Chapter 14 RealMake Believe #3
The room seems to hold its breath.
My hand twitches.
I could do it. I could reach out. I could comfort her. I could let the chemical flood do what it wants and become what they’ve designed me to be: a soothing machine, a gentle hand, a warm voice. I could give her relief, and maybe that relief would keep her brother alive. Maybe.
But I can feel the hook in it. The way the system tightens around this moment, ready to record the spike, ready to reward the behaviour.
I look at Lena, really look.
Her pupils are slightly too dilated. Her skin is flushed, not from the room’s warmth but from something internal. She’s breathing too fast. She’s caught in it too.
They are dosing her as well.
They aren’t testing me with her. They are binding us both to the same chemical lie.
My stomach turns.
“Lena,” I say, and I force my voice to stay flat, factual. “They’re drugging you.”
Her eyes widen, confusion flickering. “What?”
“They’re drugging you,” I repeat. “That’s why you feel like you need me. That’s why you’re saying it like that. But those feelings…they’re not real.”
Her mouth opens. Closes. She looks at her own hands as if they might be betraying her.
“I—” she whispers. “I thought…I thought it was just fear.”
“It’s not just fear,” I say. “It’s a programme.”
Her face crumples. She makes a small sound, half-sob, half-laugh. “They said you’d help,” she whispers. “They said you wouldn’t be able to stop.”
The voice cuts in. “Subject Honey. Verbal engagement detected. Continue.”
The command is almost casual.
My stomach drops.
They’re listening to every syllable, not just for content but for tone. For warmth. For softness. For the moment my voice turns into comfort.
I take a slow breath and do something that feels like tearing my own skin.
I pull away.
Not physically. Emotionally.
I let my face go still. I let my eyes harden. I let my voice lose every trace of gentleness, even as the chemicals scream at me to soften.
“Lena,” I say, and it comes out cold. “Stop.”
She flinches as if I’ve slapped her.
Good. Painful good.
“Stop,” I repeat. “They want you to beg. They want me to soothe. Don’t give it to them.”
Her tears spill faster. “I can’t— I can’t—”
“You can,” I say, and my voice stays sharp, because softness is what they’re waiting for. “Look at me. Don’t ask me for comfort. Tell me what they told you to do.”
She shakes her head violently. “They’ll hurt him.”
“They might,” I say, and my hands shake as the chemical warmth coils tighter in my veins, begging me to lie. “But if you perform, they will own you. And they will still hurt him when it’s useful.”
Her breath catches. She looks at the ceiling, at the unseen eyes. Then she whispers, barely audible, “They told me to touch you.”
The words slam into the room like a bell.
My skin crawls, not from desire but from violation – the idea of their script using her body, using mine, turning contact into a tool.
I step back.
Lena’s shoulders sag with relief at my distance, as if her own body is relieved not to have to follow the command.
The voice returns, colder now. “Facilitator. Proceed.”
Lena shakes her head. “No,” she says, and it’s so small, so fragile, that my chest aches.
The warmth in the room changes.
It turns on a dime. The honeyed scent drops out, replaced by something acrid, medicinal. My mouth goes dry. My stomach clenches. The cosy light shifts subtly, cooler, harsher. The carpet suddenly feels like a trap.
The chemicals switch.
A wave of emptiness sweeps through me so fast it steals my breath. Not sadness. Not pain. Absence.
The warmth remains, but it no longer comforts. It becomes pointless, like heat in a room where no one lives.
My heart stutters.
Lena sways on her feet. Her eyes go glassy. She blinks slowly, as if her brain is struggling to keep up.
“They’re—” she whispers, voice flat. “They’re…changing it.”
They’ve taken away the reward.
They’ve replaced it with numbness.
My limbs feel heavy. My thoughts slow. The ache of wanting to help evaporates, replaced by something worse: indifference.
I swallow hard.
This is the true punishment. Not pain. Not fear.
They are trying to make me stop caring.
Because if they can do that, they don’t have to control me through tenderness. They can control me through emptiness.
The voice speaks with clinical satisfaction. “Empathic output suppression initiated. Observe behavioural change.”
Lena sits heavily on the bed, as if her legs have given up. She stares at her hands, expression blank.
I should feel something about that. Alarm. Urgency. Compassion.
Instead, there is only a dull, grey nothing.
Panic flickers at the edge of it – not emotional panic, but cognitive. The awareness that something vital in me has been muffled, perhaps permanently so.
I dig my fingernails into my palm until it hurts. Pain is a tether. Pain is proof.
I focus on the sting.
Slowly, like a tide reversing, the numbness wavers.
Not gone. Just…thinning.
I look at Lena.
Her eyes meet mine, and in them I see the same horror, muted but present. She mouths something.
“What?” I ask, and my voice sounds wrong. Too empty.
“My brother,” she whispers.
The words should break me.
They don’t.
That terrifies me more than anything else in this room.
I step forward on autopilot, because my body remembers the movements even if the feeling has been dulled. I crouch in front of her, close enough to see the faint tremor in her lower lip.
“Tell me about him,” I say, not because I want to hear it – God, what does it say about me that I don’t want to? – but because I know this is the only way back. To force my brain to do the work of caring until it sparks.
Lena stares at me, confused. “He’s…he’s eighteen,” she says slowly. “He – he likes football. He’s…he’s stupidly brave. He tries to act like he doesn’t need me.”
A small image forms in my mind. A boy laughing at something. It is faint, like a photo left in the sun too long, but it exists.
I grab hold of it.
“Keep talking,” I say.
Lena blinks, tears returning, and that alone feels like a victory. “He – he calls me bossy,” she whispers. “He says I fuss too much. But he always texts me when he gets home, even if he’s pretending he doesn’t…”
Her voice warms as she speaks, and with it my chest tightens again. Not the chemical warmth. Real warmth, sparked by story, by specificity.
The room hums, attentive.
They are watching me claw my way back to empathy.
“Subject demonstrates resistance to suppression,” the voice notes, and for the first time there is something like irritation beneath the neutrality.
Good.
I keep my eyes on Lena. I keep my focus on Sam, on the imagined grass stains from playing football, on the ordinary bravery.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and this time the words carry weight again. Real weight. “I’m sorry they’re doing this to you.”
Lena’s face crumples. She presses her hands to her mouth. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispers. “I don’t know how to stop them.”
“You can’t stop them,” I say. “Not from in here. But you can refuse to perform.”
A chime sounds again, sharper than before.
The warm light flares and then steadies.
The voice returns, clipped. “Facilitator Lena. Session complete. Exit the room.”
Lena jerks as if yanked. She looks at the door, then back at me, panic blazing. “No— I can’t—”
“You can,” I say, and the urge to soothe surges, powerful and dangerous, but now it’s mine, not theirs. “Listen to me, Lena. If you stay, they’ll use you more. They’ll make you beg. They’ll make you hurt. Go.”
Her eyes search mine, desperate. “What about Sam?”
I hold her gaze, forcing my voice to stay steady. “They’ve already threatened him. They will keep doing it whether you stay or go. But if you leave now, you deny them the ending they want.”
“What ending?” she whispers.
“The one where you cling to me and I comfort you,” I say. My throat tightens around the words. “The one where we become their story.”
Lena’s breath shakes. She stands slowly, like her limbs are made of water. She takes one step towards the door, then stops and turns back.
For a heartbeat, the urge to reach out almost destroys me.
I don’t.
I keep my hands to myself.
Lena swallows hard. “Thank you,” she whispers, and her voice is raw and real.
Then she turns and leaves.
The door closes softly behind her.
The room remains warm. The biscuits remain on their plate. The water remains cold and sweating.
But the comfort has rotted. Why did I care so much about Lena? Something in my gut says she’s not the one I care about at all.
But then who?
The silence presses in, thick and heavy until a soft hiss sounds from somewhere in the walls.
The faint honeyed scent returns in a thin thread, testing the air.
I feel my body respond – micro-relaxations, the lure of ease.
I clench my fists and refuse it.
I cross to the table and pick up a biscuit. It crumbles slightly between my fingers. Real enough.
I hold it for a moment, then set it down again untouched.
Because this room is not for feeding me.
It is for feeding on me.
I sit in the chair and force my breathing to remain steady without becoming soft. There is a difference. Steady is controlled. Soft is surrendered.
I stare at the framed landscape and memorise it – the impossible hills, the painted stream – because I know what comes next.
They will send someone else.
If not Lena, then another face. Another voice. Another carefully chosen vulnerability.
They will keep pulling at the part of me that reaches out.
They will reward it until it becomes reflex.
Then they will punish it until it dies.
And when it dies, they will call it progress.
I press my hand flat against my chest, feeling my heart beat, stubborn and alive.
I whisper, so quietly the microphones might miss it, “You don’t get to take that.”
The room hums, as if amused.
The warm air thickens again, sweetening, coaxing.
I close my eyes and do the only thing I can do in a place like this.
I make my kindness a weapon by denying it to them.
And I wait for the next lie.