Chapter Eleven
The cold never leaves.
It settles into my feet and stays there, a patient ache that sharpens over time, as if the temperature is learning me.
I curl my toes for warmth, and pain answers at my wrist.
My breath hitches, and I go still at once, my heart racing.
Movement invites attention.
Attention invites hands.
Hands bring pain.
Time starts passing in interruptions.
Being moved from the chair to the floor, then back again. Or standing until the pressure drops out of my head, my balance falters, and I collapse, giving them another excuse to hurt me.
Restraints are adjusted, chains shortened and lengthened and corrected with quiet efficiency. Liquid nutrition is delivered without warning, the straw pressed between my lips before I can brace myself.
Sleep isn’t…sleep anymore.
My body shuts down in pieces and restarts without recovery, leaving my thoughts more muddled each time.
I start cataloging touch because it’s all I can hold onto.
Not who touches me. That changes.
How.
A hand guiding my elbow when I stand. Steadying my shoulder when I sway. Correcting my posture when I slump.
Each contact brings pain. Never where I expect it.
A thumb pressed into the base of my wrist. Fingers digging just under my collarbone. A sharp flare along the side of my neck that wipes sound and thought down to static.
“Careful.”
“Don’t pull.”
“Relax.”
I learn quickly that relaxing doesn’t help.
Nothing does.
If I hesitate, they correct. If I resist, they escalate. If I comply, they change the rules.
My body starts bracing before my mind can catch up. My muscles lock, my breath goes shallow, and my skin crawls in anticipation of hands that may or may not come.
I try to hold myself perfectly still.
It doesn’t work.
While being guided from the chair to the floor, my knee buckles.
Pain slices through my elbow, the bruise along my nerve worsening every time they decide I’ve done something wrong.
“There,” a man says, mildly. “That’s better.”
I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste blood and anchor myself there instead.
I think of Tessa.
Not her face. I won’t survive that.
Her hands. She was always holding something. A mug. A pen. The edge of a desk. Until she wasn’t. Until she was standing in an elevator, her hands completely empty, on her way…here?
The thought almost unravels me.
I force it away. I can’t afford to lose focus. I tell myself I’ll think about her when I’m out. When I can act. Then start counting my breaths again.
The cold worsens in waves, coming and going in a rhythm I can’t place.
Maybe at night. The hood never comes off, so I can’t be sure. But I cling to the logic of it anyway because without structure, my thoughts will simply float away.
The ache in my feet is constant now.
I press my heels together for warmth and immediately regret it. Fingers compress a nerve at my ankle. Not hard enough to cause pain, but enough to remind me they can.
I start planning.
Not for escape. They’re too careful with the restraints to give me an opening.
For release.
They want compliance. Predictability. Language alignment. Answers that land within acceptable parameters.
I adapt—replying quicker, mirroring their phrasing, and keeping my reactions tightly controlled. When they cause me pain, I breathe through it and recover as quickly as I can.
They notice.
I know because the timing changes.
Corrections come faster with less time in between. They don’t wait for me to settle—to return to whatever baseline they recorded—before moving on.
Once, when I steady myself too quickly, the touch lands on my shoulder.
Right where it still aches from the dislocation.
I gasp without thinking about the consequences.
“Easy,” a voice murmurs. “We’re just helping.”
Something shifts inside me. It’s small at first. A single thought I can force away. But then it returns. The pattern clarifies, and understanding cuts through the haze of pain.
All those agents who disappeared from the duty rosters. Mostly women. A few men. I thought they’d been reassigned. That someone had mishandled paperwork. Or that there was an explanation I simply hadn’t seen yet.
I never considered this.
Did GSD send them all here? To a place with chairs bolted to the floor and hoods that smell like someone else’s pain and evaluations that never end?
And if they did…what does that mean for me?
I don’t know how this ends. But if I get out of here, I won’t be quiet. I won’t be forgiving.
I won’t let them erase another woman and call it care.
The thought steadies me more than any breathing exercise ever has.
I fold it inward and keep it hidden where they can’t touch it.
My thumb curls, searching for the familiar edge of my ring. There’s nothing there. The motion stops halfway through.
I flinch before they touch me now. Sometimes before they speak. I hate that they’ve done that to me. That my nervous system is adapting in ways I don’t yet know how to undo.
But I’m here—still me. As long as that’s true, this isn’t over.