Chapter 36
Billa
The air changes the moment we leave the others. It’s colder here, sharper. It makes me think the walls themselves hold the memories.
Ember walks just ahead of me, flashlight beam cutting across white tile and steel doors.
Every step echoes. The corridor stretches long and too clean.
There’s no color except for the thin red stripe running along the wall.
It’s a marker for the “therapy wing,” according to the map Florencia slipped us.
But therapy isn’t what it smells like down here. It smells of bleach and fear.
Ember stops at the first door. “You hear that?”
I listen. A soft hum. It’s mechanical, steady. Maybe a fan. Maybe a monitor.
Could someone be watching us?
She glances back at me. “I don’t like this.”
Bumps run down my arms. “Neither do I, but we have to see.”
She nods, and together we push open the first door.
Inside, the room is small and windowless, lined with mirrors on three sides. A single chair sits in the center beneath a hanging light. A camera blinks in the corner, its red eye glowing faintly.
Ember swallows. “It’s a stage.”
Her words hit me hard. I cross the room, fingertips brushing the chair’s arm. Cold metal. The kind that leaves marks.
Something flutters beneath it—a sheet of paper, half-torn. I crouch and pick it up.
It’s a schedule.
Columns of numbers, initials, and one heading that makes my skin crawl.
WING-B PERFORMANCE PREP.
My heart hammers. “They were still running it recently.”
Ember’s eyes flick to mine. “Kenzi’s right. The performances never stopped.”
Before I can answer, a faint sound comes from the hallway.
Not footsteps, but a child’s laugh.
We both freeze. Why would any child laugh in this place?
“Did you hear that?” Ember asks.
“Yeah.”
We move toward the door slowly, every instinct screaming to turn back. The sound drifts again. It’s higher this time, echoing off tile. But it’s not joyous laughter. It’s the kind that ends too soon, cut off mid-breath.
Ember lifts her flashlight, jaw tight. “They said the west wing was the rehearsal space.”
I nod, clutching the paper tighter. “Which means this is the audience.”
We follow the corridor to another door, this one unmarked except for a small white sticker near the handle—a spool symbol, inked in black.
My stomach twists. “That mark…”
“I see it,” Ember says.
For a moment, neither of us moves. Then she steadies her voice. “We get what we can. Photos, names, anything. Then we go meet the others.”
I nod, forcing my hand to stop shaking as I lift my phone to snap a photo of the mark. The flash pops, and in that half-second of light, something glints inside the narrow observation window.
An eye. Watching us.
The light fades. The window is dark again.
“Someone’s in there,” I whisper.
Ember’s hand clamps around my wrist. “We can’t open it. Not yet.”
“But…”
“Not yet.” Her voice trembles, but she doesn’t look away from the door.
The laugh echoes again, closer now, like it’s behind us instead of ahead.
And suddenly the quiet feels alive. The kind of quiet that breathes back.
We stand perfectly still, caught between the sound and the door, between the past and whatever waits inside it.
Then Ember whispers so quietly I almost can’t hear her. “We need to move now.”
So we run.
Footsteps echo behind us. But that isn’t what disturbs me the most.
Laughter, faint at first, then breaking into static. It seeps from the vents, crawls along the walls—a recorded sound on loop. Maybe. Or something worse.
I grab Ember’s arm and drag her down another corridor.
She pulls ahead of me, flashlight beam jerking across the hallway as we sprint. My lungs burn, and my pulse is loud in my ears.
We round a corner and nearly crash into Luke and Florencia.
Luke catches Ember’s arm. “What happened?”
She tries to answer but can’t. Instead, she points down the hall, back toward the holding wing.
Florencia’s eyes narrow. “You found something. What?”
“Rooms,” I gasp. “Stages. Cameras still running. Someone was watching us. There was—” I stop, still hearing the echo of that laugh. “A child’s voice.”
Luke’s jaw tightens. “Could’ve been an audio trigger. Or a recording loop to disorient intruders. We’ve been hearing things too.”
“What?” I demand.
They exchange a look.
My stomach knots. “Tell us.”
“Whispers.”
Florencia looks past us, frowning. “It means they knew we were coming.”
The words hit like a rush of freezing river water.
Ember regains her breath. “They’re active down there. Wing B. I saw the marks of the spool symbol. Same as the other one.”
Luke curses under his breath. He’s already checking the feed on his tablet, eyes darting. “I’m not picking up internal motion sensors, but that doesn’t mean anything. These systems are siloed.”
Florencia glances toward the west wing. “Sofia and Kenzi are in there by now.”
That realization settles hard in my gut.
Luke looks up from the screen. “We need to link their feed. If we can’t warn them, we can at least capture what’s happening.”
Ember folds her arms. “Can you do that without triggering alarms?”
“Probably,” he says, fingers moving fast. “Depends on the internal architecture.”
I hover beside him, watching lines of code flicker across the tablet screen. He’s calm, too calm. That scares me more than if he’d panicked.
Florencia moves to the far wall then pulls out a small external drive. “If we can get even partial footage of Radley interacting with a survivor, it’s enough to blow this open. That’s all we need.”
I shake my head. “It’s not all we need. There are people still locked down there. Innocent kids. Lost in echoing memories.”
She looks at me gently, almost apologetically. “We save who we can, Billa. But we need proof before we have power. Once we expose this, they’ll all be free.”
It’s the journalist in her talking, the one who’s learned the hard way that truth without evidence is just noise.
But the survivor in me can’t swallow it.
And that isn’t how I see it. “Assuming they survive once Radley and his crew find out they’re done. They’re children. They need us.”
Ember puts a hand on my shoulder, forcing me to focus. “We’ll get them out. First we have to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Luke exhales sharply, the tablet emitting a soft chime. “I got it. Camera access in the west wing. Two feeds are live.”
He tilts the screen toward us. A static-blurred image resolves into a wide, clinical room with white walls, bright lights, and a raised platform at the center.
Sofia stands near the back, her posture poised. Beside her, Kenzi sits in a chair, face half in shadow.
And across from her—even through the static—I recognize the man in the tailored suit.
Dr. Radley.
Florencia’s breath catches. “They already found him?”
The feed flickers, the sound lagging. Kenzi’s voice comes through in fragments. She’s quiet, steady, and rehearsed. Sofia stands just behind her, one hand on her shoulder, guiding her.
Luke glances up at me. “We’re recording.”
But my stomach churns with acid. Behind Radley, something moves—a shadow crossing the glass wall. Someone else is watching them.
I step closer to the screen. “Luke, zoom in.”
He frowns, pinching the display. The image sharpens.
For a moment, I wish it hadn’t.
The shadow behind the glass isn’t security. It’s a mask. Smooth, featureless, and all too familiar. The same figure from the rafters.
He tilts his head toward the camera.
Then the feed cuts to black.