2. Cipher
Cipher
The brothers call it my "bat cave."
Leaning forward in my chair, I manipulate the PTZ controls to zoom in on Rose's face.
She's smiling politely at something Sophie said, but the smile doesn't reach her eyes.
Those hazel eyes remain vigilant, constantly scanning her surroundings, cataloging exits, assessing potential threats.
It's a survival mechanism I recognize all too well.
I've used it myself since I was six years old.
"What have you been through, Baby Girl?" I mutter, the endearment again slipping out before I can stop it.
I still don't understand what’s going on with me.
I've participated in countless extraction operations, rescued numerous victims, all with professional detachment.
I could sort through body parts while knee-deep in rivers of blood without flinching.
But the moment I laid eyes on her huddled in that corner…
a primitive possessiveness crashed through my carefully constructed walls like a sledgehammer.
Her small form was pressed against the corrugated metal, those wide eyes looking up at me not with fear but with something that felt dangerously like recognition.
When I lifted her into my arms, her slight weight triggered a response so feral it terrified me.
My skin actually tingled where it made contact with hers, like a circuit completing.
Mine. Again, I hear that voice in my head.
I push away from the monitors, disgusted with myself. She's not mine. She can't be. I have no right to claim anyone, much less someone so fragile, so wounded, so deserving of care and comfort.
I don’t comfort. Not with these bloodied hands, this fractured mind, this soul that was carved out piece by piece many years ago in a basement in Damascus.
I turn to my main terminal—a custom-built system with processing power that would make most government agencies jealous—and continue the background check I've been running since we brought her back to the compound.
Rose Hartley, eighteen years old. Mother deceased when she was twelve, breast cancer according to the death certificate.
Stepfather Richard Hartley became her legal guardian.
No further school records after sixth grade, supposedly homeschooled, but no registration with state education authorities.
No social media presence whatsoever. No employment history. No medical records beyond age twelve.
It's as if she disappeared from the world six years ago.
My fingers fly across the keyboard, executing commands that bypass firewalls and security protocols with practiced ease.
Child protective services had been called to the Hartley home twice shortly before her mother's death—suspected neglect, both times dismissed without investigation.
After her mother died, nothing. Not a single welfare check or follow-up.
She fell through the cracks in the system.
Richard Hartley's record paints a picture of a two-bit criminal—three arrests for petty theft, two for check fraud, multiple illegal gambling charges, nothing that stuck due to insufficient evidence or witnesses who mysteriously recanted.
His financial records show a pattern of accumulating debt.
He's exactly the type of lowlife scum who would sell his stepdaughter to settle a debt.
White-hot rage floods my system. I've seen the worst humanity has to offer, but the calculated selling of your own child—even a stepchild—ignites something dark and vengeful inside me that I haven't felt since I hunted down my torturers after my escape.
My fingers tighten on the mouse, imagining they're wrapped around his throat instead.
“He’s a dead motherfucker.”
I glance back at the screen where Rose is trying to make herself invisible even as my cameras render that impossible. She's tucked into herself, taking up minimal space, shoulders hunched slightly as if expecting a blow.
"She's a survivor," I say aloud to the empty room.
The signs are clear. Hypervigilance. Evidence of long-term psychological conditioning consistent with emotional abuse, possibly physical. Adaptive behaviors typical of trauma victims—minimizing her presence, avoiding eye contact, anticipating negative outcomes.
I understand the signs all too well. I displayed most of them by age seven.
"There's something wrong with you, boy,” my father says, his face twisted with disgust. “Something missing upstairs,” he announces as he taps the side of his skull with his index finger. “You ain’t like the rest of us."
The man was right, though not in the way he thought. What was missing was his ability to accept a child whose brain worked differently than his own.
I switch camera views, following her as Angel walks with her through the compound and back to her room. She moves with a kind of careful precision, taking up as little space as possible, never brushing against anyone or anything. Another survival adaptation.
I need more cameras, more angles—both inside and outside her room.
I know it’s intrusive. But watching is what I do. I observe, surveil, analyze patterns, identify threats, and neutralize them before they can materialize.
What I don’t do is interact. Interactions are messy. Difficult. Especially for someone like me, whose social skills were nearly absent from birth, and then further stunted by abuse before being deliberately erased during government "training."
Rummaging through the supply closet in my quarters behind the surveillance room, I gather the equipment I'll need to install additional cameras tomorrow.
Three Axis Q6215-LE PTZ network cameras with 1080p resolution and night vision capability.
Two Sennheiser MKE 400 directional microphones.
One infrared motion sensor. All connected to my private server via an encrypted wireless network.
I check my equipment meticulously, testing each device, ensuring optimal functionality, the whole time telling myself the additional surveillance is just security, just protection.
I ignore the voice in my head that whispers it's something else entirely—because that has no place in my calculated existence.
Sleep, when it finally comes, is no escape. It never is.
Blackness. Disorientation. The smell of mold and human excrement. The sound of water dripping somewhere to my left, exactly 37 drops per minute. My wrists burn from the metal restraints, infection setting in where the skin has broken .
"Tell us about Operation Blackbird," the voice says in accented English. I've given him a name in my head—The Professor, for his cultured tone and precise diction.
I've been here before. I know what comes next. The rough cloth over my face. The water. The drowning that never ends.
Yet, I say nothing.
The cloth descends. I try to brace myself, but you can't brace for drowning.
Water pours, filling my nose, my mouth, my lungs.
My body betrays me, thrashing against the restraints, desperate for air that isn't coming.
Forty-seven seconds. That's how long a human can experience simulated drowning before the brain shuts down from panic.
When they finally remove the cloth, I'm gasping, choking, my body convulsing with the desperate need for oxygen.
"Your government has abandoned you," The Professor continues conversationally. "They reported you killed in action two months ago. No one is looking for you. You've been erased, just like all the people you erased for them."
I don’t doubt he's telling the truth.
"We can do this for months," The Professor says. "Years, if necessary. You're already dead to them."
The cloth descends again. This time, I see Rose's face, and I am no longer the tortured, but the torturer. Rose watches me, seeing the monster beneath my skin.
I wake with a violent jerk, sheets tangled around my legs, sweat soaking through my t-shirt. My hand automatically reaches for the knife under my pillow, gripping the handle as reality slowly reasserts itself.
My room. My bed. The compound. Safety.
The clock reads 3:17 AM. Three hours of sleep—more than usual. I swing my legs over the side of the bed, sitting with my head in my hands as the remnants of the nightmare fade, leaving behind a throbbing pain in my temples.
I pull off my sweat-soaked t-shirt, the cool air hitting the scars that cover my torso and back—thick, ropey reminders of electrical burns, knife wounds, cigarettes pressed into flesh.
I run a hand over the scar on the side of my face, a souvenir from my escape when I killed seven men with my bare hands and a makeshift knife fashioned from a metal bed frame.
I pull on a fresh shirt and head back to my surveillance room. I already know sleep won't return tonight.
The compound is quiet at this hour, most of the brothers are either sleeping or in their rooms fucking.
I pull up the compound schematics and mark where I'll place the new cameras.
One in the hallway outside her room, positioned for maximum coverage of her door.
One covering the window from the exterior.
Another at the stairwell nearby. I calculate optimal angles, fields of view, potential blind spots.
More coverage means better protection.
That's all it is—protection. Not possession. Not obsession. Just protection.
Yet, deep inside, I know the truth. That what she most needs protection from is me. That I, with my blood-soaked hands and fucked-up mind, am the most dangerous threat of all.