doubt. They hadn’t escaped. He had taken them.