Chapter Thirteen
My breathing evens out. The aftershocks take longer to fade. My pulse flutters, then settles. My mouth is sour, the taste clinging to the back of my tongue and teeth.
When I leave, the first thing I’m going to do is brush until my gums bleed. Then sit under my shower head, emptying my hot water heater and scrubbing my skin raw.
The hood is damp with my breath. The stench of old fabric and sweat mixes with a tinge of copper from how often I’ve bitten the inside of my cheek. It smells familiar now. Too familiar.
Relief drains away slowly. When it’s gone, everything underneath is exposed. Raw. Buzzing.
My brain starts assembling fragments into order. It always does.
Cause. Effect. Sequence.
Compliance review complete.
Agreement documented.
Release pending.
I tell myself that’s good. It means I survived.
The cost was high. Too high. But I’ll sleep in my own bed again. I’ll eat real food. I’ll wake sore and shaken, but still myself. Mostly.
I don’t brace when the door opens again. They’ll give me instructions. Get me ready for transport. Return me to something approaching a life.
Instead, hands close on the hood and pull it down hard, drawing the fabric snug against my throat. The knot at the back of my neck is tightened until swallowing turns into effort and every breath rasps faintly through the cloth.
My wrists are hauled up and out.
Pain explodes through my shoulders, sharp enough to empty my head of everything else.
“Wait,” I cry, the word tearing out of me in a harsh, broken sound. “I complied.”
The grip on my arms shifts, fingers hitting multiple pressure points at once.
My heartbeat roars in my ears. My toes scrape along the rough concrete. I can’t get my feet under me. They don’t care. Don’t wait. I’m so confused, I can’t track steps or turns as they drag me…somewhere.
We cross a threshold. It’s cleaner here. The air is filtered, the faint tang of ozone and disinfectant layered over metal and plastic.
The temperature shifts too.
Not the biting cold I’ve learned to endure. It’s controlled. Even. The kind of warmth meant to steady me. To slow breathing. Make resistance inefficient. After everything else, it almost feels like mercy.
That’s what makes it wrong.
Fingers press into the side of my neck. Not painful. Deliberate. The pressure steals a beat of time, a brief hollow where sensation drops away and then snaps back.
“I agreed,” I manage. My body is trembling now—a fine, uncontrollable vibration I can’t stop. “I did what you asked.”
“Yes,” the calm voice says. “You did. This is a correction.”
A correction?
Hands lift me. Someone yanks at the chain between my ankles. Others brace my arms as I’m lowered onto something narrow, but raised off the floor. The surface, something smooth and clean, yields slightly beneath me.
Straps follow. Calves. Thighs. Hips. Chest. Shoulders.
Each one is tightened to the point of pain. By the time they’re done, I can’t move at all.
I thought compliance was the goal. What I actually gave them was proof I wasn’t broken.
That’s what they’re fixing.
The calculation I was so certain of collapses in seconds.
At my throat, the pressure from the ties eases slightly. The bottom edge of the hood is lifted just enough to let brightness bleed in—a narrow intrusion that makes my brain stumble trying to account for it.
A gloved hand reaches under the hood, rough against my cheek.
Something cold presses to my left temple. Wet. Sticky. It tugs at my hair as it’s set in place. Now the right. More sticky pads along my chest.
No!
My breath splinters. My body revolts against the contact. Every nerve ignites at once. The straps feel like an added layer of skin, pinning me inside every sensation I can’t escape. I can’t even squirm.
Something cold and synthetic forces its way between my teeth before I understand what’s happening. My jaw stretches past the point of pain, wrenched wider than it wants to go, then held by hands that know exactly what they’re doing and don’t care who they’re doing it to.
“Breathe,” the man says, almost gently. “This will be quick.”
My heart is pounding so hard, it feels like it might tear something loose inside my chest. A tiny whimper dies in my throat.
I try to pull back into analysis. Into patterns. Into anything that creates distance.
My mind refuses.
“Final calibration. For the record.”
Time collapses.
There’s no sequence. No thought. Just sensation followed by absence. A violent flicker where awareness used to be. As if someone reached in and switched me off mid-signal.
My body comes back in pieces, none of them in order. The ache in my jaw arrives before I know I have a jaw. The taste of copper before I remember having a mouth. The burning in my throat before I understand what a throat is for.
My head feels wrong. Heavy. Pressurized. My skull is too small for whatever’s still happening inside it.
There’s no before. No after. Just a sudden, oppressive…now with no edges and no end.
I try to move. Nothing responds—not my hands, not my arms, not my legs. Just breath, shallow and uneven, the only proof I have that I’m still inside my own body. That I’m still…anywhere.
“You’re safe,” the voice says softly. “This was necessary.”
Every feral instinct I have fires at once—scream, bite, destroy, dismantle—and none of it makes it past my raw throat.
What comes out is thin and fractured.
“I’m not…okay.”
Silence. Then a quiet curse.
“She’s oriented.”
The straps are released quickly. Efficiently.
I’m pulled off the table and half carried somewhere. My feet barely register the floor. My muscles shake uncontrollably, failing in ways I can’t prevent or hide.
I wait for another correction. Another command. Another punishment for still being wrong.
Instead, they seat me against a slanted wall, the position curving my spine and folding my body forward whether I want it to or not.
My wrists are locked behind me. My ankles are chained too close together, the bones pressing against one another. The restraints are tight, but they aren’t fixed to anything. I’m not anchored.
There’s no support.
“Stay,” someone says.
The angle forces my abdomen to engage. Muscles I don’t have left ignite as I try to hold myself upright. I tremble, sag, catch myself, sag again. Every second takes more from me.
The door closes.
Tears leak from my eyes without permission.
A quiet, seductive thought slips in.
Let go.
Another follows, faint but stubborn.
They didn’t plan for me to still be here.
I cling to that.
Not because I believe I’ll survive. But because if I do, they’ll regret this.
My strength fails, my core giving out inch by inch.
I slide down the wall slowly, pain burning through my shoulder and hip until I crumple to the floor. The impact rattles my teeth.
I don’t make a sound. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. My body is done.
I feel them before I hear them, a shift in the air that prickles across my skin.
“Jesus,” someone mutters, annoyed.
Hands haul me upright. My abdomen spasms violently, muscles seizing in protest as they force me vertical.
“Stand.”
My legs fold immediately.
Pressure hits without warning. A thumb drives into the side of my neck beneath my jaw while fingers wrench my elbow back at a vicious angle, ripping the breath straight out of me.
I whimper—I hate that I whimper.
“Careful. Don’t let her drop again.”
The chair catches the backs of my knees. Restraints snap into place. Wrists. Ankles. A strap cinched across my torso, tight enough that I don’t have to hold myself up.
My stomach burns. My ribs ache. My shoulder pulses with a nauseating, rhythmic throb that makes consciousness feel optional.
The hood is pulled lower, then tightened until gagging becomes something I have to actively resist.
“Stay.”
As if I could leave.
The door closes, and the locks engage.
I try to breathe. To count. To think.
My body shakes, not from fear, but from exhaustion draining whatever reserves I have left. With a clarity that hurts, I understand this isn’t escalation. It’s a pause. They’re waiting for something they don’t have yet. When they get it—
I force the thought away, narrowing my focus to holding my head upright so they won’t have to touch me again.
I think about Tessa one last time.
Then I force myself to stop.
Defiance is all I have left, and I hold it close, using it to stay awake because unconsciousness would make this easier for them.