The answer, as it turned out, was midafternoon.
One moment, she was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at nothing, her fingers tapping out iambic pentameter against her thigh. The next, the world tilted sideways, and her body simply gave out.
The dream came fast.
The box. Always the box. Metal walls so close she could touch them without extending her arms. Darkness pressing against her eyes like something solid, something alive. Thesmell of rust and concrete and her own fear, sharp and animal.
She tried to move. Her limbs wouldn’t respond.
She tried to scream. Her throat locked shut.
Randall’s voice slithered through the dark, reading data at her in that flat, professional tone. Coordinates. Names. Numbers. An endless flood of information she didn’t understand, couldn’t process, couldn’t stop absorbing.
47.6062, -122.3321. David Thornton. Rebecca Vance. KILO-SEVEN-TANGO.
The knife appeared. She couldn’t see it—couldn’t see anything—but she felt it. The cold press of metal against the soft skin of her inner forearm. The bright, burning line of pain as it opened her up.
Every time you slow down, we add another.
She couldn’t slow down. Couldn’t speed up. Couldn’t do anything but lie there in the dark while the data poured in and the blade kept finding new places to cut.
Filing cabinets don’t ask questions.
The walls pressed closer. The darkness thickened. She was shrinking, compressing, becoming something small enough to fit in the space they’d made for her. Soon, there would be nothing left. Soon, she would just be data, stored and silent, a human hard drive with no room left for the person she used to be.
Morgan woke with a scream tearing out of her throat.
The sound was raw, animal—a noise she didn’t recognize as her own. She sat up gasping, heart slamming against her ribs, her hands fisting in the sheets like she could anchor herself to something real.
The room was dark—hours must have passed, the afternoon light long gone. She couldn’t remember where she was. For one terrible moment, the walls pressed in and she was back in the box, back in the dark, back in?—
Not the box. A bed. A window. Shapes that proved the world still existed beyond her own terror.
A soft knock at the door. Then Lincoln’s voice, careful and low. “Morgan?”
She tried to answer. The word caught in her throat, trapped behind whatever had locked her voice away.
The door opened a few inches. Light from the hallway spilled across the floor, and Lincoln’s silhouette appeared in the gap. He didn’t enter. Didn’t approach. Just stood there, one hand on the doorframe, waiting.
“I heard you scream,” he said. “I wanted to check—” He stopped. Started again. “Are you okay?”
The question was absurd. She was the opposite of okay. But his voice—that careful, uncertain voice—cracked something loose in her chest.
“No,” she managed. The word came out uneven, wounded. “I’m not.”
Lincoln stayed in the doorway. She could see him processing, calculating, trying to figure out the correct protocol for a situation that had no protocol.
“May I come in?”
She nodded, then realized he might not be able to see the gesture in the dark. “Yes.”
He crossed the threshold slowly, like he was approaching something fragile. Which, she supposed, she was. He stopped a few feet from the bed, hands at his sides, posture rigid with uncertainty.
“Should I turn on a light?”
“No.” The darkness felt safer right now. Less exposed. “Just—can you stay? For a minute?”
“Yes.” He lowered himself onto the edge of the bed, leaving space between them. His weight shifted the mattress, and Morgan felt herself tilt slightly toward him before she caught herself. “I’m here.”
