I miss noise that isn’t controlled.
My chest tightens sharply, like something invisible is cinching a strap around it, and I have to slow, pressing my hand to the wall as my vision narrows. The air feels thin, like I’m breathing through fabric, and no matter how deep I inhale it doesn’t feel like enough.
Not here. Not in the open. Not in this corridor that suddenly feels too clean to survive inside.
My pulse roars in my ears as I scan the hallway, desperate and unfocused, until I spot a narrow door set back between two supply bays. No label. No windows. Just a simple metal handle and a keypad.
I don’t think. I just move.
I wrench the door open and slip inside, slamming it shut behind me and throwing the lock before I can talk myself out of it. The space is barely big enough to stand in—mops, cleaning carts, shelves stacked with chemical bottles—but the moment the door seals, the noise cuts off like someone flipped a switch.
Dark. Tight. Safe.
I sink down against the wall, knees pulling to my chest, and finally the breath I’ve been holding breaks loose. It comes out shaky, uneven, followed by another, then another, each one catching halfway in. My shoulder knocks against a metal shelf and sends a spray bottle rattling, the sound too loud in the tiny room.
Okay. Okay. Breathe.
I press my forehead to my knees and focus on the details. The cool metal shelf against my shoulder. The faint smell of disinfectant and lemon cleaner. The rough seam in the floor tile beneath my boot. The rhythm of my breath as I force it slower, counting in my head because numbers don’t panic. Numbers don’t lie.
In. Four.
Hold. Two.
Out. Six.
My hands tremble as the adrenaline drains, leaving everything raw and buzzing. Anger flickers back up, tangled with hurt and something dangerously close to betrayal.
Benched.
Like I’m some fragile asset that might break if they use me too hard.
Like I didn’t break already and put myself back together with grit and spite and stubbornness. Like survival somehow disqualifies me from the thing I survived for.
Jon’s face flashes in my mind uninvited—the way he wouldn’t look at me, the way his voice went cold and official. I know that tone. I’ve heard it used on recruits, on soldiers being sent home, on people he’s decided he can’t afford to care about. The ones he shoves out before they can become another ghost he carries.
Is that what I am now?
I drag a hand down my face, fingers pressing hard against my eyes. My head is spinning with too many threads at once—Mikhail’s patterns, my missing notes, Jon not calling my dad, the way everyone keeps asking me the same questions like I’ll suddenly give a different answer if they wear me down hard enough. The way he looked relieved when he saw me in the meeting room, and angry a second later, like both things lived in him at once and he hated me for noticing.
I’m not crazy.
I saw it. I felt it. The pattern is there, and benching me doesn’t make it disappear. Neither does taking my papers or my comms or pretending that what happened in that cell made me less dangerous instead of more.
Another breath finally goes all the way in, filling my lungs without resistance, and I cling to it like a small victory. I’m not falling apart. I’m angry. I’m hurt. And I’m thinking.
That’s when I’m dangerous.
I straighten slightly, pressing my back against the wall, letting the silence settle me instead of scare me. The closet is cramped and smells like chemicals and old mop water, but at least it’s honest. At least it doesn’t look me in the face and call confinement concern.
They can lock me out of rooms. They can take my papers. They can tell me to sit still.
But they can’t take what’s already in my head.
And if Jon thinks this ends with me quietly obeying orders, he’s underestimated me in a way that might cost all of us.
Chapter 12
Captain Jonathan
