28. Emma
twenty-eight
Emma
Jasmine was on the floor when I came for her.
Not the polite, collapsed-at-the-hips kind of sitting, but the true bottom: ass to concrete, knees up, shoulders braced against the seam where wall met slab, like the geometry of her body alone could keep the room from closing in.
The white glow of the bulb above made a hard-edged shadow under her chin, which looked almost regal until you saw the snot.
It was the tears that impressed me, though.
They weren’t silent. They weren’t even managed.
She let them rip down her face in wide, stuttering streaks, like her body was in open rebellion against the rest of her.
I walked the corridor naked. No robe, no slippers, just the full topography—scars, bite marks, the dense weave of skin that told every story worth hearing.
I wanted her to see me this way: stripped of props, nothing to distract from the architecture.
My feet slapped the tile, loud enough to cut through the snot-hiccup noises she was making.
She didn’t look up until I was nearly even with her door.
Then her head came up, eyes black and glossy.
She took in my whole self in a single scan—never shy about it, never blinking.
She wiped her nose with the heel of her palm, leaving a wet comet trail down the side of her face, and then she got up.
Not graceful, but not uncertain, either.
She pushed off the wall with both hands, getting every inch of herself vertical before taking the three deliberate steps it took to cross to the bars.
Her hands closed on the steel, knuckles white.
For a second, I thought she’d try to bend them.
I took two steps back, just enough so the geometry was hers, but the distance belonged to me.
She shook the bars, not because she thought they’d budge, but because she needed to show the room she still could.
“You fucking cunt,” she said. Her voice was a chemical burn—raw, low, not even angry so much as hollowed out.
I shrugged. “You never had to watch?”
She didn’t answer. She just watched me, fingers still welded to the cage, breath coming in short, regular hits like she was timing herself against a stopwatch.
“You think you’re the first?” I asked. My voice was flat—no spin, no spike, just the clean edge of the fact.
She jerked her chin up, a challenge.
I let the silence go. I let it fill every seam in the bunker. Jasmine wasn’t like Adam’s projects; she didn’t need a reason to keep fighting. She needed a reason to stop.
I watched her hands. The way she gripped the bars—top and bottom, thumb over index, just shy of breaking skin—told me more than her face ever could. She was looking for the right moment to turn all that hurt outward. She just hadn’t found it yet.
“I want you to know,” I said, “that I never intended for you to end up like this.”
She made a sound, somewhere between a cough and a laugh. “Bullshit.”
I shook my head, slow. “I wanted you for the other wing. But Adam—” I let it hang. “He insisted.”
Jasmine’s jaw flexed. She pressed her forehead to the bars, then pulled back, lips peeled away from her teeth. “Where is he?” The voice, again, was stripped to bone.
I shrugged again. “He’s gone. You saw it.” I let her see the truth in it. “You were the last thing he ever wanted.”
This landed. I could see the way it hit her, the pulse at her temple, the tiny start-stop of her hands on the bars. She didn’t say thank you. She didn’t even say fuck you. She just waited, like if she gave me enough time, I’d fill in the rest of the story.
I obliged. “Sniper’s alive,” I said. “For now.”
She licked the inside of her cheek, processing.
“You want to see him?” I offered.
She shook her head, hard. “No.”
I stepped closer, until only the bar’s thickness separated us. She tensed, maybe expecting a slap, or a kiss, or just the usual power flex. I didn’t touch her.
Instead, I said, “You two had something special.”
She flinched at that. Not visible to anyone but me, but I saw the microtremor in her eyes, the way she reset her jaw.
“Is that your move?” she said, voice dry. “Try to make me say I love him?”
I smiled, a soft, empty one. “You already did.”
She let go of the bars. Not with defeat, but with the clinical detachment of someone who has decided the tool doesn’t work and it’s time for the next option.
“Go fuck yourself, Emma,” she said.
I almost said, “I already did,” but it would have been too easy.
Instead, I stepped back. I let her watch the way I moved, the way every scar caught the light and threw it back as something new. I made sure to turn full on, so she could see everything. She wanted to look away. She didn’t.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
I ran my hand down my stomach, tracing the pattern of an old burn. “Because Adam’s story was always the same. He tried to rewrite it with each of you, but it always ended in the same place.” I shrugged. “I want to see if there’s a different ending.”
She waited, the calculation obvious on her face.
I let the words drop, clean as a scalpel. “They’ll eat him, you know. The Psycho Burgers customers. Same as they ate the others.”
Jasmine’s face twitched. For a split second, she looked young—too young for this room, too young for the world she’d walked into. But it vanished fast.
“I’m going to kill you,” she said. Not a threat, not a wish. A scheduling problem.
I nodded. “If you can.”
She moved then. Fast—faster than anyone I’d ever caged.
She grabbed the bars with both hands and hauled her feet up, bracing them against the crossbar.
In a single move, she pressed her whole body through the gap, arms extended, trying to wrap her hands around my neck.
The effort was beautiful, even if it was doomed.
I stepped back in time, but not so far that she couldn’t touch me. Her fingers grazed my collarbone, nails sharp enough to draw blood if I’d let her get a good grip. I caught her by the wrists, held them until the fight drained out.
“You’ll never get another chance,” I said.
She spat in my face. It was perfect—angled just right, landing on the bridge of my nose and running down, hot and salty, over my lips. I let it stay.
“Good,” she said.
She dropped back into the cell, landing cat-like, knees flexed. She didn’t break eye contact. Not for a second.
“Want to know what happens next?” I asked.
She stood. “I don’t care.”
I smiled, this time for real. “You will.”
I walked the length of the corridor, slow, then stopped at the wall opposite Jasmine’s cell.
She tracked every move, brain running the angles.
She knew there were men in the other wing; she’d seen them on the feeds, clocked the numbers, made her own guesses about the rotations.
But she didn’t know the part that mattered.
I pressed my palm to the wall. There was a soft click, and a seam opened where there had been nothing but concrete before.
The door was heavy—three inches of steel, painted to match the bunker, with no handle on Jasmine’s side and hinges sunk deep enough that you’d never see them unless you knew to look.
I swung it open, slow, so the hinge didn’t squeal.
The men came out in single file. Six of them: all ex-military, all big, all with the eyes of people who hadn’t slept in years. None of them said a word. They lined up, just inside the corridor, and waited.
Jasmine watched them, face a perfect blank.
“Meet Adam two through seven,” I said.
I turned and walked back to her cell. I unlocked the door. I swung it open, then stepped aside.
She stood at the threshold, arms at her sides, every muscle tight.
I looked at her, flat and even. “You’re free to go,” I said.
She looked down the corridor, then at the men, then at me.
“I know what this is,” she said, low.
I nodded. “It’s a test. Just like the others.”