"Thanks for the pep talk." I took a long pull from the bottle, trying to wash down the taste of paranoia. Every car that drove by made me tense. Every unknown number on my phone sent my heart racing. "Just work stuff."
"The tattoo shop or the bar?"
"Both." Neither. The secret third thing where I'd apparently sold myself to a psychological research facility run by a man with a voice like expensive whiskey and intentions I didn't want to think about.
Mika studied me with those dark eyes that saw too much. "You know you can tell me if something's wrong, right?"
I could. I could tell her everything. Show her the contract, the texts, the money that still sat in my account like evidence of my spectacular fuck-up. But what would I say? "Hey, so I might have accidentally agreed to be a sex slave for science, and now they're trying to collect"?
"I know," I lied, curling deeper into her couch. "Just need to lay low for a while."
Laying low worked for exactly nine days.
On day ten, they started calling. Not from blocked numbers or the disconnected line on the business card. From everywhere. The tattoo shop. The bar. My dentist's office, for fuck's sake.
"Is this Miss West?" The receptionist at my gyno's office sounded confused. "I have a note here about rescheduling your appointment for your... participation physical?"
I hung up.
They called from the pizza place I'd ordered from once. From my old high school. From numbers that belonged to my neighbors, my coworkers, my fucking cable company.
"Miss West," that same cultured voice every time, no matter what number appeared on the screen. "Avoiding your obligations doesn't nullify them. We can do this the easy way or the difficult way."
I chose option C: throw my phone in Puget Sound and buy a burner from a sketchy convenience store.
That bought me another week.
Then the letters started. Not mailed—appeared. Under Mika's door. In my work locker. Tucked under the windshield wipers of every car I'd ever driven. Same expensive paper. Same neat printing.
Your participation period has begun, Miss West. Continued avoidance will result in collection protocols as outlined in Section 61-A of your agreement.
I didn't remember a Section 61-A. Probably because I'd been too busy counting my money to read about "collection protocols."
"Okay, what the actual fuck?" Mika held up one of the letters that had somehow appeared in her locked mailbox. "Who's the Mire Institute?"
"No one. Nothing. Junk mail." I snatched it from her hand, shoving it into my pocket with the dozen others I'd collected. "Probably a scam."
She crossed her arms, hip cocked in that way that meantshe was done with my bullshit. "Junk mail that knows your name? That appears in locked boxes? Lilah, if you're in some kind of trouble—"
"I'm not." Another lie. They were piling up like the letters, like the days I'd been running. "I just need a few more days here, okay? Then I'll be out of your hair."
"You know that's not what I meant." She touched my arm, gentle in that way that made me want to tell her everything. "Whatever this is, we can figure it out together."
But we couldn't. Because what I'd signed, what I'd agreed to in that coffee shop with my cocky signature and my certainty that I was smarter than everyone else—that was mine to figure out. Mine to run from. Mine to eventually face.
I lasted three weeks.
Three weeks of hiding, of jumping at shadows, of collection protocols that escalated from calls and letters to more creative methods. My boss at the bar received a generous donation "in honor of Lilah West's upcoming sabbatical." My tattoo mentor got a letter praising my "commitment to personal growth through intensive study." My bank account showed pending transfers labeled "PARTICIPATION INCENTIVE - PENDING COLLECTION."
They were tightening the noose without ever touching me. Reminding me that they could reach into every corner of my life whenever they wanted.
"I can't do this anymore," I told Mika on day twenty-one, standing in her kitchen at 2 AM, exhausted and frayed. "I'm going home."
"Finally." She pulled me into a hug that smelled like her vanilla shampoo and felt like safety I didn't deserve. "Whatever this is, Lilah, running isn't fixing it."
She was right. Running wasn't fixing anything. It was just delaying the inevitable.
I went back to my apartment the next morning. Everything was exactly as I'd left it—bed unmade, coffee cup still in the sink, contract papers still scattered across the floor like accusations. The only difference was the envelope on my kitchen counter.
