Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
HALLOW
The hum is the first thing to die.
It’s a sound I haven’t lived without for two hundred and fifteen days—the low-frequency drone of the HVAC, the buzz of the recessed light, the electronic heartbeat of the monitors in the hall. It all vanishes in a single, sharp pop.
The silence that follows isn’t empty; it’s heavy. It’s a physical pressure that pushes against my eardrums. The wire-caged light above me flickers once, a dying amber gasp, and then the dark swallows the room whole.
It’s a different kind of black now. Before, there was always a sliver of grey under the door, a hint of the “civilised” world outside. Now, it’s absolute. I am suspended in ink.
In the hall, the emergency klaxons try to kick in. They let out a pathetic, dying groan—skreeeee-unh—before the backup generators scream and fail. Metal grinds on metal. Somewhere far below, a heavy door slams shut with a boom that vibrates through the foam slab and into my spine.
“Doctor?” I whisper.
My voice is a serrated blade of sound. It’s the first time I’ve spoken in months, and it hurts. It tastes like rust.
No answer. Only the sound of Aris’s frantic, retreating footsteps. Scuff-thud, scuff-thud. He’s running. The man who wanted to watch me burn is fleeing the heat.
I pull against the leather. Creak. The restraints are cold.
The sweat on my skin has turned to ice in the sudden absence of the climate control.
I can feel every inch of where the hide touches me—the thick strap across my diaphragm that keeps my breaths shallow, the cuffs that keep my wrists splayed like a crucifix.
The peppermint smell—the green mist—is thicker now. It doesn’t need the vents. It’s seeped into the padding. It’s in my hair.
I stare into the blackness until my retinas start to hallucinate. White spots dance in the void. I imagine the blue and red of my hair bleeding into the dark, swirling like ink in water. I can feel the memory of my combat boots, the weight of them on my feet, though I know I’m barefoot and exposed.
Thump.
Something hits the door. Not a hand. Something heavy. Something wet.
It slides down the steel with a long, sickening smear. Sssssss-ulch.
I hold my breath. My heart is a frantic percussionist, drumming against the ribcage Aris tried to hollow out. I wait for the scream, but it doesn’t come. Instead, there’s a new sound.
A metallic clink. Then a scratch.
It’s the sound of something sharp—a blade, or maybe a nail—dragging slowly across the outside of my door. It’s deliberate. It’s a signature.
Skritch… skritch… skritch…
I don’t move. I don’t breathe. I am a ghost pinned to a board. The darkness is so thick I can’t tell if my eyes are open or closed. I am alone in the tomb, and the thing on the other side of the door is taking its time.
A soft whistle starts.
It’s low. It’s out of tune. It’s a nursery rhyme I don’t recognise, twisted into a minor key that makes my teeth ache. It’s the sound of a predator playing with its food before the first bite.
I pull at the wrist straps again, harder this time. The leather bites into my skin, the salt of my sweat stinging the raw patches, but the bolts in the floor don’t budge. I am still the captive. I am still the “asset.”
The whistling stops.
The silence returns, but it’s different now. It’s expectant. It’s the silence of a theatre right before the curtain rises on a tragedy.
“Is… someone… there?” I croak.
No answer. Just the sound of the peppermint fog settling over me, and the distant, rhythmic drip… drip… drip… of something leaking in the hallway.
I’m still strapped down. I’m still broken. But for the first time in two hundred and fifteen days, the darkness feels like it’s on my side.
The shadows don’t just sit in the room; they pulse.
My heart is the only clock left, and it’s running too fast, ticking away the seconds in my neck.
I pull against the chest strap, the heavy leather pressing into my sternum until the air comes out in jagged, shallow sips.
My skin is slick with cold sweat, making the vinyl of the slab feel like a wet tongue against my spine.
The smell of peppermint is no longer a scent; it’s a taste. It’s thick, coating my throat in a medicinal frost that makes my head swim. I can feel the madness Aris tried to drown starting to float to the surface, buoyed by the toxins in the air.
Cling. Cling. Cling.
The sound is rhythmic. It’s coming from the ventilation shaft above. It’s not the wind. It’s something metallic hitting the grate. I tilt my head as far as the neck restraint allows, my eyes straining toward the black square in the ceiling.
A small, rectangular shadow flutters down through the slats. It doesn’t hit the floor with a thud; it whispers as it slides through the air, landing softly on my stomach, right between my pinned hands.
I can’t see it. I can only feel the weight of it—stiff, laminated paper. It’s cold against my bare skin. I fumble with my fingers, the tips barely able to reach the edge of the object. It’s a card.
I don’t need light to know what it is. I can feel the embossed shape of the suit. My thumb traces the curve of a heart.
The whistling in the hall starts again, but it’s further away now.
It’s accompanied by a new sound: the wet, heavy drag of something being pulled across the tiles.
A body. The sound of a dead weight being hauled through the dark, the heels of its shoes clicking a frantic, hollow rhythm against the floor.
Thump-drag. Thump-drag.
Then, the scream starts.
It’s Aris. It’s not a command this time. It’s a high, thin sound—the kind of noise a rabbit makes when the owl’s talons find its back. It’s muffled by distance and several inches of steel, but it’s unmistakable.
“Please!” he shrieks. “I have… I have the data! The files! You don’t understand the work—”
The scream breaks into a wet, choking gargle. It sounds like someone trying to talk through a mouthful of marbles and blood. There’s a frantic scuffle, the sound of glass shattering, and then a heavy thud that makes the light fixture above me rattle in its cage.
I am straining so hard against the floor bolts that my wrists start to bleed. I can feel the warm, copper-scented liquid trickling down my palms, soaking into the leather cuffs. The pain is a grounding wire, keeping me from drifting away into the green fog.
The silence that follows the scream is worse than the noise. It’s a hungry silence.
I lie there in the dark, the card resting on my belly like a gravestone. I am still trapped. I am still a girl in a padded box, splayed out for a doctor who is currently being unmade in the hallway. I’m not free. The door is still locked. The leather is still tight.
But as the smell of fresh blood begins to fight with the peppermint in the air, I realise the “therapy” is over.
The light doesn’t come back on. The orderlies don’t come to check my vitals. I am alone in the dark with my ghosts and a paper heart, listening to the sound of footsteps returning toward my door.
Not Italian loafers. Heavy boots. Slow. Deliberate.
Each step is a promise. Each step is a threat.
I pull one last time, my muscles screaming, my joints popping in the dark. The leather holds. The bolts stay deep.