Chapter 11
THE HOUND
A good girl wouldn’t eavesdrop.
The chair outside Doctor Noxen’s office sits so high that my feet dangle.
By design, I’m sure. Everything here is built to make us feel small and sweet and pliable.
Even so, the offices on this floor are nicer than the exam rooms in the medical wing.
Less sterile, more foreboding. The hallway is cramped, thrumming with machinery and littered with unmarked doors lining stark white walls.
The one at the far end is slightly ajar.
A ray of warm, artificial light pours through the crack, blinding compared to the dim of the hall.
But light isn’t the only thing slipping through.
I smooth my hair, adjust the wrinkled hem of my blush pink uniform until it looks pristine. Try to make myself small. A man’s voice cuts through the murmur, but I shake my head, hard.
A good girl wouldn’t listen.
Another man chimes in, low and eerily familiar.
I get smaller in my seat, counting the seams between the tiles.
But seconds pass, and the voices don’t fade, and suddenly I’m not feeling like a very good girl.
I slip out of the chair, soft-soled practice shoes silent against the tile.
Keeping my head down, I pad to a steel bench on the other side of Noxen’s door.
“I heard Carr’s sending his hound after you, aye, Mav?” a deep voice mocks. A low groan answers him.
“Don’t remind me, Diedrich.” This time it’s the voice I recognize, Mister M.
“You mean, the ghost is back to haunt us again?” another voice chimes in. Laughter follows, easy and unbothered.
“Ghost, executioner, analyst, whatever Carr’s calling him this week.” Mister M sounds bitter. Who is he talking about?
“What did you do this time?” the deep-voiced man quips, voice like sandpaper.
“I didn’t do anything,” Mister M snaps. “This whole batch is worthless.” I clutch my skirt tighter, fabric bunching up in my sweaty palms. The growl in his words makes me want to melt into a puddle. “Beyond Avery, they’re all liabilities.”
Something in my heart cracks at that. I knew Mister M wasn’t fond of us, but to hear him say it so casually hurts more than I’d care to admit.
“Maybe he’ll prove useful then. If your girls can’t be fixed by Carr’s almighty saint, then it’s their problem,” one of them says, though I can’t place which.
“Or better yet, it’s his problem.” The deep-voiced man laughs thickly. The group joins him, sharp rumbles echoing down the corridor.
Mister M scoffs. “He’s far from a saint. I bet he gave himself that nickname.” His voice drops lower, thoughtful. “You’ve got a point, though. A visit from the ghost might just clear my name.” Shivers run down my spine.
“And clear him out, if we’re lucky,” one agrees.
“He should be long gone by now,” a higher-pitched man cuts in. “Given his track record.”
The deep voice hums in agreement. “I thought so too. Six girls lost, so close to graduation? There should be no coming back from that.”
There’s a long pause, giving me time to expel the breath I’ve been holding far too long. Six? I can’t place it, but something about that number leaves a pit in my stomach.
“Carr seems to think he’s still useful,” the younger voice asserts.
Mister M groans. “Oh please, Carr just wants control.”
“He’s not bothering me right now,” the deep voice cuts through. “That’s all I care about personally.”
“Cheers to that!” the young man agrees. Glasses clink. Their conversation turns to something else. I push myself back in my chair. Dress smooth, hands folded. Newfound secrets carved into my chest, blaring louder than any alarm.
Still a good girl.
Doctor Noxen’s office is less of an office and more of an evaluation room.
A desk is nestled in one corner, but the rest of the room is purely clinical.
An oversized chair looms in the middle, with long leather straps dangling from its edges.
I don’t need his instruction to know that’s where I’m needed. I fold myself onto the edge.
Be still. Be small. Be easy to fix.
“You woke up screaming,” he says, tired eyes glued to the tablet in his hands. “Tell me what you saw.”
My fingers pinch at the hem of my skirt. I open my mouth, then close it. What do I tell him? I don’t even know what it was I saw. A blur of doors? Faceless voices? A girl with honey brown hair and a striking bruise who was me but also wasn’t me?
No.
There’s nothing I can say right now that won’t make me sound absolutely out of my mind. I swallow past the prickle in my throat. I know I’m not polished like Avery, but what if I’m not even fixable? A good girl doesn’t cause trouble. A good girl doesn’t dream at all.
“I don’t remember,” I say to the floor.
He looks up. “Nothing at all?”
I shake my head, ponytail flicking over my shoulder with a flourish.
He hums. Makes a small note. “Strange. The others don’t wake at all. You know that, right?”
Heat rises under my collar. I tamp it down and sit up straighter, grateful for instructions when they come.
“Hold out your wrist,” he says. I offer my left, keeping my head low.
He slides on a diagnostics band and waits for the readout.
His lips press into a frown at something I can’t read.
“Even now, you’re more awake than you should be.
Dosage miscalculation?” The question sounds like it’s for the tablet, not me.
“Sorry,” I say anyway, just in case.
“Not your fault.” His annoyance slides past me, directed at the metrics piling up on his screen; a puzzle with too many misshapen pieces.
“Likely just an enforcer’s sloppy work. I’ll log it.
” He pulls a tube from somewhere in the wall and attaches a rubber mask to the end.
“This will smooth the edges. Nothing more.”
I nod because nodding is easy and right.
The mouthpiece is cool against my lips. I breathe when he tells me to, deep and slow.
The vapor that floods my lungs is floral and metallic, like blood-soaked lilies.
It burns bright through my chest, then softens to a dull ache at the base of my ribs.
My shoulders drop a fraction. I exhale a half-sigh.
“Follow my finger,” he says, and I do. Left to right, right to left. “Count backward from five.”
“Five…four…three…two…one.” The numbers are clean on my tongue. I make them neat in case neatness counts for something.
He glances at the monitor, the crease between his brows deepening. “Recite your mantra.”
“Poise. Obedience. Purpose.”
“Still sharp,” he murmurs. His stylus makes another line. “Unusual.”
I hold my breath without being asked, hoping stillness might make me easier to solve.
“We’ll try stronger.” He sets the tablet aside and takes out a syringe tipped with a fine needle. “Close your eyes. Drift. Don’t fight it.”
Don’t fight it.
I do as I’m told. The sting is quick; the warmth is slower. Blankets of haze being stacked one on top of another until I’m buried. The lamplight blurs. The chair tilts like I’m falling, but I don’t flinch. My thoughts rise and fall on rhythmic waves.
A voice moves at the edge of my consciousness. “Follow the light.” Something bright passes my eyelids; I mean to obey and forget to.
“Designation?”
My mouth opens because he asked, and I always answer when I’m asked. “Two… One. Four.”
The stylus stops abruptly. I feel the shift in the air as much as I hear it.
I blink without meaning to. The room swirls back into frame. Doctor Noxen is a careful smear that sharpens into a stunned form. Then a person. And the look on his face screams that he shouldn’t be sharp and I shouldn’t be here.
“You should be gone under this dose,” he says, matter-of-fact, dark eyes now glinting with curiosity.
“Sorry,” I whisper, because there is genuinely nothing else to offer. I comb my mind for every mistake I could’ve ever made to cause this.
“Don’t apologize.” He leans back on the word, setting the stylus down. His tone changes into something flatter. “You said you don’t remember, yet you’re still fighting; that tells me you do.”
My fingers twitch at my sides, cold on the metal’s edge. The urge to please him and the urge to cower in a corner and cry overlap like crossed wires. “I don’t—” I start, then swallow it. A good girl doesn’t contradict. Or argue. Or dream.
Yeah. Things aren’t going well for me.
He watches me a beat longer, then tilts his head, as if he’s choosing a gentler angle. “Let me ask differently,” he says, and I hate that I’m grateful for the mercy he’s affording me. “Do you prefer to sleep without dreams?”
I nod slowly. Please make me right. Please fix me.
“Good.” The corners of his mouth ease into something that’s not quite a smile. “Do you know why we sedate our subjects at night, 214?”
I shake my head.
“Because sedated girls can’t dream. Dreams destabilize the very structure the advancement program is built on. The structure that keeps girls like you steady.” He retrieves the stylus and writes while he speaks. “You want to be steady, don’t you?”
Yes. Yes. Yes. I want to glue myself to the correct answer until it sinks through my skin and takes residence there. I don’t want to be fixed—I need to be fixed. Stable girls graduate; unstable girls disappear.
He reaches for my wrist again, checks the numbers against whatever the monitor says is acceptable. It doesn’t please him. He makes another note, a single neat word.
“What will—”
My words tangle. “What will happen to me” is not a proper question. I swallow it back into my chest where my heart is hammering like I’m still sprinting down an endless hallway.
“Nothing dramatic,” he says, as if he heard the question anyway.
“We’ll adjust. Different formulas, different dosages.
” He removes the cuff with a practiced snap and sets it gently on the desk, metal clicking against wood.
Then pats my knee, offering me a tired nod.
“Nothing you’ll need to worry about. Hop up. I’ll have someone escort you back.”
That’s it? My mind scrabbles for the sharp edge that should come next: A lecture, a punishment, a veiled threat. It doesn’t arrive.
At the door, I hesitate. “Doctor?” The word leaves me before I can tuck it back in. “I…I can try to sleep better.”
He steeples his fingers against the desk. Tilts his head. “Sleep isn’t a task you pass or fail,” he says, and for a half-second it almost sounds kind, smothered immediately by a sharp edge. “It’s a protocol,” he continues. “One that simply needs refining.”
I lower my eyes. “Yes, sir.”
“Don’t fret.” He swivels the tablet toward himself again. “The organization knows best.”
I let the door close softly behind me. The air of the now-silent hallway chills around me, colder than when I entered. I start back toward the stairs, and Vance falls into step behind me without a word, face hard as marble.
The cuff at my wrist flashes orange, the only indication that I’m still spiraling inside. I smooth my skirt and fix my hair and practice the right kind of breathing all the way back to my pod.
If anyone asks, I’ll say it was fine. The doctor was kind. The dose was correct. I’m steady. I’m safe. I’m good.
Lingering beneath the lies, the doctor’s question bites at me.
Do I prefer to sleep without dreams?
Yes, I tell myself. Yes, I do. Of course I do.
I tell myself until the words sit properly on my tongue.
And I keep walking.