It hit me a second later. My nose has always been sensitive, a side effect of my dynamic, perhaps, or just the fact that I experience the world through senses other than sight first. It wasn't just the stale, chemical tang of fear. It was thick, biological, and overwhelmingly heavy.
It smelled like a fruit cellar that had been flooded by the ocean, rotting blackberries, dusty old parchment dissolving in water, and a sharp, brine-soaked finish that made the hair on my arms stand up. It was the scent of an Omega in deep, profound distress, souring the air, fermenting into something desperate. It smelled like isolation.
"Kitchen," Anders barked, his voice tight, lacking its usual cool command. He pointed a trembling hand toward the massive marble island where the strobe light originated. "The beacon is tracking to the kitchen."
We moved as a unit, drawn toward the glow like moths to a bug zapper. My boots squeaked on the polished floor, a sound that seemed irreverently loud in the tomb-like quiet. I gripped the handle of the trauma kit tighter, my knuckles aching.
We rounded the massive marble island and froze.
The floor was a disaster zone. A bottle of pills had been shattered, white chalky tablets scattered across the grey stone like jagged stars in a dark sky. I recognized the shape of them. Stabilizers. Strong ones. But beyond them, huddled in the corner where the floor-to-ceiling glass walls met the concrete, was a nest.
It wasn't a nest of soft blankets, plush pillows, or clothing scented with packmates. It was paper.
Thousands of strips of white paper, shredded by hand, crinkled and torn, piled into a chaotic, rustling mound. In the flash of the red strobe light, I saw ink on the shreds. I recognizedthe typesetting. She had destroyed her own manuscript, months, maybe years of work, to build a sanctuary out of the very words that had isolated her.
Buried in the center of the paper nest was a figure.
She was curled into a ball so tight she looked impossibly small, her knees pulled to her chest, her face hidden in her arms. She was wearing an oversized beige sweater that hung off her trembling frame, and leggings that caught against sharp edges of the paper.
"Ms. Rose?" Anders stepped forward, his leather shoes crunching loudly on the pill fragments. He held his hands up, palms out. He sounded official, terrified, and utterly out of his depth. "I'm Anders Svinton. Your agent. We received a distress signal from your wrist unit."
The figure didn't move. She didn't uncurl. But a sound escaped her.
It was a low, fractured whimper. A vibration in the throat that started high and broke into a jagged sob before being swallowed back down, wet and thick.
My blood ran cold. The trauma kit slipped from my fingers, hitting the floor with a heavy thud that vibrated through the soles of my feet.
Time didn't just stop; it rewound. The sleek, modern house dissolved. The smell of the ocean and rotting blackberries vanished, replaced by the ghost scent of aggressive floor wax and stale gymnasium air.
I was eighteen again. I was standing on the plastic choir main-riser in the back row, my hands sweating in the pockets of my polyester robe. I was watching a girl in a cheap blue graduation gown grip a podium, white-knuckled and shaking.
I knew that sound.
I had replayed that specific sound in my nightmares for a decade. It was the specific, terrifying cadence of a voice failing,of a throat constricting around a plea for help that never came. It was the sound of a girl realizing she was entirely, utterly alone in a room full of people who were supposed to protect her.
"No," I whispered, the word scraping out of my chest, raspy and horrified.
As if hearing me, the woman in the nest lifted her head.
The red emergency light on her wrist flashed, illuminating her face in a harsh, crimson wash. Her glasses were gone, likely lost somewhere in the nest. Her ink-black hair was a matted disaster, sticking to her sweat-slicked forehead in wet tendrils. Her eyes were wide, glassy, and unfocused, burning with a chemical fever that looked lethal.
But I knew those eyes. Grey, intelligent, and currently filled with a terror so pure it made my knees weak.
I looked at Anders. He was frozen, his mouth slightly open, his icy blue eyes staring down at the woman he had been emailing for three years. The woman he had threatened with a lawsuit for breach of contract less than an hour ago. The woman he had sat directly behind on a stage ten years ago, watching the back of her neck turn red as she fell apart.
"Tessa," Anders breathed, the name falling out of him like a confession of sin.
Simon made a noise in the back of his throat, a sharp, wounded intake of breath. He took a stumbling step back, his ink-stained hand coming up to cover his mouth, his dark eyes darting frantically from her face to the sketchbook sticking out of his messenger bag, filled with drawings of a woman he thought was a stranger.
She flinched at the movement. A violent, full-body jerk that sent a spray of shredded paper flutter-kicking into the air. She scrambled backward, digging her heels into the floor, pressing her spine against the freezing glass wall as if she could push right through it and fall into the ocean.
"Don't look," she rasped, her voice a ruin of what it used to be, cracked, dry, and raw. She threw her hands up to cover her face, trying to vanish. "Please, don't look at me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I ruined the ceremony. Just let me leave."
She was hallucinating. She didn't see three men in a storm-ravaged house. She saw the crowd. She saw the bleachers. She saw the security guards coming to drag her off the stage while the student body laughed.
Anders looked like he was going to be sick. He swayed, his face leaching of color until it matched his white dress shirt. "She... It's T.L. Rose. It’s her. It's Tessa."
"She's burning up, Anders," Simon choked out, his voice thick with horror, but he didn't move. He stood there, paralyzed by the sudden collision of his art and his guilt. "Look at her skin. She's dark red. She’s going into shock."
