Her face crumples in a way she probably doesn’t realise I can see. “It would be for the child’s safety.”
There it is.
The knife.
Not between my ribs.
Inthem.
A tight, breathless pressure coils just beneath my sternum – not maternal, not sentimental, nothing soft and glowing – just a deep, consuming sense of possession, the kind that snarls when someone threatens what’s inside its den.Mine.Not theirs. Not his. Not hers. Not the Director’s. Mine.
Even if I hate it.
Even if I don’t want it.
Even if it feels like an intruder.
They don’t get to take anything from me ever again.
Something settles in me then, slow and cold, like water filling a tank. I wipe my palms on my trousers and give Callaway the calmest smile I’ve given her since the day I arrived.
“Thank you,” I say. “For your honesty.” My voice is soft enough to be misread as compliance. “Truly.”
She relaxes.
She shouldn’t.
That night,after rounds, the guards are sluggish from their shift meal and the corridors hum with the low, predictable rhythm of a building that believes it has tamed its monster. I lie on my bed, eyes open in the dark, watching the camera blink its lazy red eye in the corner. The scan. The file. The guard’s hand reaching toward my stomach. The Director’s shadow hanging over everything. The threat of intervention. The certainty that they are planning my future without me in it.
I don’t move for a long time.
Stillness is a strategy.
Stillness is how predators decide where to place their teeth.
Then, slowly, I roll onto my side and let my hand drift to my stomach, fingertips hovering without touching, as if I’m afraid to feel anything at all. Something shifts inside me – small, subtle, almost curious – and the sensation sends a jagged pulse of something hot and dangerous through my chest.
“They think they can restrain me,” I whisper into the dark, voice steady, steady, steady. “They think they can decide what happens to what’s growing in me.” The red light blinks. I let my smile stretch, sharp and patient. “Let them try.”
By the time the camera pans away, I’ve already started counting the steps between the guards’ posts, mapping every door that clicks instead of locks, every cart with unsecured supplies, every corridor where the lights flicker long enough to hide a shadow.
They wanted stability.
They wanted control.
They wanted compliance.
What they’ve really given me is motive.
And motive is so much more useful.
WAIT FOR THE PATTERN TO BREAK
Everybody’s Dead Inside - Alissic
Bones
Time doesn’t break here.
