Chapter 25
The Observation Room
Vinny Salotto
Standing here, not strapped down. No leather biting into my wrists.
No chairs bolted to the floor. That’s how I know this is worse.
No wires. No water. No needles. No screaming machine built for one person at a time.
Just me… a wall of monitors and Master D standing beside me like he hasn’t dragged the whole world under Hillsboro and taught it to breathe wrong.
On the screens, they break in different ways. Killian in the noise room. Lucifer in silence. Jagger in the dark with his ghosts. Lolli strapped to a bed, eyes wide, mouth open around a scream the monitor doesn’t let me hear. I don’t move or blink. Master D notices. Of course he does.
“Your pulse is elevated,” he states, but I don’t respond.
He turns his head slightly, looking at me.
“You hide it well.” And again, I stay silent.
The monitor in front of me flickers as Jagger slams against the restraints and his mouth is pulled back in a snarl.
I know that look. I’ve seen it before. Different room.
Different life. Same boy trying to become bigger than the thing hurting him.
My jaw tightens, and Master D looks back at the screen.
“His aggression is reactive. Predictable and useful,” he says, and I glance at him.
“You call people useful too often,” I say, and he almost smiles.
“And you remove problems too easily.” He smirks. Fair. Doesn’t mean I like hearing it. The screen changes to Lolli now. Her hair is damp. Face smeared with white, red, and black makeup. I stare at her, but I don’t let it show. “She’s looking for them,” he says, and I glance over at him.
“Where are they?” I ask, but his eyes stay on the monitors.
“Exactly where I need them.”
The answer sits between us like a loaded gun. I could take it. Maybe. Not him though. Not yet.
There are two guards by the door. A camera in the left corner.
The lock mechanism is exposed but reinforced.
And last, but not least, a vent above us, but too narrow for a body to fit in.
This is the perfect observation room designed by someone who expects betrayal.
Smart, but annoying. He folds his hands behind his back and glances at me.
“You’re angry,” he says, but I shake my head.
“Disappointed then?”
I stare at Lolli’s screen. She’s saying something that I can’t hear but I don’t need to.
I see the shape of the word. Jagger. My heart drops inside my chest but I keep a straight face.
He’s looking for me to react and I won’t give it to him.
“No, I’m waiting,” I finally answer as his eyes snap towards me.
“For what?” he asks, but I don’t answer. Because if I say it out loud, I’ll have to act, and right now—acting gets them killed. That's the problem with cages. Sometimes the first thing you break isn’t the door. It’s timing.
There was a time before all this. Before Hillsboro… before Master D… before we were reduced to files, triggers, tests, and reactions. We were just trouble in expensive shoes and cheap rooms. Not friends. The word never fits right. But something close. Something meaner.
Jagger was always the loudest, not because he talked the most. No…
that was Lucifer. Lucifer could talk an angel into sin and a sinner into thanking him for her.
Jagger was loud because he couldn’t enter a room without disturbing it.
Chairs shifted and heads turned. People were careful around him.
Killian watched everything like he was taking measurements for a funeral.
Me… I stayed near the exits. Jagger doesn’t remember this…
and it's my fault he doesn’t, but the last night he saw me—Killian made him come out to the club, and when I arrived, he was already drunk and the drugs were flying high through his veins.
The music vibrated off the walls as the lights bled red under the frame. Jagger leaned back in a booth with his boots on the table. Killian kept moving a glass half an inch to the left every time Lucifer moved it half an inch to the right. He noticed and did it on purpose.
“You know. One day, someone is going to mistake that little habit for charm.” He smiles over the rim of his drink. Killian doesn’t look at him.
“One day, someone will mistake your mouth for intelligence.” Jagger laughed. I didn't, which brought Lucifer’s attention my way.
“They’re funny tonight, aren’t they?” he asks, but I look at the door.
“No,” I deadpan, and his smile sharpens.
“You never laugh,” he states, and I roll my eyes.
“You never shut up,” I fire back, making Jagger laugh harder. Killlian almost smiles. Almost.
Lucifer leans back in his chair eyeing me. “You wound me, Salotto.”
“Not yet.” I grin, and that alone wipes the smile off his face for half a second.
Good. I like him better—honest. We never got along.
Lucifer and me—he needs the room to bend, and I don’t bend for no one.
He likes voices, praise, and performance.
I enjoy silence, results, and clean exits.
He called me boring once, and I told him boring people live longer.
He laughed and said, “Not around me.” He’s a fucking idiot.
Especially around him. Jagger watches us like he wants us to either fight or kiss just to end the tension, but I bet if I did attempt to kiss Lucifer, Jagger wouldn’t like it, not one fucking bit.
“This hostility is inefficient,” Killian cuts in.
“Everything about Vinny is inefficient. He makes brooding look like labor,” Lucifer smirks, and my eyes narrow on him.
“You make breathing look like theater,” I spit, and Jagger slaps the table.
“Finally, that was a good one.” He laughs, and Lucifer’s smile returns, only colder.
He never liked me, and I don’t like him, but here we are.
That had to mean something, even if none of us are stupid enough to call it loyalty.
Later that night is not something I like to think about.
The things I did to him—the things I’ll never forgive myself for…
The monitor flashes as Jagger breaks out of the chair and my memory disappears. He is loose with bloody knuckles and razor sharp focus. Master D watches with interest, not fear, and that’s what bothers me.
Jagger tears through the door like the room offended him personally, and when the guard on screen turns too slow, Jagger drops him.
I want to smile, but I don't. I just keep watching as another camera angle catches him entering the hall, heading towards Lolli. Of course he heard her. I did too. Even without sound, some things don’t need volume.
Master D taps a control and the screen splits. Jag on one side, Lolli on the other.
“Remarkable,” he says. “Her distress produced a stronger response than his own trauma sequence,” he states, and I step toward the monitors, causing the guard behind me to shift. I stop, then narrow my eyes.
“You planned that?” I question, and a smile spreads across his face.
“I designed it.”
“That’s worse.”
“Yes,” he says, agreeing with me. On screen, Jag reaches her door and the impact makes the camera shake. Lolli turns her head, but I can’t hear her. I can see her face change. Hope. Bright, but fragile. I hate it all. “Do you know why you’re here with me, Vincent?” he asks, but I don’t look at him.
“No!”
“You do,” he says, so fucking sure of himself. Maybe he is right, but I’m not going to say it. He steps closer to the monitors.
“The others are reactive under pressure. Killian evolves through analysis. Lucifer through psychological deprivation. Jagger through protective violence, and Lolli… emotional distortion." He smiles at that.
“And me?” I ask, and he finally turns to meet my eyes.
“You don’t react,” he says.
“Everyone reacts,” I challenge.
“No… everyone feels. Not everyone lets feelings choose for them,” he answers as the guard near the door shifts again. Nervous, huh, Billy. “You are containment,” he adds, and I almost laugh.
“No!”
“Yes!”
“I’m not yours.”
“No, but you are useful,” he says, and there’s that word again. My fingers twitch which he notices. “Careful,” he says, and I glance at the guard, then the camera, then at him.
“I am.”
“That's why you’re standing here instead of trying to tear my throat out,” he says, and he’s not wrong.
I hate that. He gestures towards the screens.
“Look at them,” he commands. I don’t want to, but I do.
Jagger lifts Lolli off the bed as her hands cling to him.
The image is grainy, but still enough. Something in my chest pulls tight.
Not jealousy. Not exactly. Recognition. She found one of them.
She needed that… good. My hands curl anyway as Master D watches me watching them.
”You care?” he asks, and my eyes flicker to him for a second.
“No!”
“Lie better,” he says, but I don’t answer.
He smiles then points at the screen. “There it is,” he says as Killian has his head tilted with unfocused eyes in the noise room.
Lucifer sits with a bloody face in the silent room, and Jag has Lolli in the hallway.
Axel’s feed is blank. I noticed, and he saw me notice.
“Axel is irrelevant,” he spits, and I raise a brow.
“No one is irrelevant to her,” I say.
“Exactly.” He moves to the console and enters a code. A new monitor turns on to a room I don’t recognize. White floor. Drains in the center. Restraints off the wall and a chair, empty.
“Phase two requires a stabilizer,” he says as I stare at the empty room.
“No.”
“You haven’t heard the offer.” He smiles.
“It isn’t an offer,” I grit.
“No, it isn’t.”
The air changes as the guard near the door puts his hand on his weapon.
I could move before he draws. The one behind me is slower.
Master D is the problem. Not physically, but strategically.
He already has something in place. Men like him don’t enter a room unarmed, even when their hands are empty. Especially then.
“What do you want?” I ask, and he presses another button. Lolli’s screen enlarges and she’s in Jagger's arms, her eyes look exhausted as she still watches everything.
“Her cooperation is inconsistent. And her attachment to the group is becoming dominant. That can be used, but not if the group remains uncontrolled,” he states, and my jaw tightens.
“Say it,” I spit.
“You will bring her back.”
Silence. The room narrows.
“No!”
“You will!” he says with certainty laced in his tone.
“No!” I grit.
“She will follow you,” he says, and I hate that he says it.
I hate it more that some part of me thinks he may be right.
He steps closer, facing me fully now. “Not because she trusts you. Not yet. Because she wants to. Because you don’t ask questions or make noise.
Unlike the others, you don’t pull at her,” he says as I look at him.
“You don’t know shit about her,” I accuse, and he smirks.
“I know enough… especially which wound to press.”
There it is. The truth of him. Not a scientist. Not a doctor. Not even a monster. Worse. He’s patient and waits for people to show him where they hurt then builds rooms around it.
“And if I don’t?” I say, and he nods once to the guard.
The man presses a control and Lucifer’s monitor flickers and his silent room lights shift from dim to blinding white.
He flinches barely, but I see it. Killian's feed spikes with sound waves across the display. In Jagger and Lolli’s hallway, doors begin locking ahead of them one by one.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Even through the glass, I can feel the trap closing.
“Then I continue,” he says, and my pulse slows. Not calming… but dangerously.
“You hurt them anyway,” I whisper.
“Yes.”
“Then there’s no deal.” His smile disappears as his fingers twitch above another button.
“Wrong. The deal is how much.” He smirks, and I go still. He steps closer, licking his lips. “Bring her back willingly, and I stop the current sequences.”
“And after?” I ask.
“After, you stay at my side.”
My eyes narrow. “As what?”
“Handler,” he says, the word landing like rot.
I look back at the screens. Jagger is holding her hand now, dragging her through the hall.
Protecting her. Lucifer alone. Killian drowning in sound, and Axel missing.
“You can save them from the worst of it,” he tells me, and I almost laugh.
Because there is it—the hook. Not freedom.
Not power. Mercy, only the poisoned version.
“You want me to betray them?” I ask, and he claps.
“I want you to choose the option with the fewest losses,” he answers. Same thing. Different suit.
On screen, Lolli stumbles and Jagger catches her. My hand tightens into a fist.
“You left once without saying goodbye. You’re good at surviving the cost of abandonment,” he says, his voice low. I turn my head slowly as the guard behind me tenses. Master D doesn’t. He’s either brave or stupid, or maybe he’s that sure of himself.
“You don’t know what that cost,” I say, and he smiles.
“No, but I know you paid it.”
I could kill him. The thought is clean… simple.
Then every door locks. Every sequence continues.
Every person on those screens gets worse.
He knows it. I know it. That’s why he isn’t afraid.
He doesn’t have to beat me. He just has to make the price of refusing too high.
He reaches into his pocket and extends a small black keycard.
“Bring Lolli to room seven,” he orders, but I don’t take it.
Not at first. The monitors keep moving. Keep hurting and reminding.
Lucifer presses both hands to his head while Killian strains against the restraints.
Jagger carries Lolli past a camera, eyes wild and doomed, but she looks up…
right at the lens and, for one impossible second, it feels like she sees me.
Not the camera. Me. Her lips move. Ghostboy.
My chest goes tight and he sees that too.
“Choose, Vincent,” he growls, and I look at the keycard, then at him, then at my friends.
Friends… there’s the word. Ugly. Late. True.
I take the card, bringing a smile to Master D’s face. “Good.”
I step towards the door and the guards move aside ,but before I leave, the asshole has something else to say.
“One more thing,” he says, and I stop. “If you tell them about this arrangement, the deal ends.” He smiles as my fingers close around the keycard until the edge bites into my palm.
“And if I don’t come back?”
“Then they all go back to their rooms,” he says, the air shifting again. Everything is suddenly so still and quiet. “And Lolli goes somewhere even you won’t find.” I take a deep breath and look over my shoulder and watch how he stands among the monitors, surrounded by pain he arranged like art.
He thinks he has me. Maybe he does. For now. I open the door, step into the hallway while the keycard burns into my fist. The deal sits in my mouth like poison, but somewhere ahead, Lolli is waiting for someone real to find her. Too bad I’m walking toward her with a lie.