I obey, allowing him to tighten the cold metal around my wrists. He leads me back into the corridor, and the cell lock seals with a sound that settles deep in my chest. And one thought keeps circling without finding a place to land.
I've officially stepped into way more fire than I tried to avoid.
I stand in the cell for a second too long, palms still open like I'm waiting for cuffs that aren't coming back yet. My chest expands, stalls, then forces air in again. The quiet presses harder than the noise ever did.
Mikhail Volkov.
His name repeats until it loses shape and becomes weight instead of sound.
I pace again, but the rhythm's off. Four steps to the bars. Three back. It's the pattern that kept me sane before I knew someone had rewritten my future in a room without windows and called it "help."
Compliance.
Discretion.
Those words were meant to sound civilized, but they aren't. They're rules designed to own me.
Pacing turns into frustration, so I sit on the bench. My forearms rest on my thighs, hands hanging loose, but my fingers twitch like they're searching for something to grip.
He said my arrest created ripples, as if I were a stone tossed into water that wasn't supposed to move.
I close my eyes, and the image that comes isn't the cell or Volkov's cold stare. It's Blue, with sunlight catching the edge of her hair, fury sharp enough to cut through sirens, and confusion cracking something open behind her eyes.
She doesn't belong near cages, much less in them.
I need to know if she's okay.
My jaw tightens until my molars ache. Time turns to molasses.
A guard passes, and keys jingle. Somewhere down the hall, a man shouts and gets silenced. The sound hits and fades, temporary and disposable.
A different guard appears next to the bars. He's younger, and his eyes don't linger. He orders, "Mercer. Step forward."
I do.
He doesn't cuff me. He opens the door and instructs, "Follow me."
I obey, snaking through the hallway and popping out into another room. A man wearing a badge but street clothes sits across from Mikhail.
"Sit," Mikhail orders, pulling the chair next to him away from the desk.
I don't argue.
"Sign here," he orders, pointing at a line on a stack of papers.
I pick it up, reading fast, scanning for the landmines that should be there to destroy my career or Blue's reputation.
There aren't any.
My confession is twisted into a misunderstanding by the authorities. The public disturbance gets misattributed to a mistaken identity.
It scares me more than the original charges ever did.
"Sign," Mikhail orders sternly.
My heart races faster. My signature doesn't just make my previous problem go away. It comes with new problems that I don't have a handle on yet. There's no way this won't come back to bite me.
Still, my choices are bleak. So I sign, and stare at my name, which looks wrong on the page, like it doesn't belong to me anymore.
