They had her seated facing the glass wall, wrists locked behind the chair with industrial restraints that dug into skin deep enough to leave pale grooves whenever she shifted.

Lila didn’t sit still.

Not because she was trying to escape anymore. Because she couldn’t decide what to do with the fact that she was being made to wait.

A soldier stepped into her peripheral vision and adjusted the angle of the chair without asking. The metal legs scraped loudly against concrete.

"Stay facing forward," he said.

Lila laughed once under her breath, dry and cracked. "Or what?"

The soldier didn’t answer immediately. He just looked at her like she was a problem that had already been solved and was now only waiting to be filed away properly.

Behind the glass wall in front of her, a bright room waited. Clean. Sterile. Overlit in a way that made it feel less like a room and more like a blank page.

A chair sat in the center.

Empty.

Cables coiled neatly along the floor like veins waiting for a body.

Lila tilted her head slightly, trying to see more of the room’s edges. A guard stepped in and pushed her head back to center with two fingers against her temple. Not rough enough to break anything. Just enough to remind her it could happen whenever they felt like it.

"You’re going to watch," the soldier said.

"I already am," she replied.

A pause.

Then the soldier added, almost casually, "Not that part. The part where he decides what he is."

That sentence didn’t land immediately. It just hung there, suspended, like it was waiting for meaning to catch up to it.

Lila’s jaw tightened anyway.

Because she understood enough.

Another guard passed behind her and stopped near the glass. On the other side of it, a technician checked a monitor, then nodded once to someone out of frame.

"Rolling in thirty seconds," someone said.

The words echoed faintly through the wall.

Lila leaned forward as far as the restraints allowed, the chair creaking under the strain. "Where is he?"

No answer came.

Instead, the lights in the observation room brightened slightly, like a stage being prepared.

A camera arm adjusted itself overhead.

Lila’s breathing slowed in a way she didn’t like. Not calm. Controlled. Forced into shape by something outside her.

She tested the restraints again, harder this time. The metal held without complaint.

Behind her, a second set of footsteps stopped.

A different soldier spoke quietly, not to her. "She’s still the anchor point."

"Yeah," the first one replied. "That’s why she gets to watch."

Lila stopped moving.

Not because she wanted to.

Because she heard that last part properly.

Anchor point.

She let out a slow breath through her nose, eyes locked on the empty chair behind the glass.

"Yeah," she muttered, almost to herself. "Sure. Let me watch."

The door to the observation room opened.

And Adrian was brought in.

—

A bright light stung my eyes when I opened them. Nothing else had registered—

And I was already trying to move in the chair I was restrained in.

"...shh. Shh. There, there." a voice cooed from behind me. Jennifer.

Her tone didn’t match the restraint around my wrists or the clinical glare of the room. It belonged somewhere softer. Somewhere fake.

I tried to twist anyway. The straps bit deeper.

Jennifer’s hands found my hair. Slow, deliberate strokes, like she was calming an animal she already knew would obey eventually.

"I wouldn’t go near him if I were you, Jen," one of the soldiers said.

A pause. Then Jennifer looked at him.

He stopped speaking mid-breath.

That was all it took.

But it didn’t stop me.

Not even her touch could settle what was already crawling under my skin.

Lila.

The thought hit like something physical.

What the fuck did they do to Lila?

My body reacted before I could think. The chair scraped slightly as I pulled against it, muscles tightening until it hurt just to stay still.

"LET ME GO!!"

The words came out wrong. Too raw. Too loud for a room like this.

Jennifer leaned closer behind me, her voice dropping.

"Adrian, please."

A softness that didn’t belong in restraint protocols.

"Don’t make me have to put you to sleep again."

That stopped something in me. Not compliance—something closer to panic. The kind that doesn’t negotiate.

My throat tightened. My vision blurred before I even realized I was crying.

Jennifer exhaled, like I was exhausting her.

Then she moved in front of me.

She didn’t rush. She never rushed. That was part of it—control disguised as patience.

Her thumb brushed under my eye, collecting what had already spilled over.

"You know," she said, "I really don’t like hurting you, Adrian."

It almost sounded like a confession.

I stared at her through the wet blur in my vision, trying to find something in her expression that didn’t fit. There was nothing. That was the problem.

She believed it.

"You’re special to me."

That sentence should have meant something safe.

It didn’t.

For a moment, she just held my face there, like she was making sure I couldn’t look anywhere else.

Then she stood.

"Then why are you doing this?!" The words broke out of me before I could stop them.

She sighed again, not at the question itself, but at the necessity of answering it.

"I know Vivian gave you the rundown of how your mind works," she said, almost conversational, "even if it was a long time ago."

My stomach tightened at the name.

"Do you remember?"

A beat passed.

Then I turned my head.

To the left.

There was glass there. Darkened slightly. Not fully transparent, but enough that it was not meaningless either. Something existed behind it. Something I was not supposed to focus on.

"Who’s behind there?"

Her hand snapped back to my jaw, turning my head to her again with quiet precision.

"Nobody, sweetie."

Sweetie.

The word made my stomach tighten for reasons I could not articulate fast enough to stop the reaction.

My eyes flicked back despite her hand holding me steady.

The glass remained unchanged, but my brain refused to accept that as proof of nothing.

Jennifer leaned in slightly.

"Look at me."

I did.

Her expression softened again, but this time it carried something instructional, like she was guiding a patient through a breakdown rather than speaking to a person having one.

"I know you’re scared."

She said it like she had already categorized every response I was capable of having.

"I know you think you need to fear what’s happening to you. But you don’t."

Her fingers traced lightly along my cheek as she spoke, grounding me physically while dismantling me psychologically.

"You have something rare. Something most people never get the chance to understand about themselves."

Her eyes flicked briefly toward the glass again.

"You have potential."

The word hung in the air too long.

"Not just potential," she continued. "Something far beyond what you’ve been allowed to become."

My breathing slowed slightly without permission. Not calm. Just overwhelmed into stillness.

Her hand slid down my arm, slower now, as if mapping something she already understood better than I did.

A beat.

"And I know exactly what’s holding you back."

Her voice sharpened slightly on the last word.

"People," she said simply. "Attachments. The idea that you owe loyalty to things that only keep you small."

Her fingers tightened just slightly on my wrist.

"They’re not protecting you. They’re limiting you."

The room felt colder after that sentence, even though nothing had changed.

A pause stretched between us.

Then she softened again.

"I know it’s hard to trust me." She said quietly. "Especially after everything that’s happened."

There it was again—that careful gentleness, like everything she said had been rehearsed for comfort.

"...but I don’t think it’s easier to trust what you already believe either."

Her hand moved into her pocket.

The object came out without ceremony. A small device. Clean. Purpose-built. My instincts reacted before my understanding did.

Something about it was wrong in a way I could not immediately define.

She lifted it slightly.

"I want to show you something," she said.

"—...?"

Then she pressed it.

The world did not fade.

It changed.

My left eye went dark.

Not closed. Not damaged in a way I could immediately comprehend. It simply stopped being part of the world. Like it had been switched off inside my skull.

A sharp burning sensation followed, deep and invasive, and then my perception fractured.

The room around me flickered.

White walls became unstable. The light warped, bending like it was being pulled through something beneath it. My right eye tried to compensate, but the imbalance made everything feel wrong.

And then I saw it.

Not the room.

A different place.

A screen.

A voice.

A moment I had buried without meaning to.

"I’ve thought about it..."

Lila’s voice.

My body reacted instantly. I tried to move, but the restraints held me in place while my mind was forced to watch something I had no consent to revisit.

"Thought about what?" a voice asked her.

The pain in my left eye spiked.

"Breaking his limbs while he sleeps..."

"TURN IT OFF!!"

The scream wasn’t just panic. It was resistance. Pure rejection of what my brain was being forced to relive.

The pressure vanished instantly.

Sight returned in a violent snap.

I was breathing too fast. My chest wouldn’t settle. Warmth ran down my face—blood, I realized, from somewhere I hadn’t felt break until now.

...what the fuck was that?

Jennifer’s voice carried something almost pleased.

"Nifty, right?"

She stepped closer again, unbothered by the aftermath.

"After the lattice was implanted, I didn’t even need proximity anymore. It gave me access to everything already inside you."

Her eyes studied mine like I was a screen she was scrolling through.

"Some memories are fragmented. But that one?" A faint smile. "That one’s intact."

She tilted her head.

"That’s who you want to build a life around?"

Her hand returned to my face again, almost tender.

"There is no version of that story that ends well for you, Adrian."

I shook my head before she finished, like the motion alone could erase what she was planting.

"No. No, no, no—"

It wasn’t a debate anymore. It was defense.

"You’re wrong!"

Her expression didn’t change.

That was the worst part.

Because she wasn’t reacting to me.

She was observing me.

"You’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong—"

The repetition wasn’t argument anymore. It was drowning noise. My own voice trying to outshout something else forming underneath it.

A doubt that didn’t belong to me.

Something colder slipped in between the words.

Maybe—

"YOU’RE FUCKING WRONG!!"

Silence followed like a cut.

Jennifer straightened slowly.

Disappointment. Clean and clinical.

Not anger.

Worse.

She turned away as if the conversation had already concluded itself.

"Try again later," she said to someone behind her.

Paper rustled. A pen stopped moving.

The room started to empty.

Footsteps. Doors. Distance returning.

And then only her voice remained at the edge of the exit.

"And Adrian."

I didn’t look up.

"Think about what I said."

A pause.

"I know you already know there’s truth in it."

The door closed.

And what was left behind wasn’t silence.

It was me trying not to believe her.

—