I tried to slow my breathing, tried to slow my thinking, but my mind was whirling at a million miles a second. I couldn’t breathe. My body was in full panic mode, regardless of what my mind was doing. I needed air, needed it now, needed it like nothing I’d ever needed before. My hands flailed uselessly, slapping at Miksa Fenes’s arm, which might as well have been made of pure steel for all the good my little slaps were doing. He said nothing, or at least nothing I could hear, and since I could hear and feel his breaths on the top of my head, I assumed he wasn’t doing any talking. I stopped slapping his arm and searched for another option. I needed something. Anything. A weapon. Like the knife on my belt. I grabbed the Gerber survival knife out of its sheath with fumbling fingers and ran it straight into his hip. He screamed, breaking that quiet tradition.
