Chapter 3
Chapter three
The door doesn't have scratch marks.
That's the first thing I notice about the admin building — everything here looks like it belongs in an actual building. Wood doors. Brass handles instead of bolts. There's even a nameplate: G. Wajnowski, Director.
Director. Not warden. Not supervisor. Director, like this is a program and not a cage.
Sven walked me across the compound to get here. Cold air, icy path, the short distance between Red House and the admin building that feels like crossing into another world.
Sven knocks once. Doesn't wait for an answer. Opens the door and steps aside, which puts me in the doorway alone, which is a choice. His choice. He's presenting me.
The man behind the desk is already looking at me.
Dark hair, cut close. Hard face, not yet angry. He's big the way Sven is big, but different. Sven's size is vertical, all height and reach. This man is built like a wall. Thick through the chest and shoulders, hands flat on the desk.
He's wearing a dark henley. No badge. No uniform. No visible weapon. A tablet and my file — the thick one, the red-tagged one — are on the desk in front of him.
"Sit," he says.
One chair. Metal. Not bolted, which is interesting. Either this room doesn't get the same kind of visitors or he's confident enough in his ability to handle whatever a chair might become.
The office itself is sparse. No photos. No personal effects. A filing cabinet. A shelf with binders labeled by color — red, orange, gold — and stacked neatly enough to be compulsive. The window behind him faces the trees, not the yard.
I sit.
"Alexandra Jones." He opens the file. Doesn't look at it — he already knows what's in it.
The opening is performance. He wants me to see him open it.
To know he has it. "Eighteen. Ward of the state.
Seven placements in four years. Aggravated assault — three counts.
Property destruction. One suspicious death. "
He reads my rap sheet the way someone else might read a grocery list. No emphasis. No reaction. Just data.
"It's Alex," I say.
"I know what it is." He closes the file.
Folds his hands on top of it. Looks at me with pale eyes that don't blink enough.
"I'm Gavin. I run this facility. Anything that happens inside these fences is my responsibility, including you.
You've met Sven, who runs your house. You will also meet three other staff members over the course of your first week — Cal, who oversees lab and cognitive work.
Stone, who handles outdoor programming. And Lumi, who works with residents on transition. "
He lists them like items on an itinerary. No descriptions. No reassurances. This is what's going to happen to you. That's all.
"Your evaluation file starts now," he says. "Everything you do, say, and refuse to say in this facility will be documented and submitted to the Review Panel at the end of your placement period. The Panel will determine whether you remain here, transfer to another program, or are reclassified."
"Reclassified as what?"
"That depends on what the evaluation reveals." He leans back. The chair doesn't creak. Everything about this man is precise.
Reclassified. Not transferred. Not released. Reclassified — like I'm not a person with a case. I'm a specimen with a pending label.
"I'm going to ask you some questions. You can answer them or not. Your refusal will also be documented."
"Sounds fair."
"It's not meant to be fair. It's meant to be thorough." He picks up the tablet. Taps it once. "Have you ever experienced a blackout? Loss of consciousness, memory gaps, dissociative episodes. Waking up somewhere you don't remember going. Time you can't reconstruct."
"One."
He doesn't react. Doesn't write anything.
He already knew the answer — it's in the file three inches from his hand.
But I gave it to him straight because I'm not stupid enough to deny something he can verify, and telling the truth on the easy questions buys me room to hold the line on the hard ones.
"Tell me about it," he says.
"It's in my file."
"Your file tells me what the police documented. I'm asking what you remember."
"That's the point. I don't."
He sets the tablet down. Folds his hands. The posture is patient but the patience is a tool, not a kindness.
"The incident report from your final placement describes a body found in the basement of your group home.
Male, seventeen. Bite wounds to the throat, chest, and forearms. Tissue damage inconsistent with human dentition.
Blood evidence suggesting the attack lasted between fifteen and twenty minutes. "
He recites it flat. No emphasis. Like he's reading the weather.
"You were found at the scene. Covered in the victim's blood. No defensive wounds on your body. No DNA under your fingernails. No evidence of a weapon."
He waits. Watching me process it.
No defensive wounds. That's the detail that gets people. If I was attacked — if whatever happened in that basement was something that happened to me — there should have been cuts on my hands, bruises on my arms, skin under my nails. Something to say I fought back.
There was nothing. Just his blood on my skin and my body untouched underneath it.
"The bite impressions were analyzed by three separate forensic teams," Gavin continues. "None of them could match the dental pattern to a known species. Two flagged the wound depth as impossible for a human jaw to produce. The third refused to submit a finding."
I know all of this. I've read the reports — the ones I was allowed to see and the ones I wasn't. I know what the forensic analyst said.
I know the phrase that's followed me through every placement since: bite impressions inconsistent with human dentition.
Nobody knows what to do with that sentence, so they just keep passing it along with my file.
"Four hours," Gavin says. "You left the common area at approximately eight PM. You were found in the basement at midnight. Four hours unaccounted for. What do you remember?"
The basement. The dark. The smell of blood — hot, copper-bright, everywhere. And underneath the horror and the blankness, something I have never once said out loud:
It smelled familiar.
Not new. Not shocking. Familiar. Like my body recognized the scene before my brain could process it. Like whatever happened in those four hours was something I'd done before, something encoded in muscle and bone, something that lived in a part of me I don't have access to.
"Nothing," I say. "I remember going downstairs. I remember the lights were off. And then I was on the floor and there were cops."
"Four hours. And nothing in between."
"Nothing."
"Do you believe that?"
The question lands different than I expected. Not do you expect me to believe that — every cop and counselor asks that version. Do you believe that. Like my own conviction is the variable he's measuring.
"Yes," I say. And it's true. And it's the most terrifying truth I own, because the alternative — that I do remember, that it's in there somewhere, that four hours of my life contain something my brain walled off to protect me — is worse than the blank.
Gavin watches me for a long moment. His face gives me nothing. Then he picks up the tablet again.
"Have you ever experienced unusual physical symptoms? Elevated body temperature. Heightened senses — smell, hearing, vision. Involuntary muscle contractions. Pain in the jaw, hands, or spine that doesn't correspond to an injury."
My left wrist aches. Right on cue. I don't look at it.
"No."
"Rapid healing? Injuries that resolved faster than expected?"
I think about the split lip I got in my third placement that was gone by morning. The bruised ribs from a fight in juvie that stopped hurting after six hours. The deep cut on my palm from a broken window that I watched close itself while I sat in a bathroom stall trying not to pass out.
"No."
"Unusual emotional responses? Aggression disproportionate to stimulus. Protectiveness toward strangers. A compulsion to respond to perceived threats with physical force."
Every single one. Every single one of those. My whole life.
"That's a pretty broad definition of unusual," I say. "I grew up in the foster system. Disproportionate aggression is a survival skill."
Something almost moves in his face. Not quite a smile. Recognition, maybe. Like I just confirmed something he suspected.
"Last question." He sets the tablet down. Folds his hands again. "The night of the incident. The four hours you can't account for. Is there anything — any sensation, any fragment, any physical memory — that you've never told anyone?"
I go back there. I always go back there when they ask.
The basement stairs. The dark at the bottom.
The smell hitting me before my feet found the floor — blood, hot and copper-bright, so thick I could taste it.
My hands wet. My shirt heavy with it. And underneath all of it, the thing I never say: It smelled familiar.
The blood. The violence. The raw physical aftermath of something I should not have been capable of. It didn't feel new. It felt like something I'd done before. Something my body knew.
"No," I say.
Gavin nods. Writes one final thing on the tablet. Turns it face-down on the desk.
He studies me for a moment. Not my face — my hands. My wrists. The way I'm sitting. Like he's reading a second set of answers in my body that my mouth didn't provide.
"Do you know anything about your biological parents?" he asks. Casual. Like an afterthought.
It's not an afterthought. Nothing this man does is an afterthought.
"No. I was surrendered as an infant. No records."
"No records," he repeats. Writes nothing.
Which means either it doesn't matter or it matters so much he already knew the answer.
"Your schedule starts tomorrow. Cal will assess cognitive function and baseline physiology.
Stone will begin outdoor regulation programming.
Lumi's sessions are weekly — you'll be notified of timing.
Meals are on Sven's schedule. All movement is escorted. "
He stands.
"One more thing." He picks up the red-tagged file.
Holds it where I can see the tab on the front, the one stamped Death on record — unresolved.
"I don't need you to tell me the truth. Your file, your blood work, and your behavior will do that.
The Review Panel isn't interested in what you say. They're interested in what you are."
He says what you are — not who. Like the distinction matters. Like they're two different questions and only one of them is relevant to the people who put me here.
"Sven," he says.
Sven is in the doorway. He's been there the whole time, I realize. Not inside the room — in the hall, listening. His face is blank but his posture is tight. Something about this interview made him tense, and I don't think it was me.
"Take her back the long way," Gavin says. "The yard is in transition."
Sven nods. His hand finds my arm — not as hard as before, but firm. We walk.
I'm still running Gavin's questions through my head. He started with blackouts. Ended with my parents. Every question in between was a breadcrumb leading somewhere he'd already been.
He wasn't recording my answers. He was recording the distance between what I said and what my file already told him. Every lie confirmed his theory faster than the truth would have.
We're at my door. Sven opens it. I step in. He stands in the doorway and for the first time since I've met him, he looks at me like I'm not an item on his checklist. He looks at me like I'm a problem he doesn't have a protocol for.
He looks at my left hand. I realize I'm pressing my thumb into my wrist. I stop.
"Your schedule starts at seven tomorrow. Don't be late." He pulls the door. Pauses. "And don't stop walking when you cross the yard."
The bolt turns.
I sit on the bed. Pull my knees up. Close my eyes.
Your evaluation file starts now. Everything you do, say, and refuse to say will be documented.
They're not helping me. They're not rehabilitating me. They're not even punishing me.
They're building a case.
He knew before I sat down. The file, the blood work, whatever "Frosthaven Review Panel Authorization" actually means — someone, somewhere, already decided what I am. Gavin's evaluation isn't discovery. It's documentation.
And every answer I refused to give him was an answer all on its own.