Throughout listening to Scott, the verdict was in by the end of his explanation. Yes, the boy had been telling the truth. Did that make him necessarily safe? No. Did that mean the he should be allowed to leave the cell until the rest figured out what to do with him? No. But the pain that Mary had experienced by making contact with him as he spoke for even that brief moment swayed her to think that despite any logic, Scott should be let out of the cage. Too, she couldn’t put her finger on it but there was something strange and…sort of supernatural about the man. Mary didn’t have the abilities to tell man from beast exactly, she just knew that there was something extraordinary about the man that she couldn’t explain.
She had been about to wander over to the door to call for the key to the cell- for she didn’t possess a copy on her at the moment- when Joe bolted through the door everyone had exited into, with the others following in rapid succession.
“The girls saw a pack of them heading our direction, we got to go Mary. Everybody, up the hatch, get yourselves armed.” Joe ordered firmly, being the first to go up the ladder of the hatch and open it up from the inside, pushing himself up to the ground and vanishing out of site. Behind him was Scraggly, who nervously retorted,
“Not all of th-h-h-em are girls. Th-h-h-here’s the man,” He countered to Joe who was long gone by now and not in ear range to hear him anyway. He approached the rings but stopped halfway when Doug spoke, standing with his arms crossed over his chest impatiently waiting for the other man to finish his climb up the ladder.
“Yeah well, what’s the damn difference? The gay’s nothin’ more than a lady anyhow,” Doug snapped back, giving a hearty chuckle at his own joke and giving the ladder a shake which in turn startled Scraggly and made him yelp out in shock.
“Well then, if you don’t want that, climb the fuckin’ ladder!” Doug responded, growing more and more irritated by the minute.
During the entire exchange, Mary was grasping her gun and eyeing Arianna tentatively. She could see that Arianna had the key, and when Doug had his shot to the ladder, Arianna swiveled to Mary and gestured to Scott.
“We been talkin’ bout it and you best leave him in the cage. Wouldn’t want anything to happen while we’re gone you know what I’m saying?” Arianna said towards Mary, who pulled away from the cage and nodded her head.
“I’ll be a minute, I just remembered that I need to reload,” Mary said after a while of realizing that Arianna wasn’t moving towards the ladder and had been waiting for her. Arianna’s gaze narrowed for a moment but she soon nodded her head.
“Be careful all alone down here. If anything happens…nobody’s gonna be mad at you if you kill him. Save us a lot of time, really, but make sure if it happens you do the job all the way and not some half-arse shit that’s gonna make me spending hours trying to wrap his wounds,” Arianna spoke, giving a wink. She had begun to make her way towards the ladder when Mary paused her with a ‘Wait’, approaching the woman and getting close enough to straighten out Arianna’s shirt that had folded up in certain areas to expose her belly.
“Aw, Mamma. You takin’ care of everyone.” Arianna said affectionately, smiling before heading up the ladder finally. Mary watched to make sure she was gone before approaching back to the cage. In her hand she had the key which she had clearly swiped from Arianna.
Holding it out to the lock, she paused mid motion in order to give Scott one final warning.
“I’m going to let you out of this cage like you want. But you can’t come up the hatch. I know that you have military experience but you aren’t properly trained for the type of things we do out here. This is the only condition I have.” Mary looked to Scott in the eye as she spoke, but she did not wait for him to affirm that he wouldn’t follow her up the hatch, instead, trusting that he would be grateful enough to be freed from his cage that he wouldn’t try to leave and endanger everyone. The lock clicked and the door opened before Mary slipped the key back in her pocket, approaching the ladders and giving Scott one look over her shoulders before she climbed up and closed the hatch behind her, leaving Scott completely alone in the shelter…and free from his prison cell.