The weight of it settled on my skin like breath that didn’t belong to me. I sat back. Pulled my knees to my chest. The hunger shifted. Deepened. Every organ inside me turned on the others.
My body was already devouring itself. But they didn’t come. They didn’t feed me. They didn’t speak.
I rocked once. Twice. The silence never broke. I pressed my forehead to my knees. Inhaled the scent of my own sweat, my own fear, my own unfinished screams. And I waited. That was the game. That was the point. To let me listen to the sound of my own body failing. To teach me what power sounded like when it wore silence.
My throat clenched. I couldn’t swallow. The gag was too tight. But I didn’t cry. I didn’t whimper. I didn’t beg. I breathed. And in the white light of that windowless room, I became something new. Not clean. Not broken. Just waiting. Breath was all I had. And it was still mine.
The lights never turned off. They didn’t flicker. Didn’t hum. Didn’t shift from harsh to soft like they had any intention of pretending to care. They just burned overhead with that surgical, all-knowing glow. Flat. Cold. Constant. Like time didn’t pass here. Like it wasn’t supposed to.
There were no clocks. Just the weight of my own body reminding me that I hadn’t eaten. That I hadn’t stood. That I hadn’t been touched in hours. Maybe longer.
I’d stopped counting. Or maybe I never started. Because time only matters when someone might come. And no one came. Not yet.
The mirror on the far wall stared back at me. But it wasn’t a mirror. Not really. It was a sheet of glass dressed in distance. A barrier designed to remind me that I wasn’t alone—just invisible. My reflection was there if I shifted the angle. Just barely. Ghost-like. A smear of skin and bruises and collarbone and breath.
I sat with my back against the opposite wall. Legs folded. Spine bowed. Not because I was tired—though I was. But because the posture felt familiar. Felt safe. Felt mine.
The gag scraped the corners of my mouth. Dried spit flaked off every time I moved my jaw. My tongue was heavy. My stomach had stopped growling. It just curled in on itself now.
I stared at the mirror. I knew they were there. Someone was always watching. The feeling was too loud not to be real.
My skin itched from the awareness. Like eyes were peeling me back, layer by layer, documenting the erosion. Not looking for surrender. Looking for the moment before.
The moment just before I cracked.
The speaker crackled.
Just once.
Then silence.
It came again. Louder. Like someone tapping a microphone. Like they wanted me to flinch. I didn’t. Then the voice came. Low. Smooth. Familiar.
Ellis.
“Let’s see how long loyalty lasts without food.”
That was all he said. Nothing else. No gloating. No warning. No name.
The speaker clicked off. And I was alone again. Only I wasn’t. Because now it wasn’t just about watching. It was aboutlistening. They wanted to hear me fall apart. They wanted to record the breath before I begged.
But I didn’t give them anything. Not the tremor in my spine. Not the pressure building behind my eyes. Not the twitch in my fingers that started every time my stomach twisted on itself like it was trying to devour whatever I had left.
I pressed my forehead to the floor. It was cold. Real. It grounded me. The tile didn’t care if I survived. It would hold my body either way. But I did. I cared. I kept breathing. That was the only sound I still owned. And I made it loud enough for them to hear.
I smelled the food before I saw him. Not grease. Not rot. Not the sour staleness of whatever they kept hidden in sealed bags for other girls, other cells.
Real food. Warm. Bread. Meat. Steam.
I hated that my mouth watered. My body betrayed me before he even walked in. I tasted it behind the gag, like shame.
The door opened with the same click as before, the same hiss of hydraulic weight releasing, but this time it was slower. Staged. Like someone wanted me to feel it in my chest before they even stepped through.
Ellis Ward didn’t walk in like a man with power. He walked in like a man who never had to reach for it.
He wore black. Tailored. His shoes caught no dust. His sleeves were rolled precisely one fold. The kind of perfection that made it look like none of this touched him. That I was just a smudge he planned to wipe off the glass.
He carried the tray with one hand. Balanced. Casual. The way Wolfe carried weapons. He didn’t look at me right away. He set the tray on the floor. Too far to reach. Close enough to smell. Then he crouched. Not beside me. Across the room. Folded his arms over his knees. Watched me.
