"Moving," Jinx confirms, and we're off.
The service stairs are narrow and steep, metal grating that clangs under our boots no matter how carefully we move. The sound echoes through the shaft, bouncing off concrete walls, announcing our presence to anyone listening.
No one comes.
Level two. Level three. The door to the security station is right where Jagger said it would be, a reinforced steel barrier with a small window at eye level.
Jinx peers through. Holds up two fingers. Two guards, just like the intel said.
He looks at Jace. A silent question.
Jace nods and moves forward. He opens the door without a sound. The guards don't even have time to react. One momentthey're sitting at their monitors, bored and half-asleep. The next, Jace is between them, blade flashing, and they're crumpling to the floor in spreading pools of red.
Clean. Efficient. Merciful, in its own way. They never knew what hit them.
"Security neutralized," Jace reports, wiping his knife on one of the guards' uniforms. "Cameras?"
Marlee slides into the room, fingers flying over the keyboard. "Loop is holding. Eight minutes left on the window. Children's wing is through the east corridor, past the medical bay."
"Let's move."
We leave the security station and push deeper into the facility. The corridors here are cleaner, brighter, the kind of sterile white that hospitals use to project an image of healing. But there's nothing healing about this place. The air tastes wrong. Recycled and stale, with an undercurrent of chemicals that burns the back of my throat.
The east corridor stretches ahead of us, doors lining both sides. Most are closed, dark windows revealing empty rooms. Examination tables. Monitoring equipment. The tools of conditioning, waiting for their next subjects.
Then we reach the children's wing.
The doors here are different. Heavier. Each one has a small window reinforced with wire mesh, a keypad lock, a slot at the bottom for food trays. Prison cells dressed up as hospital rooms.
And behind them, we can hear the children.
The first door Marlee opens reveals a horror none of us are prepared for.
The room is small, maybe eight by eight, with a single mattress on the floor and a bucket in the corner. But that's not what stops me cold. What stops me is the wall.
Someone has been scratching words into the padded surface. Hundreds of them, thousands maybe, layered over each other until they form a dense tapestry of desperation. The same phrases, over and over:
I am not a person I am not a person I am not a person
Pain is instruction pain is instruction pain is instruction
Do not feel do not want do not love
The boy huddled in the corner has bloody fingertips. Raw, torn, the nails ripped away to nothing. He's been writing these words with his own flesh.
"Jesus Christ," Marlee breathes.
The boy doesn't react to our presence. He's rocking, hands pressed flat against the mattress, whispering under his breath. The same words that cover the walls.
"I am not a person. I am not a person. I am not a person."
I crouch down, keep my voice soft. "Hey. We're here to get you out."
He flinches like I've struck him. His hands come up to cover his ears, and I see more damage. Burn scars on his forearms, perfectly circular, evenly spaced. Cigarette burns, probably. Maybe worse.
"Out doesn't exist," he says. The words are automatic, rehearsed. "There is only the facility. There is only the work. There is only compliance."
I know those words. I said those words, once. They drilled them into us until they became the rhythm of our heartbeats.
