Then I open my eyes and see the ceiling.
Not white. Not surgical. This one is a gentle cream with a faint pattern. Flowers, maybe, or something meant to pass as flowers without ever being quite real. The light is golden, like afternoon through curtains. There’s even a soft hum in the air, like a radiator doing its job.
I don’t move.
Relief rises on instinct, a bright little flare in my chest.
I smother it.
Relief is how you bargain. Relief is how you agree to things you shouldn’t.
My head turns slowly, scanning.
A bed. A real bed. Mattress with gentle softness, sheets that smell faintly of laundry soap. A chair in the corner, upholstered, the kind you could sink into and forget your spine exists. A small table beside the bed with a glass of water and a plate of biscuits arranged as if somebody has rehearsed hospitality.
The walls are painted. There’s a framed landscape of soft hills, a stream, the kind of picture you’d see in a waiting room because it offends no one. There’s a door.
A door.
I swing my legs off the bed and stand. My feet sink into carpet. Carpet.
It should not be possible for carpet to make me suspicious, but my suspicion latches onto it like a burr.
I take two steps, testing the room’s willingness to let me exist in it. No alarms. No voices. No temperature shift meant to punish curiosity. If there are cameras, they’re hidden. If there are microphones, they’re everywhere.
I approach the door.
The handle is metal, cool against my palm. It turns without resistance.
The door opens.
Not into a corridor. Not into a guard post. It opens into a small bathroom: sink, mirror, folded towels, shower with a curtain. A bar of soap in a dish. Toothbrush. Toothpaste. Someone has stocked this room like I’m meant to stay.
But it is notmyroom.
I stare at my reflection. No signs at all remain of our final battle on the roof.
How much time has passed?
I look…fine. Too fine. Clean. No bruises. No blood under my nails. My hair is brushed back from my face as if someone cared enough to make me presentable. Or wanted me to feel cared for.
All evidence from our fight on the roof is gone. But…why were we fighting? Who were we fighting? And why were we on the roof?
Something niggles at the back of my mind, urging me tothink,to remember, but when I try to focus on it, memory slips through my fingers like sand.
Instead, I lean closer, searching for tells – pupil dilation, tiny injection marks, the faint sheen of something chemical. I don’t see anything. Which means either I’m wrong, or they’ve become so practised they’ve stopped leaving evidence.
I turn away from myself and return to the bedroom.
The biscuits sit waiting. The water beads cold on the outside of the glass as if it’s been set down recently.
A thought comes uninvited, soft as the carpet: maybe this time is different.
I swallow it whole and let it sit like a stone in my gut.
Because here’s what I know: cruelty doesn’t always look like pain. Sometimes it looks like a kindness you didn’t ask for.
I don’t touch anything for a long minute. I circle the room instead, slow and deliberate, letting my fingertips skim the wall, the frame of the picture, the edge of the chair. Everything has weight. Everything feels real. That, too, is a lie. Realness as camouflage.
