41. Hannah
Hannah
The SUV fishtails hard across the rain-soaked streets.
Gunfire chases us through the intersection behind us.
Glass explodes somewhere back near the bridge.
Then Mason slams the accelerator harder, and the city blurs into streaks of wet neon and storm light outside the windows.
Nobody speaks at first.
We’re all breathing too hard.
Shaking too much.
Trying to process what just happened.
I sit wedged between Clay and Gabriel in the backseat, soaked clothes freezing against my skin while memories claw through my head so violently it feels like my skull might split apart.
The red room.
Oh God.
Not a punishment chamber.
A morgue.
My stomach twists violently.
Names painted onto the floor because children kept dying faster than they could track them properly.
Tiny names.
Tiny shoes beside beds.
Children crying for parents who never came.
My hands start shaking.
Clay notices immediately.
Of course he does.
His hand slides over mine instantly.
Warm.
Steady.
Grounding.
“Hannah.”
I can barely hear him over the roaring in my head.
A little boy screaming during electrical conditioning.
A girl vomiting after injections.
Avery helping me sing quietly in the dark because some of the younger children cried less when we sang.
Oh God.
A sob catches in my throat.
Gabriel sees it too.
And suddenly my brother looks like he wants to burn the world down.
“They made us watch,” I whisper.
The SUV goes silent.
Rain hammers against the roof overhead.
“What?” Russ asks carefully from the front seat.
I stare blindly at the storm outside.
“The red room.”
My voice barely works now.
“They took the children who died there first.”
Gabriel closes his eyes briefly.
Like he remembers too.
No.
Worse.
Like he never forgot.
“They made us stand on the names,” I whisper.
The horror in the SUV becomes almost physical.
Mason mutters,
“Jesus Christ…”
Clay’s arm slides around my shoulders immediately, pulling me against him before I completely unravel.
I go willingly.
No fight left.
Not tonight.
Because every memory coming back feels like another piece of my soul getting ripped open.
Gabriel’s voice turns rough.
“It was punishment conditioning.”
I look at him sharply.
“You remember.”
His jaw tightens.
“Most of it, I never forgot.”
Pain flashes across his face.
“I was older. They couldn’t wipe me as clean as they wiped you.”
That sentence destroys something inside me.
Wiped.
Like a hard drive.
Like a machine.
I curl unconsciously closer into Clay’s side.
And he lets me.
No questions.
No pressure.
Just warmth and solid strength while the world keeps falling apart around us.
Nora suddenly speaks from the far backseat.
Quietly.
“There was a girl named Emma.”
Everybody looks at her.
Nora’s hands shake in her lap.
“She used to hide crayons in the vents.”
Memory slams into me instantly.
A tiny blonde girl drawing suns on concrete walls.
A guard ripping the crayons away while she cried.
“Oh my God…”
Nora starts crying softly.
“They took her into the red room after the winter blackout.”
Nobody speaks.
Because we all know now what that means.
Eli stares down at his hands.
“I thought I imagined some of it.”
“No,” Gabriel says quietly. “That’s how they kept control.”
I look at him.
“What do you mean?”
Gabriel’s eyes lift to mine in the dim SUV lighting.
“They made us distrust our own memories.”
Oh.
Oh no.
That’s why Wu kept calling everything instability.
Why he framed emotions as weakness.
Why he insisted memories couldn’t be trusted.
Sentinel didn’t just torture children.
They psychologically isolated them from reality itself.
The realization makes me feel sick.
Clay’s thumb brushes slowly across my knuckles.
Grounding.
Always grounding.
Mason checks the rearview mirror sharply.
“We lost two vehicles.”
Russ looks over immediately.
“Sentinel?”
“Yeah.”
Mason’s expression darkens.
“They’re searching district by district now.”
Of course they are.
Wu knows too much now:
my memories are returning
survivors are reconnecting
the list exists
former operatives are defecting
That makes us dangerous.
Very dangerous.
The SUV turns sharply into an industrial alleyway before disappearing beneath an abandoned shipping structure near the waterfront.
Hidden garage.
Prepared.
Interesting.
Gabriel notices me looking.
“Safehouse.”
My pulse stumbles slightly.
“You already had places like this.”
Gabriel gives me a tired look.
“We’ve been fighting Sentinel a long time.”
We.
Not just him.
A network.
Survivors.
People who escaped.
People who remembered.
The SUV finally stops inside the dark warehouse garage.
The second the engine dies, exhaustion crashes into me all at once.
Emotional.
Physical.
Mental.
Too much.
Clay notices immediately.
“You’re fading.”
I huff out the weakest laugh ever.
“Pretty sure I faded three breakdowns ago.”
That tiny smile he gives me in response?
Dangerous.
Soft Clay might actually kill me faster than combat Clay.
Russ exits first with Lucas and Miles to secure the perimeter.
Mason’s team spreads out quickly through the warehouse.
Efficient.
Used to this.
The little girl finally falls asleep against Miles’s shoulder, exhausted beyond tears.
Nora quietly helps Eli walk toward the stairwell entrance.
And for the first time since the tunnel—
they almost look normal.
Not operatives.
Not survivors.
People.
Gabriel opens the SUV door slowly and turns toward me.
“You coming?”
I try to move.
The second I stand—
the world tilts violently sideways.
Oh no.
Pain detonates behind my eyes so hard I gasp.
The warehouse flickers.
For one horrifying second—
I’m not in the garage anymore.
I’m back underground.
Cold concrete beneath my knees.
Children lined against walls.
Wu standing behind glass.
A voice saying:
“Subject Thirteen experiencing recall resistance.”
I physically stagger.
“Hannah!”
Clay catches me before I hit the ground.
The vision disappears instantly.
Back in the garage.
Rain outside.
Safehouse.
Clay holding me.
My breathing turns ragged.
Gabriel’s face goes pale.
“Oh no.”
Fear slices through me.
“What?”
Gabriel looks genuinely terrified now.
“The overlap episodes.”
My stomach drops.
Wu was telling the truth.
Clay’s entire body tenses beside me.
“What just happened?”
I grip his jacket tightly.
“I saw it.”
My voice shakes violently.
“The red room.”
Gabriel swears softly under his breath.
“Already?”
Already?
What does that mean?
“What’s happening to me?”
Nobody answers fast enough.
And that silence scares me more than the visions do.