Chapter 23
The Room That Remembers
Jagger Holmes
I’ve been here for what feels like days.
Wrists and ankles locked down. Chest strapped so tight my ribs have to fight for every breath.
They think rage is simple, like a bad temper with fangs, but it isn’t.
Rage is a house fire that started when you were too small to carry water.
It’s years of smoke in your lungs. It’s the sound of someone screaming your name from a room you can’t reach, but what's worst of all is knowing the monster has a face and you were too young to break it.
The room is black. Not dark but fucking pitch black. My head rolls forward and my tongue tastes like metal. “Gross,” I rasp.
A speaker clicks on and my body tightens. ”Jagger Holmes,” Master D’s voice calls out, making my jaw lock. I hate this fucking guy.
“Open the door,” I growl.
“Not yet,” he states, and I laugh. It doesn’t sound right. It sounds hungry.
“You don’t want me awake in here,” I warn.
“That’s exactly what I want,” he says calmly, then a light turns on. Not overhead but in front of me. A screen. The room stays dark around it, but the screen glows white-blue, burning straight into my skull. Static rolls across it. Then… a woman crying. My whole body goes still. No. No. No. NO!
My hands pull against the restraints so hard the leather creaks, and the voice inside me wakes up violently.
“Break it,” it commands.
“I’m going to,” I spit as the screen flickers, and suddenly, I’m not in Hillsboro.
I’m eight years old again. Barefoot on a cold floor, hiding behind a cracked door.
Breathing through my mouth because if I make a sound, he’ll hear me.
My mother is crying. Not loud. She never cried out loud.
She knew better. That’s the part that killed me later.
Not what happened. Not just that, but the way she tried to be quiet so I wouldn’t be scared.
Like that was still something she could give me.
As if she could still mother me through hell.
The screen flashes. A hallway with old carpet and a broken lamp. Her hand reaches for me as my name spills from her lips. “Jagger…”
The restraints bite deeper the more I tug at them. “Turn it off!” I growl, but Master D doesn’t answer; instead, the screen keeps playing. Not clear but flashes. My mother’s face. The man’s shadow. Her body hitting the floor.
My breathing turns ragged as I try to look away.
“He’s dead. You killed him,” the voice snarls.
“Not enough.”
“You made him pay.”
“No,” I whisper, because that’s the truth no one understands.
Killing him later didn’t save her. Breaking every bone I could reach didn’t rewind the room or time.
It didn’t make me bigger when I needed to be.
All the years of abuse. Of hiding and not being able to protect her.
Killing him didn’t make me strong enough in time.
The screen freezes on her face. Her eyes looking towards the door. Towards me. Like she knew I was there. Like she knew I didn’t move. Something inside my chest caves in. I was a kid. I was eight. I know this but it doesn’t matter. I stayed quiet and hidden. I got to live. She didn’t.
“This is the root of your aggression," Master D’s voice states, and I laugh.
“No,” I say.
“No?” he questions.
“That’s not the root,” I growl as the screen flickers and my mother vanishes. The room goes black again and a new sound plays. A door closing. Footsteps walking away. Vinny. Not real. It can't be real. But I know the silence. I know the way it feels when someone leaves without giving you a target.
The screen glows again, only it’s not my mother this time. It’s Vinny’s back. Walking away. Same as before. No goodbye. No explanation, just absence wearing his shape.
“You don’t fear violence, Jagger. You fear helplessness,” he states, and I grind my teeth as the restraints groan beneath my fists.
“You’re real proud of that sentence, aren't you?”
“You couldn’t save your mother. Not the first time or the last time.
You watched her be raped for years. Then, it was your turn.
It’s sad the night Vincent left you was the same night someone in a mask held you down and fucked that tight ass while your mother watched.
” He laughs as my vision goes red at the edges.
“You couldn’t keep Vinny,” he continues as my chair shakes. “And now Lolli is gone too,”
Her name on his lips causes everything to stop. The voice is gone. My breathing stilled. “What the fuck did you just say?” But he doesn’t respond, just a click of the speaker and then—a scream. Her screams. Lolli.
My blood turns to ice first—then fire. No.
No. That one is real. I know the difference.
I know the sound of hallucination. Know the drugged edges.
The false echo. This isn’t that. This is her.
Raw. Scared and hurting. My heart slams in my chest hard enough to hurt as the voice comes back with a vengeance.
“Save her,” it commands and my head lifts and the screen flickers with her image. Not clear, just enough. Just a flash of pale skin. A flash of panic. Then her smile—gone.
My hands curl and the leather strains. “Interesting. Maternal trauma produces rage. Abandonment produces instability, but her distress produces focus,” Master D says calmly.
I breathe in, and the room narrows. The past disappears. My mother’s face. Vinny's back. The blood. The door. The boy I was. All gone, but only one thing remains. Lolli’s screams. Someone made her scream. I pull against the restraints, but they still don’t break.
“Jagger, what are you feeling?” Master D asks, and I smile.
“Purpose,” I say as the chair screams beneath me and the leather tears halfway across my right wrist. The alarm chirps overhead, and Master D goes quiet. Good. He's learning.
I wrench my arm again, my skin burning against the leather as my muscles pull, then finally, it snaps. My right hand becomes free and the room changes. Just like that. Not because the lights move but because I do. I rip at the other strap while laughing. Not wildly, just with pride.
“There you go,” the voice praises as my second wrist comes free, then my chest and ankles. The door locks engage. One. Two. Three. Containment Protocol.
I stand slowly, my legs almost buckling. The screen shows Lolli again. Another scream tearing through the speakers. I turn toward the camera in the corner.
“I’m fucking coming,” I say sinisterly.
Grabbing the chair that’s bolted down, I lift as they shriek against the floor, but the metal bends and the chair comes loose. Taking it, I roar and slam it into the door. The impact rattles through the room.
“Again,” the voice encourages.
The door dents.
“Again.”
The lights flicker.
“Again,” it tells me as the voice is no longer screaming for me to break something. It knows I am. The door gives with a crack that sounds like a bone remembering what it is. I laugh then step into the hall. Two guards are already there. They raise their weapons, and I smile. Wrong choice.
I don’t feel the first hit or the second.
I only feel… forward. One guard goes down, and the other backs away too late.
My fists meet bones and I shatter them, then smash a skull into the wall, reveling in the feeling of warm blood splashing against my heated skin.
Everything becomes motion. Sound. Red lights. Shouting.
Her screams still echo in my head. I can save her. At least this time I’m not eight and hiding behind a closed door. I am the thing coming through it.
Another alarm starts, only louder, as the hallway erupts around me. Patients scream. Locks slam. Guards shout orders they won’t live long enough to finish. I walk through it all—no, not walk… I hunt.
“Lolli,” I roar as the building answers with chaos. And somewhere ahead, a faint, broken but furious voice… I hear her.
“Hold on, Little Riot,” I yell as my smile splits wide. “I’m coming for you, baby,” I shout as I tear the next door off its hinges.