Chapter 3 - Patterns
Patterns
The phone contacts spread across my apartment floor like constellations, each one printed out and annotated in different colored gel pens.
Pink for confirmed buyers, purple for middlemen, yellow for potential Institute connections, and red—my favorite!
—for anyone who'd mentioned Gabriel by name.
The special phone sat in the center of it all, occasionally buzzing with new messages from people who thought I was shopping for broken girls.
"Let's see what secrets you're hiding today," I told the papers, settling cross-legged in my fuzzy bunny slippers. My apartment smelled like vanilla candles and laser printer ink, such a cozy combination.
Three AM was the perfect time for pattern recognition. The city was quiet except for sirens and drunk college kids, and my mind felt sharpest when everyone else was sleeping. I'd been like this even before Daddy's training—a night owl who saw clearest in the dark.
Contact #47 (what a lovely coincidence!) connected to three others in a neat triangle.
Two buyers and one "logistics coordinator" who arranged transport.
I highlighted the connections with glittery markers, humming along to the music box playlist I'd created.
All the songs sounded like the ones from Gabriel's sessions, though I could never find the exact matches.
My regular phone buzzed: Matt checking in. Such a thoughtful boss.
Working late again? his text read.
Always! I replied with a string of happy emojis. The patterns are so pretty at night!
Get some sleep, kid. You've got afternoon shift.
I will! I wouldn't, but it was sweet that he cared.
The trafficking phone lit up with an encrypted message. Someone responding to my carefully crafted buyer persona—a wealthy woman looking for a "companion" with specific psychological conditioning. It was amazing how eager they were to sell when they thought you had money and particular tastes.
We may have what you're looking for. Institute-trained, Batch 41. Some behavioral modifications needed but highly responsive to proper handling.
Batch 41. Another sister I'd never met, another girl transformed by Gabriel's careful hands. I saved the contact and started cross-referencing with my existing data.
That's when the memory hit, sudden as a slap.
Cold morning air on bare skin. My feet were bleeding—when had I taken off my shoes? The highway stretched endlessly in both directions, and I couldn't remember which way led back to the pink room. Back to Daddy.
Everything felt broken inside, like someone had rearranged my organs while I slept. The collar was gone—my pretty collar—and my throat felt naked without it. Wrong. Exposed.
A truck had stopped. The driver was older, wearing flannel that smelled like cigarettes and motor oil. His eyes went wide seeing me there in just the torn dress, blood painting abstract patterns on my legs.
"Jesus Christ, miss. Are you okay?"
Was I? I couldn't tell. Daddy would know. Daddy always knew what I was feeling better than I did. But Daddy was gone, lost somewhere in the maze of what happened after the pink room became a red room.
"I'm perfectly fine!" The words came out in the voice he'd trained into me, bright and automatic. "Just a little lost!"
The trucker had called 911. Had given me his jacket. Had stayed with me until the ambulance came, and I'd smiled through all of it because good girls always smiled. The paramedics asked questions I couldn't answer. Where did I come from? What was my name? Who did this to you?
But all I could think about was finding my way back. Back to the pink room. Back to Daddy. Back to the only world that made sense.
They'd taken me to a hospital where doctors with soft voices tried to piece together what happened from the evidence written on my body.
I'd given them a name—Bunny, because that's what Daddy called me—and an approximate age that might have been true.
Everything else was lost in the cotton candy haze of conditioning so deep I couldn't see the bottom.
The memory faded as suddenly as it came, leaving me disoriented on my apartment floor. Six months since that morning on the highway. Six months of building this new life, this careful construction of identity that let me hunt the hunters.
I focused on the data, grounding myself in patterns and connections.
The Batch 41 girl was being held in a location two hours north.
The seller went by "Mercury" in the encrypted channels, but I'd traced his payments to a Gregory Marsh.
Real estate developer. Married with two daughters who probably had no idea Daddy bought broken girls in his spare time.
A quick search revealed his home address, his office building, his favorite restaurant where he had a standing reservation every Thursday. Tomorrow was Thursday. How convenient!
I added Gregory to my wall map with red string, connecting him to the growing web.
The map took up most of one wall now, looking like the world's most disturbing art project.
Cities where Institute girls had been sold, warehouses for "processing defective products," names and faces of everyone who'd participated in the economy of broken dolls.
And in the center, always in the center, that single photo of Gabriel.
Some days I could barely look at it. Other days I stared until my eyes burned, trying to decode the secrets behind those storm-grey eyes.
What had he seen in me that made him choose me for Batch 47?
What made me worthy of being his last masterpiece?
The sun was coming up, painting my apartment in shades of pink and gold. I should sleep. Should at least try to rest before my shift. But the patterns were speaking to me now, showing me connections I'd missed.
Three buyers had used the same transportation company. That company connected to a medical facility that specialized in "behavioral modification." The facility's board included a doctor who'd published papers on conditioning techniques remarkably similar to what I remembered from the Institute.
"Oh, you sneaky things," I told the papers. "Hiding in plain sight, aren't you?"
I was adding the new connections when my regular phone rang. Unknown number, but something made me answer anyway.
"Hello! This is Bunny!" I chirped, even though normal people didn't answer phones that way at six in the morning.
Silence. Then breathing. Then, barely a whisper: "Lilah?"
The world tilted sideways. Nobody knew that name. Nobody alive.
"I'm sorry, you must have the wrong number!" My voice stayed bright even as my hand tightened on the phone. "This is Bunny!"
"I know what he did to you." The voice was female, young, scared. "I know because he did it to me too. Batch 39."
My heart hammered hummingbird-fast. Another sister. Another survivor.
"Who is this?"
"Are you looking for him? For Gabriel?"
"Yes." The word came out breathless, all pretense dropped. "Yes, I need to find him. I need—"
"Stop." Her voice cracked. "Just stop. You don't understand what you're looking for. What he really is. The Institute wasn't about training us. We weren't products. We were—"
The line went dead.
I immediately tried calling back, but the number was already disconnected. My hands shook as I added this to my notes. Batch 39. Someone who knew my real name. Someone who knew what Gabriel had done but thought I shouldn't find him.
Silly girl. She didn't understand that finding him wasn't a choice. It was a necessity hardwired into every cell of my reconstructed self. I existed because he'd made me. I'd continue existing until I found him again.
The morning routine helped calm my nerves.
Shower with vanilla bodywash. Outfit selection—today called for a pink gingham dress with puffed sleeves and white platform sandals.
Pigtails tied with ribbons that had little bells on them, just like my collar used to.
Makeup minimal but precise, creating the illusion of innocence that made people underestimate me.
I ate breakfast standing at my pattern wall, memorizing the new connections. Gregory Marsh with his Thursday reservations and secret shopping habits. The medical facility that might be fixing broken dolls or breaking new ones. The transport company that moved human cargo like furniture.
My shift at the bar didn't start until three, which gave me time for reconnaissance.
I packed my day bag—regular phone, trafficking phone, knife with the pearl handle that fit so perfectly in my palm, and a new addition: a syringe of ketamine I'd acquired from someone who'd thought I wanted it for very different reasons.
Gregory Marsh's office building was all glass and steel, reflecting the city back at itself.
I sat in the coffee shop across the street, looking like any other girl wasting time on her phone.
But I was memorizing security patterns, noting when he came and went, identifying his car in the executive lot.
He emerged at 11:47 for an early lunch. Tall, distinguished, wearing a suit that probably cost more than most people's cars. He walked with the confidence of someone who'd never been hunted, never been prey. That would change soon.
I followed him to a restaurant six blocks away, maintaining perfect distance. Daddy had taught me so many things, but I'd learned hunting on my own. Self-taught skills were special, he'd said once. They showed initiative.
The restaurant was the kind with cloth napkins and a wine list longer than my grocery receipts. I couldn't follow him inside—too conspicuous—but I noted the time and duration. Regular patterns were vulnerabilities, and Gregory had so many patterns.
Back at the bar for my shift, I served drinks with extra sparkle, chatting with regulars and watching for new faces that might connect to my web. Matt noticed my mood and raised an eyebrow.
"Good day?"
"The best!" I told him, practically bouncing as I mixed a cosmopolitan. "I found a new friend who wants to meet me tomorrow night. Isn't that exciting?"
"Thursday night?" He knew my habits by now. "You need the basement?"
"Maybe! I'll let you know how dinner goes first."
The shift flew by in a blur of orders and observations.
Two men at the corner table kept checking their phones in that nervous way that meant illegal business.
A woman at the bar asked careful questions about whether I was new in town, if I had family nearby.
I filed them all away for future investigation.
By closing time, I'd refined my plan for Gregory.
His Thursday reservation was at 7:30, always table twelve, always alone for the first hour before his "business associate" joined him.
The restaurant had a back exit that led to an alley I'd already scouted.
Everything was falling into perfect place.
At home, I prepared for tomorrow. The right dress—something that would make him look twice but not remember details. The ketamine loaded and ready. A printed photo of the Batch 41 girl from the seller's files, her eyes holding that particular emptiness I recognized from mirrors.
"Don't worry," I told her photo. "I'll find you. I'll find all of us."
The trafficking phone buzzed with more responses to my buyer inquiries. The network was so eager to sell, so confident in their security. They didn't realize they were feeding information to their own demise, one encrypted message at a time.
I worked until dawn again, adding layers to my understanding. The medical facility had a sister location in Prague. Three Institute girls had been spotted in Miami last month. Someone in Seattle claimed to have Gabriel's research notes for sale—a lie, probably, but worth investigating.
My eyes burned and my hands cramped from writing, but stopping felt impossible. Every connection might be the one that led me home. Every pattern might reveal the path back to the pink room, back to the person who'd shattered me so carefully that I'd reassembled myself around the breaking.
"Where are you, Daddy?" I asked his photo. "Are you making new dolls? Do you miss your Bunny? Do you know I'm coming?"
The photo didn't answer, but I imagined his voice anyway. Imagined him proud of my hunting skills, my dedication, my refusal to let the outside world erode what he'd built. Good girls didn't give up. Good girls always found their way back.
Tomorrow I'd meet Gregory Marsh. I'd extract whatever he knew about Batch 41 and the network that moved us like chess pieces. I'd add his secrets to my collection, and maybe—maybe—one of them would finally point me toward Gabriel.
The sun rose on another day of my careful routine. Work. Hunt. Search. Sleep when the body demanded it, wake when the mind refused to rest. Serve drinks with a smile, spill blood with precision, follow every lead until the trail went cold or red.
This was my life now. My purpose. My perfectly constructed existence built on the foundation Gabriel had laid. I was his masterpiece, his Batch 47, his good girl wandering the world in search of her creator.
And I would never, ever stop looking.
The patterns would guide me. The connections would reveal themselves. The network would unravel thread by bloody thread until only the truth remained: where to find the man who'd made me into something that could only exist in relation to him.
"Soon, Daddy," I promised the photo, pressing a kiss to the glass. "Your Bunny will come home soon."
Then back to the floor, back to the patterns, back to the obsessive documentation of a network that dealt in broken girls. Thursday couldn't come fast enough. Gregory Marsh had no idea what was coming to dinner.
But I did. And I could hardly wait to make his acquaintance properly.