It reorganises.
At first I tried to count days. That impulse lasted about as long as my sense of outrage. Both are luxuries in controlled environments. Time, like everything else in this place, exists only as a function of procedure.
So I count cycles.
Light shift. Movement. Questioning. Return. Repeat.
The pattern is tight enough now that I can predict deviations to within a few minutes. That’s how I know it’s been weeks. Systems don’t settle this cleanly unless they’ve been running long enough to optimise.
My injuries are no longer interesting to them.
That’s another marker.
The bruising from the roof has faded to a sallow yellow. A cracked rib healed just enough to stop drawing attention. Pain management tapered without comment. They want baseline readings now, not trauma noise.
They want us intact.
That wasn’t always the plan.
The first phase was brute containment – restraints, sedation, force escalation whenever someone pushed back. That phase failed quickly. Honey pushed harder. Nightshade burned too bright. Hatchet didn’t respond at all, which unsettled them more than resistance.
Snow adapted immediately.
That worried them.
Now we’re in Phase Two. Comfort, structure, repetition. Choice-shaped questions. Environmental cues designed to invite cooperation without explicitly demanding it. The kind of system that convinces you you’re participating instead of being studied.
I don’t participate. I comply selectively.
They move me every third cycle. Same corridor, same angles, same number of steps. Two guards at my flanks, one ahead. The one in front never speaks. I like him best.
The observation room is unchanged. That tells me it’s functioning as intended. Chair bolted to the floor. Table behind glass. Mirror pretending not to be one. Camera in the corner pretending to be a vent.
The personnel rotate. The questions don’t.
“How are you feeling today?” Neutral tone. Open-ended phrasing. Designed to provoke narrative.
I give them none. “Fine.”
They pivot. “Any pain?”
“No.”
“Sleep disruptions?”
“No.” They log it anyway. Data integrity matters more than truth.
They don’t ask about Kayla. But I guess that’s the point. They wanted us to forget her, and I’m ashamed to admit that for a while, it worked. I knew they’d taken some of my memories, and I could feel her missing presence like a chasm in my chest, but I couldn’t name the feeling, or recall the cause.
The others were the same. All of us except Nightshade. They never managed to take her from him, and when he said her name, it was like a tension wire snapping, and it all came rushing back.
Now I remember, remember everything, and I will not let them take her from me again. So I answer their questions, I lie, tell half truths, and I wait to see if they’ll bring up the elephant in the room.
They don’t.
Eventually they escalate to relational probes. Group dynamics. Loyalty. Attachment. They’re trying to map fault lines – who breaks first, who follows whom, who can be leveraged against the others.
They ask about Nightshade often. They don’t ask about Kayla. That omission is not accidental.
