A teenager who laughs when we open his door. Laughs and laughs and can't stop, hysterics that have nothing to do with humor. The sound follows us down the corridor long after we've moved him to the extraction group.
Each one carries marks of what was done to them. Burn scars. Needle tracks. Missing fingernails. Teeth filed to points. Brands and tattoos and surgical scars that hint at horrors I don't want to imagine.
And in every room, the same words scratched into walls or whispered under breath:
I am not a person.
Pain is instruction.
Do not feel. Do not want. Do not love.
Helena Cross's brand, carved into these children who will never fully escape it.
I know because I never have.
It’s haunting, devastating that only something like this could be.
There’s crying as we round the hall. Soft, hopeless sounds that seep through the gaps in the doors. Whimpering. The shuffle of small bodies in small spaces. Somewhere deeper in the wing, a child screams, high and sharp and terrified, and then goes suddenly, horribly silent.
Jinx stops in his tracks.
His whole body has gone rigid, his hands white-knuckled on his rifle. His breathing is fast and shallow, and even in the dim light, his face has gone pale.
"Jinx." I keep my voice low, steady. "Stay with me."
"I know that sound." His voice is filled with fury. "I know what they're doing to them."
"We're going to stop it. Right now. But I need you here, not back there."
He turns to look at me. His eyes are dark, haunted, filled with ghosts I can't see.
"Get me through those fucking doors," he says.
"That's the plan."
Marlee moves to the next door, pulls out her tablet. "Electronic locks. Give me thirty seconds."
The longest thirty seconds of my life. The sounds from the door on the other side is a chorus of suffering that claws at my chest.
The lock clicks. Green light.
Jinx yanks the door open and inside are more cells, but these are more like lab rooms than the prison boxes on the other side.
We open the first door. The child inside flinches back, pressing herself into the corner of the tiny room. She's maybe eight years old, dark hair tangled and matted, hospital gown hanging off her thin frame like a shroud. Her eyes are wide with terror, pupils blown, tracking Jinx like he's another monster come to hurt her. Her arms are covered in bruises, needle marks, the evidence of whatever they've been pumping into her veins.
The room itself is barely bigger than a closet. A thin mattress on the floor. A bucket in the corner. Nothing else. No toys, no books, no decorations. Nothing human. Just a box designed to hold a child until they're needed.
"Hey." Jinx's voice changes. Softens in a way I've never heard before. All the rage, all the violence, all the sharp edges that make him who he is, they disappear. What's left is something gentler. Something that hurts to witness. "Hey, it's okay. We're not here to hurt you. We're here to get you out."
The girl doesn't move. Doesn't speak. Just stares at him with those huge, haunted eyes. The eyes of a child who has learned that adults bring pain.
"My name is Jinx. What's yours?"
A long pause. Her mouth opens, closes. Her throat works like she's forgotten how to form words. "They call me Seven."
Jinx closes his eyes. Just for a second. His hands curl into fists at his sides, knuckles going white. When he opens his eyes again, his expression is calm and controlled, but there’s rage burningunderneath. The memory of being in a room just like this. Being called a number instead of a name.
"That's not a name. That's what they gave you to make you forget who you really are." He crouches down, makes himself smaller, less threatening. Holds out his hand, palm up, an offering rather than a demand. "We're going to find your real name. But first, we need to get you somewhere safe. Can you come with me?"
