She pauses at the threshold.
“I’ve been doing this job for twenty-three years,” she says. “Get comfortable.”
Then she’s gone.
The door closes. The lock clicks.
Well fuck.
The holding room is cleaner than the alley. Warmer. A bed with actual sheets, a dresser, a door that doesn’t open from the inside.
Not a cell, they said.
Right.
Someone brought food—real food, more than I’ve eaten at once in months—and a change of clothes. Soft gray fabric. No House colors. The kind of thing you’d give someone who doesn’t belong anywhere. I should laugh, but I can’t find it in me.
I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at the wall.
This morning I woke up in an alley, hungry and cold and free. The same as every other morning for the last fifteen years. Invisible. Uncounted. Alive because no one was looking.
Now someone is looking. And I’m definitely not free.
The lights hum. Footsteps pass in the hallway. Voices I can’t make out. Somewhere in this building, people are filling out forms about me. Making decisions about me.
I don’t know what happens to people who don’t have marks. I’ve spent my whole life making sure I never had to find out.
I lie back and stare at the ceiling.
Tomorrow they’re going to examine me. Confirm what they already suspect. Try to figure out what I am.
And when they can’t—
I close my eyes.
It’s not like I’m going to fucking sleep anyway.
Chapter 2
Nova
I’ve been here for three fucking days.
I know because they keep replacing the food. Three trays a day—morning, midday, night. Nine trays I haven’t touched. The headache started somewhere around tray five. The shaking started this morning, fine tremors in my hands that I can hide if I keep them pressed against my thighs or curled into fists.
The current tray is still there, sitting on the dresser where they left it. Bread and soup and something that might be meat, real meat, more food than I’ve eaten in weeks. The smell fills the room every time they bring a new one.
I don’t touch it.
I’ve heard stories. Probably rumors, probably exaggerated, but I’ve survived this long by treating probably as definitely. Food makes you grateful. Food makes you compliant. Food makes you owe something to the people who gave it to you, and I don’t plan on owing these people anything.
So I sit on the bed with my empty stomach and my shaking hands and I wait.
The lock clicks on the morning of the third day.
Same woman. Same folder. Same flat expression, like the seventy-two hours I’ve spent staring at these walls didn’t happen at all.
“Come with me.”
