This is real, I told myself.
This bed. This room. This night.
But my body didn’t listen.
The air still felt wrong. Too thick. Too close. My ears rang, the silence stretching until it felt just as loud as the nightmare. I twisted in the sheets, heart hammering, every nerve braced for something that wasn’t coming but still felt inevitable.
I hated this part. The space where logic knew I was safe, but my body hadn’t caught up yet. Where memory moved faster than reason.
I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing another breath.
It barely helped.
A bed.
A room.
Darkness broken by moonlight slipping through the curtains.
The compound.
Wrecker’s room.
I dragged in a breath that shook all the way through me, but my body didn’t settle. My chest stayed tight. My skin buzzed like I was still standing in that hallway, frozen in place, watching something I couldn’t stop.
The scream echoed again in my head. Not mine this time.
Hers.
I curled forward, arms wrapping around my middle as another wave hit.
The bathroom door quickly rushed open and then arms closed around me from behind.
Immediate. Solid.
“Hey,” Wrecker said, already pulling me back against his chest. “Hey. You’re here.”
I broke.
The control I’d been gripping since the warehouse, since the phone, since Cap’s voice cut across the yard finally slipped. I folded into him, fists knotting in his shirt like it was the only thing keeping me upright.
“They know where I am,” I whispered.
Wrecker’s arms tightened immediately—not crushing, not frantic. Certain.
“They saw me,” I said. “Not the compound. Me.”
My chest burned as the truth settled deeper. The dream hadn’t been about the girl alone. It had been about what came next.
“They’re going to do to me what they did to her,” I said hoarsely. “That’s why they took the picture. That’s why they wanted confirmation.” I swallowed hard. “I lived. She didn’t. And now it feels like—like that’s something I have to pay for.”
Wrecker shifted us back against the headboard, solid behind me, one hand pressing between my shoulder blades like he was anchoring me to the present.
“This isn’t karma,” he said quietly. “This is predators circling because you got away.”
I shook my head, breath shuddering. “It feels the same.”
“I know,” he said.
