She sits in the chair. I remain standing near the door, because my body refuses to be cornered by furniture and warmth. She looks up at me, hands folded together so tightly her knuckles whiten.
“I’m not one of them,” she says. “I don’t work for – for whatever this is.”
“And yet you’re here.”
She nods. “They brought me in. They said if I cooperated, they’d—” Her voice breaks. She bites it off hard and looks down.
The room shifts around me. Not physically. Emotionally. The soft light suddenly feels like theatre lighting, designed to make her face look more vulnerable. Designed to make me step closer.
I do not move.
“They threatened you,” I say, and it comes out flat.
She nods again, tears brightening her eyes. She blinks them back hard. “They threatened my brother.”
There it is. The lever.
My chest aches. It’s an instinctive response, immediate, like my body has been trained to respond to distress with action. It’s the part of me that steps between. That smooths. That offers.
The part of me that believes if you are gentle enough, you can buy people out of pain.
I hate that part of me and I love it and I can’t cut it out.
“What do they want you to do?” I ask.
She looks up, and for a second her eyes meet mine with a kind of desperate hope that makes my stomach twist.
“They want me to get you to talk,” she says. “To…to tell them things. About you. About the others. About why you did what you did.”
A chill slides under my skin despite the warmth. “And if you don’t?”
She swallows. “They said they’ll move him.”
“Move him where?”
She shakes her head, tears finally spilling down her cheek. “They didn’t say. They just said he won’t be safe.”
My hands curl into fists at my sides.
I take a step forward before I can stop myself.
Then I stop.
Because I can feel it – an almost imperceptible shift in the air, like the room’s attention sharpening. Like an invisible lens adjusting.
They are watching the step.
They are watching my body respond to her distress. Measuring it. Recording the micro-changes: breath rate, pupil dilation, proximity. My empathy reduced to movement.
I keep my distance.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and it feels stupid. Too small. A stupid throwaway phrase that doesn’t change anything.
She nods, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand. “I don’t want to betray you. I don’t. But I can’t – I can’t lose him.”
I take a slow breath, forcing calm into my tone. “What’s your brother’s name?”
She hesitates as if the name itself could trigger something. Then: “Sam.”
