Not hope.
Not mercy.
Something colder.
Something patient.
Something that would one day crawl out of this pit and come back for its maker.
Chapter 1
California, USA – January, 2026
ELENA
The fluorescent lights in Mr. Hargrove’s cramped office buzzed like dying insects, their flicker casting a sickly yellow pallor over everything—the chipped metal desk, the stacks of grease-stained order pads, the faded health-inspection certificate hanging crookedly on the wall like a bad joke.
The air smelled of old coffee and fryer oil, a stale, clinging odor that never quite washed out of this place no matter how often the floors were mopped.
I stood rigid in front of him, arms straight at my sides, spine locked, the way I’d been trained to stand at attention. Old habits never died. They just learned to hide.
Hargrove’s lips moved with the practiced confidence of a man who had spent years turning power into routine.
I watched his mouth carefully, tracking the shapes, the pauses, the way he leaned forward to emphasize the moment.
“You’re fired.”
The words formed clearly, exaggerated and slow, as if he enjoyed making sure I understood. As if this was a performance, and I was the captive audience.
I didn’t flinch. I couldn’t afford to.
My hearing had been stolen from me ten years ago—ripped away along with my future, my confidence, and the last clean piece of the girl I used to be.
The trauma still lived behind my eyes, waiting.
I forced myself to focus on Hargrove’s mouth.
I had learned to read lips the way other people read books. It was the only way I survived in a world that never stopped talking.
Unless someone screamed directly into my ear, I heard nothing. And even then it came in fragments—mangled, distorted, useless.
Conversations whispered behind my back were impossible for me to hear.
Jokes, gossip, insults—things others overheard without trying—were completely out of reach for me. People thought that made me weak.
They were wrong.
Face-to-face, I missed nothing.
Hargrove leaned back in his chair, the metal legs screeching against the tile. His smirk spread slowly, like something fermenting.
He looked pleased with himself, as if he’d finally said something he’d been holding in for weeks.
I swallowed and forced my voice out. Each word scraped painfully against vocal cords that never fully recovered.
“W-what have I done... wrong, sir?”
The stammer was real. It always got worse when I was tired or stressed. I hated that he could hear it.
