Page 47 of Operation: Defiance

I thought compliance was the goal. What I actually gave them was proof I wasn’t broken.

That’s what they’re fixing.

The calculation I was so certain of collapses in seconds.

At my throat, the pressure from the ties eases slightly. The bottom edge of the hood is lifted just enough to let brightness bleed in—a narrow intrusion that makes my brain stumble trying to account for it.

A gloved hand reaches under the hood, rough against my cheek.

Something cold presses to my left temple. Wet. Sticky. It tugs at my hair as it’s set in place. Now the right. More sticky pads along my chest.

No!

My breath splinters. My body revolts against the contact. Every nerve ignites at once. The straps feel like an added layer of skin, pinning me inside every sensation I can’t escape. I can’t even squirm.

Something cold and synthetic forces its way between my teeth before I understand what’s happening. My jaw stretches past the point of pain, wrenched wider than it wants to go, then held by hands that know exactly what they’re doing and don’t care who they’re doing it to.

“Breathe,” the man says, almost gently. “This will be quick.”

My heart is pounding so hard, it feels like it might tear something loose inside my chest. A tiny whimper dies in my throat.

I try to pull back into analysis. Into patterns. Into anything that creates distance.

My mind refuses.

“Final calibration. For the record.”

Time collapses.

There’s no sequence. No thought. Just sensation followed by absence. A violent flicker where awareness used to be. As if someone reached in and switched me off mid-signal.

My body comes back in pieces, none of them in order. The ache in my jaw arrives before I know I have a jaw. The taste of copper before I remember having a mouth. The burning in my throat before I understand what a throat is for.

My head feels wrong. Heavy. Pressurized. My skull is too small for whatever’s still happening inside it.

There’s no before. No after. Just a sudden, oppressive…now with no edges and no end.

I try to move. Nothing responds—not my hands, not my arms, not my legs. Just breath, shallow and uneven, the only proof I have that I’m still inside my own body. That I’m still…anywhere.

“You’re safe,” the voice says softly. “This was necessary.”

Every feral instinct I have fires at once—scream, bite, destroy, dismantle—and none of it makes it past my raw throat.

What comes out is thin and fractured.

“I’m not…okay.”

Silence. Then a quiet curse.

“She’s oriented.”

The straps are released quickly. Efficiently.

I’m pulled off the table and half carried somewhere. My feet barely register the floor. My muscles shake uncontrollably, failing in ways I can’t prevent or hide.

I wait for another correction. Another command. Another punishment for still being wrong.

Instead, they seat me against a slanted wall, the position curving my spine and folding my body forward whether I want it to or not.