Chapter 30 Relief Hit Like A Drug
RELIEF HIT LIKE A DRUG
Big Bad Me - Power Haus & Revanant (feat. Lloren)
Hatchet
The room won’t let me forget my hands. Every tremor is a signal.
Every twitch a confession. The cuffs hold my wrists at chest height, metal biting just enough to stay present.
I’ve tested them already – slow pressure, fast jerk, rotation, leverage through the shoulders.
Nothing gives. The angle is wrong on purpose. If I fight it, I hurt myself first.
They want that.
Hunger crawls through me like a live wire. Not pain. Heat. A restless, burning insistence that turns every thought into motion. My body wants to do something. Anything. Smash. Tear. End.
There is nothing to end.
I lock my jaw and breathe through my nose, counting the seconds between inhales. Slow is better. Slow saves energy. Bones told me that without words earlier, with a look and a tilt of his head. I listened. I can listen.
My hands don’t care. They shake anyway.
I clamp my fingers into fists, then force them open again because clenching burns fuel and tightens the tremor. The effort sends a spike of frustration through me so sharp my vision whites at the edges.
Across the room, Honey stands and then sits again. Moves too much. Cares too loudly. I feel the room lean when he does, attention sharpening like a blade finding its edge.
When he stepped closer earlier – slow, open, careful – my body responded before my head caught up. Breathing slowed. The fire eased. Relief hit like a drug.
I hated that.
Not him. The effect.
Because the moment my body settled, the room noticed. I felt it in the pressure behind my eyes, in the way the lights seemed to focus. Honey gave them a handle, and they grabbed it.
I won’t be a handle.
I set my feet wider, distribute weight evenly, and let my shoulders drop a fraction. I fix my gaze on a point on the far wall and refuse to look at my hands.
They keep shaking anyway.
Sweat runs down my spine, cooling as it goes. I don’t wipe it away. Movement costs. I breathe and let it drip.
Time stretches. Or snaps. I can’t tell.
The hunger changes. It stops shouting and starts negotiating. A voice low in my gut offers bargains: Move and it will stop. Hurt something and it will stop. Let me loose.
I don’t answer.
Bones shifts on the bench. I hear it – the faint scrape of fabric, the careful adjustment of weight. Pain management. He’s hurting. He’s hiding it.
Ghost makes a small sound. Not a word. A crack. My eyes flick to him despite myself. He’s too still now, eyes bright and unfocused, like he’s listening to something inside his head that the rest of us can’t hear.
Snow stands like a statue that learned how to breathe. Controlled. Brittle. I catch the moment his focus slips – just a hair – when he looks at Bones’s hand and then away again.
We are all failing in inches.
The room does nothing.
That’s worse than punishment.
My hands start to cramp. The tremor changes frequency, faster now, finer. Hypoglycaemia. I know the signs even if I don’t have Bones’s language for it. The body starts eating itself when it has nothing else.
I tilt my head back and close my eyes for one second to reset.
When I open them, the floor feels farther away.
Not dizzy. Light.
I plant my heels and bend my knees a fraction, lowering my centre of gravity. It helps. A little.
Honey shifts again, restless. He keeps looking at me, then away, like he’s afraid to make eye contact too long. His guilt hangs in the air. I don’t want it. I don’t need it.
I need him to stop giving them data. I catch his eye and shake my head once. Sharp. Clear.
Stop.
He flinches and looks down, hugging himself smaller.
Good.
The hunger surges again, angry at being ignored. My stomach tightens hard enough that I grunt silently, breath forced out between clenched teeth. My vision pulses.
I count breaths again. In for four. Hold for two. Out for six. The tremor spikes on the exhale.
I adapt. I change the count. In for three. No hold. Out for five.
Better.
The room hums, irritated.
I feel it then – a subtle shift in the cuffs, a micro-adjustment that tightens the angle by a fraction. Not enough to be obvious. Enough to increase strain. They’re escalating quietly.
Fine. I stop fighting the tremor. I let my hands shake. Not wildly. Not dramatically. Just enough that it’s no longer something I’m trying to hide. The effort drops. The burn eases a notch. Energy conserved.
The data they get changes.
Across the room, Bones notices. His eyes flick to my hands, then to the ceiling, then back to me. Understanding passes between us without words.
Snow’s jaw tightens.
Ghost blinks rapidly, grounding himself on the movement.
Honey looks like he wants to apologise again. I won’t let him.
I keep my gaze steady and my body still, letting the tremor exist without feeding it rage. It feels wrong – like surrender – but it isn’t. It’s selection.
I choose where the energy goes.
Minutes later – or hours – the room offers nothing. No food. No water. No command.
My legs start to shake too.
That’s new.
I widen my stance further, distributing load, letting the bar take more of my weight through the cuffs. My shoulders scream in protest. I accept it. Shoulder pain I can handle. Collapse I can’t.
The hunger voice changes tactics. It shows me images – movement, impact, release. It wants violence because violence is simple.
I give it something else.
I focus on pressure. On contact points. On the exact feel of metal against skin, fabric against sweat. I catalogue sensations like tools laid out on a bench.
Here. Now. This.
The room can watch forever. I won’t give it the moment it wants – the lunge, the snap, the failure. If I go down, it will be slow. Deliberate. On my terms.
My hands keep shaking. But I keep standing. And in the long, empty stretch where nothing happens, I understand something important: They thought taking my voice would make me easier to break.
They were wrong.
Silence is where I learned control.
And control – real control – is choosing not to give them the ending they designed.