Justin’s POV
She was murmuring now.
At first, I thought she was praying, or maybe just rambling in a daze—but no, it wasn’t that.
She was naming them.
"Subject Four... Doctor Halverson... Subject Ten... Nurse Marla... Cage Unit Seven... the Red Ward... Electrocell Delta..."
Each na a trigger. Each one spat like venom. Her voice shifting, rising and falling like she was being dragged backward through ti, deeper into the belly of the place we had barely crawled out of.
The lab.
My hands gripped the wheel harder.
June’s head lolled against the window. Her eyes wide open, but glazed—glassy. Like she was seeing sothing outside the car that I couldn’t.
Or... soone.
Then suddenly she said it, soft at first, like a confession:
"I’m not Number Twelve. I’m not her. I forgot. I forgot everything..."
A punch to the gut.
That’s why she hadn’t rembered .
That’s why she looked at like a stranger that day in the class. Why she didn’t say my na when I said hers. Why she never spoke about the lab, or the past, or the bleeding wreck of the childhood we were tortured through together.
She had forgotten .
Forgotten herself.
Forgotten everything.
It wasn’t her fault.
They did this.
They scrubbed her mind clean, like they did to the others—the ones who didn’t pass assimilation. The ones who cracked when the world outside the facility didn’t match the one inside their head. The ones who stopped trying to live and just started surviving.
The ones who never ca back.
The ones the voices took over.
Now I was watching it happen in real ti.
My June—my June—screaming inside her own head while those fucking voices danced around her like wolves circling fresh at.
She began to thrash suddenly, convulsing in the seat like sothing inside her was trying to claw its way out. She kicked the glove compartnt. Elbowed the door. Beat her fists into her thighs.
"No!" she shrieked. "I’m not her! I’m not her—I forgot! I forgot!"
Tears stread down her cheeks. Not quiet ones. Violent ones. Body-wracking sobs that made her shoulders tremble and her whole fra shake like she was in a seizure.
I couldn’t drive anymore.
I pulled the car over so fast the tires screeched. Slamd it into park. Fumbled with my belt and then hers, tossing them off as I lunged across the center console and grabbed her shoulders.
"June!" I said. Loud. Sharper than I ant. "June, look at !"
Her eyes flicked to my face—but they didn’t focus.
Didn’t recognize.
Didn’t see .
I knew that look.
I’d seen it before.
In Cell Block Three.
In the children who failed reconditioning. The ones who used to be full of fire and then suddenly just... weren’t. Who sat in corners talking to people who weren’t there. Who carved into their own skin because they said it made the voices louder—or quieter—they couldn’t tell which.
It was the look of soone already gone.
And June—my June—was gone.
"Co back," I said, quieter now. Pleading. "Co back to . You’re not there anymore, you’re here. You’re safe now. Co back."
She was shaking her head violently.
"No, no, no, no, I can’t—I forgot who I was—"
"You’re June," I whispered. "You’re my June. You’re the girl who liked strawberry gum and sang to herself in the dark. The girl who saved ."
But her eyes were looking through .
Right through .
She wasn’t hearing.
She wasn’t there.
And then—just like that—she stopped.
No warning.
No build.
Just stillness.
Her body went slack in my hands. Her breathing evened out. Her expression froze.
Like ice.
Her eyes—still open—held nothing. No confusion. No sorrow. Just... vacancy. A cold void. A glint of sothing I didn’t recognize.
Sothing I feared.
She turned her head slowly, chanically, and looked at .
And then she spoke.
Calm.
Clear.
Deadly.
"I need to stab the other monsters."
I froze.
Her voice—it wasn’t hers. Not really. It didn’t feel like her voice. It felt like a chorus. Sothing wearing her voice like a skin.
"I need to find them," she said again, more firmly. "And kill each and every one of them."
She didn’t blink.
Didn’t tremble.
Just stated it like a fact.
Like a plan already in motion.
And in that mont, sothing broke inside .
Because I realized: she wasn’t hearing the voices anymore.
She was listening.
She was agreeing.
And her voice—her voice—was gone.
Drowned in the others.
Buried.
Lost.
*********
I knew that look.
I knew that tone.
I knew that bloodlust.
Because it used to be mine.
Back then, after Rico and I managed to get out of the lab—half-dead, half-mad, shaking and scarred with stitches that hadn’t healed and voices that never shut up—I was exactly like this. Cold. Calculating. Hungry for vengeance.
I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I hunted.
The guards.
The nurses.
The "specialists."
Anyone who had even watched what they did to us.
I tracked them down one by one.
Tied them up in the dark.
Tortured them in the cave until their screams turned hoarse and their eyes begged to stop. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Because their pain was the only thing louder than the voices.
And I would have kept going.
I would have beco one of the monsters.
If Rico hadn’t found her.
Number Twelve.
He told she was alive. That she wasn’t dead. That she’d made it out and vanished.
I didn’t believe him.
How could I?
She had promised to co back for .
Promised, with her hand over my heart and tears in her eyes, that she’d never leave behind. And then... silence. No sign. No rescue. No hope.
So I thought she was dead.
I had to believe she was dead. Because if she wasn’t, then she left —and that thought was worse than any shock, any knife, any cell they’d ever locked in.
But she hadn’t left .
She’d forgotten.
She’d buried everything so deep that she didn’t even know who she was.
And now... now she was lost all over again. Slipping into that sa madness. That sa rage that nearly swallowed whole.
The difference?
I clawed my way out before it was too late.
She hadn’t yet.
And if I didn’t pull her back now, I was going to lose her forever.
Because that voice?
That cold, flat voice talking about stabbing monsters?
That wasn’t my June.
That was the voice of every nightmare we grew up in.
That was the lab talking.
That was Number Twelve—not June.
And she was on a rampage.
I could feel it radiating off her.
The sa way it had radiated off all those years ago—when I finally broke out and started my personal warpath, thinking justice ant watching the world burn.
It took years to co back from that.
To piece together what little was left of my sanity.
And it wasn’t until I saw June again—in that classroom, looking so normal—that I realized why I had fought to stay human in the first place.
I’d joined that class just to get close to her. To figure out how she could smile, how she could walk in daylight while I still couldn’t sleep without a blade in reach.
But she looked at like a stranger.
Smiled politely. Walked past .
Like I was no one.
And now... now I knew why.
She hadn’t lied.
She hadn’t betrayed .
She had forgotten.
Because that’s what trauma does. It steals your past. Makes you rewrite reality so you can survive.
She forgot to survive.
But now the mories were crawling back—and they weren’t slipping in gently. They were ripping through her like knives.
She was bleeding them.
And the voices—they were winning.
"June..." I said again, quieter this ti.
She didn’t answer.
She just stared ahead, eyes vacant, lips parted slightly like she was waiting for another command. Like she was on autopilot.
I couldn’t let her spiral.
I couldn’t lose her—not now, not again.
Not when I just found her.
I shifted back into drive, one hand tightening on the steering wheel while the other gently reached out to touch her wrist. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t react at all.
I could feel her pulse, steady but distant. Like she wasn’t even in her body anymore.
"I’m going to get you back," I whispered, mostly to myself.
I swear I will.
But I couldn’t do it alone.
The cave was the only place left.
The only place quiet enough. Isolated enough.
I hated taking her there. She’d already seen enough horror.
But I also knew it was the only place where I could keep her safe from herself—and maybe, just maybe, reach her again.
I pressed my foot to the gas.
The road ahead blurred as we moved.
But all I could feel was her presence beside —so close, and yet so far.
She sat there, quiet now. Too quiet.
Not asleep.
Not unconscious.
Just... still.
A statue haunted by voices I couldn’t hear but knew all too well.
"I won’t let you beco them," I said under my breath. "I won’t let them win."
And then, from beside , so soft it might have been imagined, she spoke again:
"They’re waiting for ... in the dark..."
Her fingers twitched.
I didn’t answer.
I just drove faster.
Because I didn’t have ti to be afraid.
I only had ti to save her.
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