The silence didn’t last.
Not in a place like this.
It broke first with a rattle—the crash cart beside trembling from the reverberations of a distant, echoing clang. Then ca the subtle hum of the overhead lights growing sharper, as if the facility itself had taken a breath. Sothing in the air shifted. An alert system maybe. Or motion sensors reactivating.
We had seconds, maybe minutes, before soone noticed the guard hadn’t checked in.
"He won’t be out long," Alexis muttered, already moving. She crouched beside the unconscious soldier, pressing two fingers to his throat, then searching the compartnts of his armor. "Vitals steady. Nervous system’s overwheld. She didn’t just disable him. She short-circuited his ability to move. That shouldn’t be possible."
Sienna remained silent.
I could see it in her posture—the tremble in her knees, the way her breath caught just short of normal. Adrenaline crash. Overexertion. Whatever she did, it took a toll. I wanted to pull her aside, ask if she was really okay. But there was no ti.
Alexis tossed a small black card my way. Key clearance.
"He had Tier 2 access," she said. "That’ll open ddoors and staff corridors, maybe even so storage wings. But not the core wings or security grid."
"It’s enough," I replied, gripping the card hard enough to bend it. I turned to Sienna. "Can you walk?"
She nodded, slow. Her voice, when it ca, was ragged but resolute. "Yeah. I’m not... falling apart."
Yet.
We moved. Quickly. I wrapped a compression band around my leg, slowed the bleeding with a gauze pack from the crash cart, and limped along behind them. Sienna insisted on helping walk, her arm looped under mine. Her strength was steady, disturbingly so.
"Stairs or ducts?" Alexis asked, pausing at a corridor fork.
"Stairs," I said. "Ducts make us sitting targets if sothing goes wrong again. We need speed, not cover."
We moved through an abandoned corridor lit by ergency strips. Fluorescent tubes pulsed as we passed—white, then blue, then back to white. At one point, we heard a burst of static over the intercom. Garbled. Then quiet. Soone was testing the network.
We ducked into an adjacent hall. dical charts fluttered from a toppled clipboard, and the sll of antiseptic clung to everything. Sienna paused beside a half-broken window, scanning the open sector below.
"This is the western ward," she whispered. "They kept the more... cooperative patients here. Evelyn told that once, before they moved her."
Alexis turned to . "You think they’d keep Camille here?"
I shook my head. "Not unless they broke her first. She fights too much."
We moved again, descending two flights. I nearly lost balance at the last step—Sienna steadied with one hand. Her grip was steel.
Sothing churned in my chest. She didn’t notice.
We slipped past another disabled cara and reached a steel door labeled: Observation Hall C.
The keycard beeped. Green.
The door slid open with a hiss.
The hall beyond was cold. Wide. Lit with a blue tinge. Six rooms lined each wall—glass partitions mostly covered in black-out film. Observation chambers. For behavioral logging. And containnt.
We moved past the first two.
Empty.
The third held dical restraints. Dried blood. Nothing else.
Sienna turned her face away.
Room four—smashed equipnt. Charred spots across the walls. Soone had triggered a ltdown protocol.
ChatGPT said:
Then Alexis froze.
"Reynard," she said, voice clipped—tight, like a string pulled too far.
I turned.
Room five.
A figure lay still on the cot.
Black curls spilled across the pillow. Pale arms. Fingers twitching, barely visible in the low light. One ankle shackled with a heavy, reinforced restraint.
Camille.
Sothing inside dropped.
I didn’t rember moving. One mont I was behind Alexis, bracing my weight on a blood-soaked thigh. The next, I was at the door, keycard jamd into the reader again and again until the light turned green. The lock hissed. The door eased open.
A sterile, chemical chill wafted out. Recycled air, antiseptic. Too clean. Too quiet.
Camille didn’t react.
She lay curled, knees drawn to her chest like a question mark, her back rising and falling in slow, uneven breaths. Her lips were pale. Her skin grayish. There was a dark bruise on her cheekbone, swollen and unwashed, and a thin crusted line of dried blood streaked from her hairline to her temple. Two circular electrodes clung to her skin like parasites, anchored with yellowing tape.
Sienna sucked in a breath like she’d been punched.
Alexis was already moving—crossed the room in three steps and dropped to one knee beside the cot, fingers sliding to Camille’s wrist.
"She’s alive," Alexis said. "Pulse is irregular. Weak. Pupils reactive. Sedatives—heavy ones. But she’s holding on. Whatever they gave her... it’s not standard protocol. Might be so type of skill suppressant."
I dropped to my knees beside Camille, ignoring the fire in my leg and the stab of bone grinding against torn muscle.
"Camille?" I said, low and careful.
For a mont, nothing.
Then her eyes fluttered. Rolled back. Focused.
"...You look like shit," she rasped.
The relief that surged through was so sudden it nearly floored . I let out a sound sowhere between a breath and a laugh.
"You’re not wrong," I said, voice shaking.
She blinked slowly. Winced. "Why’s there two of you?"
Alexis glanced at . "Still hallucinating. Her system’s overloaded. We have to clear it—just not here. This ward’s too close to central monitoring. If anyone checks this room’s access logs, we’re done."
I placed a hand gently on Camille’s shoulder. Her body was trembling, but her skin was cold. Alarmingly cold.
"Can you walk?" I asked.
She tried.
Her muscles clenched. Her leg spasd. Her hands fumbled for the edge of the cot.
Then she collapsed back, weakly shaking her head. "Not unless you plan on carrying like a princess."
I smiled faintly, despite everything.
"I’d love to," I said, "but I think we’d both die halfway down the hall."
Sienna stepped forward before either of us could say another word.
"I’ve got her," she said quietly, kneeling beside the cot.
She slid Camille’s arm around her shoulders and lifted her with slow, deliberate care. The difference in her strength wasn’t lost on any of us. Camille half-laughed, half-groaned, her voice airy.
"Sienna?" she murmured. "You look taller. Stronger. Did you finally start working out or... did I just shrink?"
Sienna smile faintly as she adjusted her grip and stood up.
Camille sagged against her, eyelids drooping again.
We moved quickly. Quietly. The hallway beyond stretched ahead in dim blue pulses, shadows hanging like drapes from the corners. Each step echoed too loud. My leg throbbed with every motion, the gauze now soaked red beneath the bandage, but I kept going.
Alexis brought up the rear, constantly checking motion behind us.
And yet, it wasn’t what was behind that unsettled .
It was what lay ahead.
There were still more doors.
Still more rooms.
Still more people we hadn’t found.
And sowhere—hidden deep in the reinforced walls—I felt it.
The weight of eyes.
Watching.
Waiting.
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