Chapter 45
The cell had a way of pressing itself into you the longer you stayed in it.
The walls were stained in uneven patches, old water damage spreading like something alive, the concrete floor scratched up from years of restless pacing, dragging, something harder to name.
The mattress beneath me was thin enough that I could feel the metal frame through it if I laid the wrong way, and the air…
it always smelled faintly of rust and something sour that never fully left.
There was a mirror above the sink. Polished steel, warped just enough that it didn’t reflect you right.
I avoided looking at it, not because I was afraid of what I’d see, because I already knew.
It was night, or what passed for night in a place where time didn’t really move forward, it just sat there with you.
I’d been lying on my back, one arm folded under my head, staring at the ceiling where the light flickered just enough to make it feel like something was wrong with my eyes.
Sleep had been close, but not the kind that gives you rest, just the kind where your body gives up before your mind does.
I could’ve sworn I’d seen a small black spider in there at some point, but before I realized it, it was gone.
And no matter how long I looked, I couldn’t find it again.
I was right on the edge of falling asleep when I heard it, a sound that didn’t belong.
A slow, dragging scrape against the concrete.
My body reacted before my mind caught up.
I turned my head toward the corner, and for a second I didn’t understand what I was looking at.
He was just… there, sitting like he had every right to be.
Back against the wall, arms resting loosely over his knees, head tilted like he’d been watching me for a while already and was only now letting me notice.
Zwierek.
It didn’t make sense, it couldn’t, every part of me knew that.
The door had been locked, I hadn’t heard it open, no footsteps, nothing.
And still, there he was. For a second, I just stared at him, trying to force reality to line up with what I was seeing, trying to find the gap in it.
There wasn’t one. He just sat there, like this was normal. Like I was the one out of place.
My hands curled into the thin fabric of the mattress. I pushed myself up slowly, every muscle already tight, already ready. My mind ran through it fast. How the fuck did he get in? How long had he been there? Why hadn’t I heard – no. No, that wasn’t the thought that stuck.
I should have finished it.
I sat up fully now, feet hitting the cold floor, not taking my eyes off him for a second.
“What…” My voice came out rough, unused, dragged out of somewhere deeper than it should have been. I swallowed, jaw tightening. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
My pulse was loud enough in my ears to drown out everything else.
“How did you get in?”
Nothing, he just kept looking at me, like he was waiting, like this was part of something I hadn’t caught up to yet.
And something about that, that fucking calm, it made something inside me shift, uncomfortable.
Like a thought I didn’t want to have was starting to form anyway.
I took a step toward him, just one, testing out the distance.
“I’m not asking again.” My voice dropped lower this time. “Answer me.”
The silence didn’t sit right. Like the air in the cell had shifted into something heavier, something that didn’t belong to the room I’d been locked inside for months.
Even the flicker from the ceiling light seemed slower now, like it was struggling to cut through whatever the fuck had just settled between us.
And he was still just fucking sitting there.
Just watching me like this was normal, like I was the one acting strange.
There’s a point, right before something breaks loose, where your body knows before your mind catches up.
Mine had already decided. Every muscle pulled tight, jaw locked so hard I could feel it in my temples, hand curling and uncurling like they needed something to crush just to stay grounded.
I had never been built for gentleness. There was never a version of me that existed without tension locked into my body and violence standing close enough to breathe down my neck.
Even as a kid, it was always survival, always teeth bared, always making sure no one ever got the chance to hurt me first. If they were afraid of me, they couldn’t touch me.
That’s how it worked, that’s how it always worked.
And yet, standing there, staring at him sitting in that corner like he’d grown out of the fucking concrete, something felt off.
Not him, me. Something in me wasn’t lining up.
Like a screw had come loose somewhere deep in my head and now everything was just wrong.
Like I was standing half a step outside myself watching it happen instead of being in it.
“Rowan…”
My name didn’t sound right coming out of his mouth, not like that, not here.
“I’m always where you are.”
His head tilted, like he was studying me, waiting for something to fall into place. “You haven’t figured that out yet?”
No answer came out of me. My head kept circling the words without managing to fully understand them, and for a second, a real fucking second, I thought maybe this was what losing your mind actually felt like.
Like everything that had been building inside me for years had finally hit all at once and torn something open beyond repair.
“No.” The word came out under my breath, more to myself than him.
No.
This wasn’t real, it couldn’t be.
I needed something, something I could trust. My hand came up before I even really decided to do it. Fingers digging into the skin of my arm, hard, nails dragging down with enough force to tear through the surface.
I sucked in a breath through my teeth, body reacting on instinct, shoulders tensing as that familiar sting spread under my skin. Real. I looked down, saw it, felt it, and then looked back at him. Because if this was real, if I was awake, if I wasn’t dreaming, then what the fuck was he doing here?
I just stood there, staring at him, something unreadable pulling across my face now, something caught between confusion and something darker starting to rise underneath it.
“... What are you?”
It slipped out before I could stop it. He didn’t even blink.
He just sat there and looked at me like I was the one being slow, like I’d missed something obvious, something so fucking obvious it almost made him bored.
Then he tilted his head a little, like he used to do when I wasn’t getting it fast enough.
“Did it really never cross your mind?”
His voice never rose, and somehow that made every word hit harder.
“You didn’t question it… not once?” A breath, short, almost a laugh, but there was nothing funny in it. “Of course you didn’t.”
His eyes moved over my face, slow, like he was taking something apart piece by piece.
“It's kind of hard to notice anything when you spend all your time hating what you are. You’ve made a habit out of avoiding yourself.”
Something in my chest locked up, like my body had already figured it out and was just waiting for my head to catch the fuck up.
He didn’t say more, didn’t explain anything, he just tipped his chin toward the sink.
No. I didn’t move, my feet stayed planted like the floor had closed around them, because I already knew.
Not what, but enough to know I didn’t want to see it.
“Look.”
My jaw tightened so hard it hurt as I pushed myself, every step felt wrong, like I was walking into something I couldn’t undo once I saw it.
The metal sink came into view first, dull and scratched.
The kind of surface that had seen too much and didn’t care.
I stopped right in front of it, didn’t look up, just stared down into it like maybe I could stay there.
Like maybe if I didn’t lift my eyes, nothing would change and for a second, I almost turned around.
Instead, I glanced back at the corner, but he was gone and it made something snap inside my head.
My head jerked up, scanning the cell like that would do anything, like he’d just be standing somewhere else, like I’d somehow missed him.
I turned too fast and looked straight into the mirror and everything just stopped, because it wasn’t my face staring back, it was him.
Zwierek stood there in the reflection, eyes locked onto mine.
The air in my lungs turned useless, trapped somewhere behind my ribs while my eyes stayed fixed on the mirror.
Because he wasn’t standing beside me. He wasn’t behind me.
The room was empty. Only the reflection moved.
Zwierek stood inside the mirror staring straight at me, that smile dragging slowly across his face like he already knew exactly what this would do to me, and somewhere deep in my chest, something finally gave way so violently I thought I felt it tear.