Chapter 17 Losing Her Toys
LOSING HER TOYS
Inside Out - Paxton Smith
Kookaburra
The first thing I notice is the colour of the ceiling. White, but not the cheap kind. White with intention. Someone chose this precise shade. Someone who believes sterility is the same thing as safety.
The second thing I notice is that my hands are bandaged.
The third – my belly. Not flat. Not swollen either.
Just…alive. Strange how unchanged I feel – no sickness, no heaviness, nothing at all.
Like whatever’s inside me isn’t growing the way it should.
It doesn’t feel like a baby. Just…pressure.
Potential. A heartbeat that isn’t mine. My stomach tightens. My heart doesn’t race so much as wake.
Then comes the hum. It’s everywhere – deep in the walls, under the floor. Machinery. Ventilation. Surveillance. The kind of sound that tells you you’re not alone, even when you are.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed. They feel heavier than I remember. Someone’s been dosing me. The air smells of antiseptic and restraint.
My hand drifts to the back of my skull. The skin’s tight where the stitches pull. The chip is gone. I can feel its absence like an echo.
Good.
That part worked at least.
The rest is still up for debate.
The door opens. I don’t look right away; I already know who it is. Her perfume gives her away before her voice does – synthetic lily and clean paper.
“Good morning, Kayla.”
The voice snaps the quiet like a rubber band.
Lab coat, clipboard, hair tied back so tight it could draw blood.
Doctor Sara Callaway. I study her while she sets the clipboard down.
Thin mouth. Eyes that try to smile but don’t make it all the way.
Now she looks smaller, softer. A woman who’s been running too long and pretending it’s a career change.
The coat is new. Not an asylum issue. Civilian.
She’s trying to reinvent herself as my saviour.
Her shoes squeak. I can already tell she hates that they do.
“Where am I?” I ask. My voice comes out rough, like it’s been left in a drawer too long.
“You’re safe,” she says, too quickly. “You’re in a private medical facility. Off-grid.”
I laugh once. It’s not pretty. “That sounds a lot like somewhere I can’t leave.”
“Temporarily,” she corrects. “Until things settle.”
I sit up slowly. The world doesn’t spin, but my neck throbs like a dull reminder.
“The surgeon?” I ask.
“Handled it cleanly. No complications.”
“So…the chip’s gone?”
“Gone,” she says. “Every trace.”
“And…the pregnancy?”
“Completely fine.”
I run my tongue along the inside of my cheek, tasting the lie before she even finishes saying it. “You’re a terrible liar, Doctor.”
She flinches. Just a small twitch around her mouth, but enough.
“It’s sorted now,” she says, quieter. “And you asked me for help. You said you couldn’t keep the baby there. You said Seytan would never let you go.”
I laugh once. “She wouldn’t. She doesn’t like losing her toys.”
“She would’ve killed you.”
“She tried,” I remind her. “More than once.”
The silence that follows is sharp enough to cut with. Callaway perches on the edge of the bed like she’s approaching a wounded animal.
“You’re safe now,” she says. “She doesn’t know where we are.”
I tilt my head, studying her. “You’re still afraid of her.”
“I’d be stupid not to be.”
“Then you didn’t come here for me,” I say. “You came here to hide.”
She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to.
I let my gaze drift around the room – too sterile, too staged. “Who else knows I’m here?”
“No one outside the team.”
“The team,” I echo. “You mean the surgeon and whoever passed him the scalpel while you pretended to monitor my vitals.”
“They were necessary.”
“Names?”
She hesitates. “You don’t need to know that.”
I smile, slow and thin. “Then make sure they stay off my radar.”
“Kayla—”
“Because if I wake up to another strange man’s scent in my room, you’re going to have a problem.”
She goes pale. “No one—”
“Don’t lie.” I tip my chin at the sheets. “Who’s been in my room? While I was out of it. I remember…and I can smell them. Different. Male.”
A flicker – there it is. Just the faintest blanch, a tiny tightening of her throat before she finds her voice. “You were monitored. Standard medical protocol.”
“Monitored?” I tilt my head. “Or guarded?”
She swallows. Doesn’t answer. That’s answer enough.
She exhales through her nose, sets the clipboard down again. I notice her fingers trembling when they brush the paper. “You have had major surgery. You were severely dehydrated. And you’ve been asleep for almost a week. You need time to recover.”
I flex my fingers, stare at the tape marks on my arm where IVs lived. “You didn’t answer my question.”
She doesn’t. She turns instead, pours water from a jug into a paper cup, offers it to me like we’re in polite society. I don’t move. I want her to say it. When she realises I’m not taking the cup, she sets it down carefully, just out of reach.
“You’re safe here,” she repeats, softer now, as if repetition will make it true.
My eyes go to the corners of the room. Clean, yes, but wrong.
One small camera tucked behind a ceiling vent.
Another blink of red above the door. I feel my mouth stretch into something that might be a smile but isn’t.
For a heartbeat, the world stops moving.
The hum, the light, her voice – they all blur.
“Kayla, you’ve been through severe trauma. You’re safe here. The asylum—”
I stand. Too fast. The world tilts, but I don’t let it show. “The asylum what?”
“—won’t find you,” she finishes quietly. “You have my word. They can’t hurt you anymore. Or your child.”
My eyes snap to hers. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Use that word like it’s leverage.”
“I’m not—”
“You are. Every time you say ‘safe,’ what you mean is ‘contained.’ Every time you say ‘child,’ what you mean is ‘asset.’ You think I don’t hear it?”
Her hands clasp in front of her, white-knuckled. “You’ve been through enough,” she says softly. “You don’t have to fight anymore.”
That makes me laugh. Not polite. Not human. Just sound and teeth. “You think I fight because I have to?”
She flinches.
“Tell me this, Doctor,” I say, pacing slow, like the ground itself is my patient. “If I’m safe, why the cameras? Why the locked door? Why can’t I hear anything past these walls?”
Her voice breaks, almost a whisper. “Because they’ll come for you. The asylum,” she says. “Seytan’s people. They want you contained or gone. You know too much. They think—” She swallows. “They think you’re unstable.”
“They’re not wrong.” Silence stretches. Then: “But you’ll keep me alive.”
Her chin lifts, brave. “Yes.”
“Because someone told you to.”
“Because it’s right,” she says. But her lie doesn’t reach her eyes.
We stare at each other for a long time. Her breathing’s too fast. The hum in the walls grows louder, or maybe it’s just my blood.
“Right,” I say finally, and sit back down on the bed. “So what now? You keep me drugged and docile? Teach me breathing exercises? Make me journal about my feelings?”
“I’d like to help you heal.”
I smile. It’s all teeth. “Doctor, I don’t heal. I adapt.”
She draws a breath. “We’ll ensure your safety until—”
“Until what?” I cut in. “Until someone decides what to do with me? With us?”
“Until you’re ready,” she says, too quickly. “Until it’s safe to—”
“‘Safe,’” I echo, rolling the word on my tongue like a pill I don’t plan to swallow. “You keep using that word. You think it means something. It’s empty. Nonesensical. It means less than nothing to me.”
She opens her mouth to respond, but the intercom crackles to life – a single tone, then silence. Someone’s listening. Someone is deciding this little conversation’s gone on long enough. She glances at the ceiling, then back at me. Composed again, or trying to be.
“You should rest,” she says. “Your vitals—”
“Are perfect,” I finish for her. “Aren’t they?”
She hesitates. “Yes.”
“Then leave me alone.”
Her lips tighten. “I’ll be back in the morning.”
“I’m counting down the hours.”
She turns to leave, hesitates in the doorway. “Kayla, this place isn’t a prison. You’re not a prisoner.”
I stretch out on the bed, head tilted toward the camera light blinking faintly above her shoulder. “Of course not,” I say sweetly. “I’m your guest.”
The door shuts with a soft click. The hum swells, swallowing the space between beats. I lie there staring at the ceiling, the too-perfect white, the camera eye that never blinks.
Seytan will come for me eventually. She doesn’t lose people – she reclaims them. And when she does, I’ll be ready.
Maybe I traded one prison for another, but this one’s smaller, quieter, more polite. I trace a hand across my stomach and smile, small and sharp.
Here, the monsters wear name tags.
Here, there are no psychos crawling into my bed at night.
More’s the pity.