The door clicks softly. Not locking, not unlocking, just acknowledging itself.
I set the water down. I don’t touch the biscuits. I don’t touch anything else.
I wait.
Time stretches. Or maybe it doesn’t and my mind is just desperate to fill the gaps. I take slow breaths. I listen for footsteps. I listen for the hum of hidden ventilation. I listen for anything that suggests a person exists outside this manufactured comfort.
Then there is a knock and my stomach drops.
I stand before I can stop myself, body moving to meet it because the sound of human presence pulls at something in me that is older than caution.
“Come in,” I hear myself say, and I hate that it comes out like an invitation.
The door opens.
A woman steps in.
For one impossible heartbeat, I think I know her. Not her exactly, but the shape of her – dark hair pulled back, face that looks tired in the way real faces look tired, not styled tiredness. A plain grey jumper. Dark trousers. No visible weapon. No guard behind her.
She holds her hands where I can see them.
“Hi,” she says, and the way her voice catches on the word makes my chest ache. “I’m Lena.”
I stare at her. “Lena,” I repeat, tasting it.
Her eyes flick to the biscuits, to the water, to the chair. She gives a small, uncertain smile. “They told me you…you like to joke.”
My skin prickles. “They told you that, did they?”
She swallows. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
That sentence, from a stranger in a controlled room, is a hook. It catches behind my ribs.
I force myself to breathe. “Who are you?”
She hesitates. Looks at the ceiling as if expecting it to answer for her. “They said…I’m a facilitator. I’m supposed to help you adjust.”
“And you decided to introduce yourself like we’re at a coffee morning?” I say.
Her shoulders lift and fall, a small, helpless shrug. “It’s…less frightening if you talk to someone.”
“Is it?”
She looks at me properly then, and there is something in her expression that makes my throat tighten again. Not pity. Not clinical curiosity. Something like recognition.
Like she’s been frightened too.
My brain supplies a dozen possibilities, all bad. She’s an actor. A projection. A person with a script and a syringe hidden in her sleeve. Or she’s real and coerced and if I say the wrong thing, she will pay for it.
“Sit,” she says softly, then flushes as if she’s realised it sounds like a command. “If you want. I mean. You don’t have to.”
I remain standing.
“I can’t help you if you don’t talk,” she adds, too quickly, and then winces. “Sorry. That sounded…like them.”
That, oddly, makes her feel more real than anything else.
I swallow. “Fine. Talk.”
