June – POV
The door slamd.
I sat there frozen, staring at the sterile wall where Nate had stood.
"Sleep tight, Number Twelve."
His voice echoed in my skull like a curse. A trigger. A gunshot.
And then the screaming started.
But it wasn’t from the hallway.
It was from .
A scream that didn’t sound like mine. A sound that ca from sowhere deeper. Sowhere buried beneath all the fake smiles, all the manicured lies, all the glittering gowns and guarded flirtation.
This was her. The real . The broken one.
"NO!" I shrieked, thrashing against the padded wall like it could give sothing—anything—back. "YOU FUCKING LIAR! YOU FUCKING—"
I choked, bile rising in my throat as I collapsed again.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t think.
The lights were too bright. The walls were too white.
I clawed at my arms, desperate to feel sothing real. My nails left trails of red. Good. Let them. Maybe the blood would prove I was still here.
He was never here to help .
It was all a lie.
A carefully orchestrated illusion.
A fucking experint.
How many other people had I trusted that had been planted?
How many of my choices were real, and how many were quietly steered by vultures in white coats and clinical clipboards?
I curled into myself, knees pressed to my chest, arms wrapped around my body as if I could squeeze the betrayal out of .
And that’s when they ca back.
The voices.
Soft at first. Slithering. Seductive.
"See? We told you."
"He was always one of them."
"You’re just a pretty cage with old demons dancing inside."
"Foolish girl."
"No," I whispered, covering my ears. "No no no."
They had died.
They had been silent.
When Justin kissed , when he touched , when I looked at him like he was the whole fucking sky—I had drowned them out.
I had been healing.
I’d believed it.
I’d started to think I could be whole again.
But now...?
Now they were feasting.
"Always knew you’d fall back here, didn’t you?"
"Just like ho."
"Number Twelve. The girl who never belonged to herself."
My breath rattled. I rocked back and forth, whispering his na over and over again.
"Justin. Justin. Justin—please."
My monster. My chaos. My protector.
Where was he?
Was he even looking?
Had Nate told them to intercept him too?
What if they had him? What if he was dead—no, worse, what if they turned him into one of them?
The thoughts spiraled. They tangled like wires behind my eyes, sparking, burning, searing into every soft part of that had begun to hope again.
I crawled to the wall and pressed my cheek against it. It was cold. Sterile. Solid.
Exactly like the facility I’d once called ho.
Exactly like the one Justin broke out of.
They strap down, inject things into my veins, asking questions I didn’t understand. If I didn’t answer fast enough, they shocked .
If I scread too loud, they pumped sothing into my bloodstream that made my whole body go still and my mind split in two.
And him—the man with the gold-rimd glasses—he always ca in after. Sat beside and asked if I’d "heard the voices" yet. Like I was so sort of haunted radio station he was trying to tune.
"Tell when they co," he used to say. "You’re our favorite frequency."
He wanted to open . To unleash whatever was inside and watch it consu like fire.
I tried to rember justin. When we went shopping and he had pushed in the stroller until we got kicked out of the supermarket.
And in that mont, I felt more love than I had in my entire life.
And now here I was.
Back in the cage.
Back in the walls.
With no Justin. No love. No hope.
Just sterile lights, padded corners, and a laugh that still echoed like a knife in my ear.
"Sleep tight, Number Twelve."
I scread again.
Slamd my fists against the wall until my knuckles split.
"FUCK YOU!"
I didn’t know if I was screaming at Nate, the ghosts, the voices—or myself.
Maybe all of them.
I curled on the floor again, breathing ragged, vision blurring. My cheeks were wet.
I didn’t even rember crying.
I could feel myself unraveling.
Each second felt like an eternity.
Each tick of the light above like a countdown to madness.
The longer I stayed, the louder the voices grew.
The more they fed on my fear, my grief, my betrayal.
I held my knees tight, shivering.
"Nobody’s coming," one voice said softly, almost kindly.
"Just give in. Let go."
"Be what they made you."
"I won’t," I whispered.
But my voice was weak.
Too soft.
Too close to breaking.
Then I lifted my eyes to the ceiling. The lights blurred with my tears.
And I whispered the only thing I had left.
"Justin," I breathed, raw and broken. "Please find ."
But he didn’t co.
No footsteps.
No chaos.
No arms dragging into safety.
Just the silence.
Just the voices.
Just .
Alone.
Again.
********
I don’t know how long I stayed like that.
Maybe days. Maybe hours. Maybe minutes that stretched and lted like wax under the fluorescent lights.
There were no clocks here. No windows.
Just the hum of electricity and the soft creak of the door when they ca.
And they always ca.
Sotis in white coats. Sotis with syringes. Sotis just with notebooks and that look in their eyes. The one that made my skin crawl.
They drugged so many tis I stopped counting.
Pink liquid. Blue. Clear. Bitter. Cold. Each injection hit differently. Sotis I convulsed. Sotis I scread. Sotis I floated so far out of myself, I forgot how to find the way back.
Eventually, I stopped asking questions.
Stopped fighting.
Because every ti I tried to rember who I was, who I loved, it was like trying to grasp smoke. Like soone had taken a knife and scraped all the important parts out of my head.
Who I was.
Who I belonged to.
It all bled into white.
They stripped down to nothing and filled the hollow places with numbers.
"Subject 12."
That’s what they called now.
Number. Twelve.
I didn’t rember when they stopped calling June. Maybe I’d forgotten to answer to it. Maybe they’d beaten it out of .
Maybe it didn’t matter anymore.
They asked questions every day. Sa ones. Different drugs.
What are the voices saying?
Where are they now?
Do they still whisper in your dreams?
When did they start chanting in unison?
Sotis they would play sounds—screams, static, overlapping whispers—until my ears bled and my mind caved.
Sotis, I lied to them.
Sotis, I told the truth.
But today?
Today the voices weren’t whispering anymore.
They were chanting.
Louder than they had ever been.
Kill.
Kill.
Kill.
Kill.
I sat in the chair, wrists strapped down, head clamped in place. My veins already raw from the needles. I couldn’t feel anything anymore—not fear, not pain, not even sha.
The man in the white coat leaned down. The sa one who used to ask, "Are they talking to you today, Twelve?" like he was asking a child about imaginary friends.
His breath slled like peppermint and power.
"Well?" he said gently, pen ready. "Are they saying anything this morning?"
I looked at him.
I tilted my head slowly.
He smiled, encouraged by the movent.
And then I said it.
"They’re saying kill."
His pen stilled.
"They want blood," I added, voice flat. "Lots of it."
He blinked, then glanced at the assistant beside him. They scribbled sothing in a notebook.
"And who do they want to hurt, Number Twelve?"
I smiled.
A real smile.
One that made them both hesitate.
"They didn’t say."
Silence.
Just the sound of the recorder ticking.
The doctor straightened, clearly disturbed. "Increase the dosage," he said quietly to the nurse. "We need to sedate her before—"
I scread.
Not in fear. Not in pain.
But in rage.
I thrashed against the straps like a beast possessed. My head twisted in the clamp, teeth bared. "NO! Don’t sedate ! Don’t you want to know what they’ll say next?!"
They flinched.
"WHAT IF THEY TELL WHO DIES FIRST?"
I laughed.
God, I laughed so hard it hurt. The man dropped his clipboard. The nurse stumbled back.
"Kill. Kill. Kill," I whispered again, eyes locked with theirs. "That’s what they want. And you know what?"
I leaned forward as far as the straps allowed, a grin cutting across my face like a gash.
"I want it too."
They left there after the injection. My body numb.
But my mind was on fire.
The white lights blurred above . The walls pulsed.
The voices kept chanting, hungry and sharp and louder than ever.
And sowhere in the darkest corner of , a whisper—different from the others—erged.
It didn’t chant.
It didn’t scream.
It just said:
"Let out."
I smiled again, feeling my sanity slip one breath at a ti.
Letting it go felt easy now.
Like shedding an old, useless skin.
There was no more June.
Just Subject 12.
And the voices.
And the white room.
And the bloodlust rising.
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