For the last forty-eight hours, Serevia’s mind had been trapped in the same sickening loop, violently crashing against the same sharp memory over and over. Two grueling days had passed since the Leader last stepped into this cell, since that nerve-shredding confrontation. The images seared into her brain flared up constantly, surging through her mending body like a feverish delirium.

  The mechanical hiss of the black oxygen mask peeling away from his face, the marble-smooth skin emerging from beneath the heavy armor, and above all... him bringing the fork to his own lips to shatter her suspicion of poison. The freezing composure the man displayed as he chewed the meat from her plate and swallowed the water had violently shaken every wall of paranoia Serevia had built inside her mind.

  His words echoed relentlessly inside the cell, mingling with the steady, artificial hum bleeding through the ventilation grates. This colossal military base they were in housed a massive filtration system that wove the air clean, locking out Caduta's lethal radiation and acid-laden gray fog. That was the sole reason the Sarcos soldiers, those uniformed executioners, could roam maskless here; the rotting breath of the outside world could not seep in.

  Over the past two days, the heavy iron door of the cell had only swung open at specific hours, during the meal times when they swapped the trays. The silhouette appearing at the threshold was not the Leader's massive, terrifying shadow, but the brunette girl who had brought the steaming food on the first day. Her body, seemingly swallowed whole by her white jumpsuit, trembled slightly with every step she took, her eyes stubbornly nailed to the parquet floor.

  Although Serevia couldn't fully grasp it at first through the haze of starvation and infection, she began to read the bizarre, coiled energy radiating from the maid as her mind cleared. The way her knuckles turned white as she set the tray down, the tremor in her fingers as she placed the glass on the table... Every single movement hid a deep, rooted panic, as if she felt an invisible barrel pressed hard against the back of her neck.

  Serevia had pushed her luck a few times to shatter the torturous hours of silence, trying to tear away even the smallest crumb of information about the hell outside. Yet, even when she parted her parched lips and dared to ask a single word, an innocent question, she met the exact same sight. The brunette girl's hazel eyes would bulge with a split-second of pure terror, her lips parting as if desperate to whisper something, only for an invisible claw to ruthlessly choke the words back down her throat.

  She had so much she wanted to say, perhaps so much she wanted to warn Serevia about; her gaze practically screamed in silent shrieks, I'm begging you, shut up. Swallowing hard, fighting back the tears ambushing her eyes to abandon speech at the last second, turning her back, and fleeing the cell—she repeated this same tragic routine every single time.

  Serevia was as sure of her own name as she was that someone had threatened the maid's life, that Sarcos seals chained her tongue. The system's shadow was a barbed noose coiled not just around the necks of the captives, but also those who served them. Yet, Serevia possessed no power to prove this pure dread soaking into the white walls, nor to free the trembling girl before her from her invisible chains. Crushed under the immense weight of her own captivity, Serevia was too inadequate, too utterly alone, and too bound to reach out a hand to someone else's mute despair.

  Serevia pressed her back against the stark, white-painted wall rather than the cold iron of the bunk, stretching her legs across the width of the mattress. The absolute, deafening silence inside the cell rang in her ears, amplifying the violent storms raging through her mind.

  After the endless chaos of Caduta, the wailing sirens, the desperate screams of street vendors, and the death rattles echoing from every corner, this isolation had initially felt like a mind-numbing void. It lacked the adrenaline, yes. Sprinting breathless through the streets, hiding from Sarcos patrols for a scrap of moldy bread, fighting to survive the toxic wind that bit right down to the bone... All that savage struggle to live now remained locked behind these heavy doors.

  An artificial, skin-numbing warmth had replaced the freezing cold and flesh-cracking acid rain of the outside world. Before, she had to steal, run, and claw at the dirt just to fill her stomach. Now, she simply sat in place, waiting for the unbelievable feasts served to her on silver platters. Yet, the steepest price for this effortless satiety, this physical comfort, was the maddening silence gnawing at her sanity. There was no sound; there was no life.

  The sickly tremors and bone-deep aches that had held her body hostage had melted away within hours, her fever breaking completely. Not a trace remained of her defenseless state from the first day. She had finally stripped the filthy, worn cardigan that clung to her skin like a second armor, hurling it to the foot of the bed.

  She wore nothing but a thin, tightly fitted thermal shirt, its color faded to a washed-out gray and its collar riddled with tears. The fabric had worn so thin that the frail outline of her ribs showed with every breath she took. Below it, she wore rugged cargo pants with frayed knees, the thick fibers deeply stained with mud.

  She had finally unleashed the hair that had sat in a tight, rigid knot at the nape of her neck for days. When she yanked the tie away, the dark strands, heavy with grime and sweat, spilled over her shoulders like an untamed cascade.

  With this new physical relief washing over her, she seized the chance to examine her surroundings more clearly. She noticed a detail her blurred vision had missed on that first fever-ridden day: a narrow alcove in the left corner of the cell. It held a small, wall-mounted ceramic toilet, flanked by a cramped sink fashioned from cold stainless steel. This luxury was the twisted guise of hygiene Sarcos offered its captives.

  The moment she cranked the stainless steel faucet, the sight of the crystal-clear, sediment-free water flowing out felt like a miracle in itself. Cupping her hands, she splashed the ice-cold water against her face, her swollen eyelids, and her cracked lips over and over again. She scrubbed her skin raw, desperate to scrape away the sticky layer of sweat and the toxic gray of Caduta that had seeped into her pores. Then, bending over the cramped basin, she shoved her tangled, matted hair under the rushing stream, massaging her scalp with her fingertips to wash away the weight of years. The way the water penetrated her roots and purified her skin felt so reviving, so violently resurrecting...

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  Now, she sat on her bed, scrubbed and purified, feeling the water droplets from her wet hair slide down her neck as she waited for the next move in that crushing silence.

  Drawing support from the cold wall at her back, she dragged her gaze across all four corners of the cell, tracing the joints of the flawless white ceiling. There was not a single stain, not a single crack in that sea of white to occupy her mind. To drown out the hum of silence gnawing at her brain, she tried counting numbers in her head, forcing herself to match the rhythm of the steady hisses bleeding from the vent.

  A hundred, a hundred and one, a hundred and two...

  Soon enough, the numbers lost their meaning and bled into one another, her mind stubbornly drifting back to the dark streets of Caduta, to Torn’s desperate, terror-stricken gaze. Every time she ran her brother's name through her mind, venomous, whispered curses spilled from her lips. She damned Sarcos, the system, the injustice, and above all, her own uselessness.

  As the water from her wet hair dripped onto her shoulders, her brain feverishly churned out escape plans.

  Could she claw the screws out of the ventilation grate and slip into the narrow tunnels? Could she lunge at the maid's neck, snatch the keys, bolt through the door, and outrun the guards? When the hours dragged on and the cell lights dimmed a fraction, as if mocking the arrival of evening, these makeshift towers she had built in her mind came crashing down with a deafening roar.

  This place was nothing like the riddled ruins of Caduta; it was an impenetrable, suffocating military base. While surviving the barrel of a gun and crawling out from among so many corpses was a miracle that defied all logic, dreaming of tearing down these walls with her bare hands now was pure insanity. If only she had vanished into the dust along with the loot during the chaos in the ruins, she would never have tasted this crushing despair. But now, like a wild animal stripped of its fangs, she was cornered in this white trap—one that spared her physical pain for the moment, but slowly, meticulously strangled her soul.

  She dragged in a deep, jagged breath. Rather than soothing her, the filtered air flooding her lungs only fanned the flames raging inside. She bounced her right leg over the edge of the mattress in an involuntary, erratic rhythm, her teeth ruthlessly tearing at her dry cuticles until they bled. She had no idea why she was still breathing, nor why she sat on this immaculate bed.

  The monster who slaughtered dozens of people in mere seconds without batting an eye, the one who navigated a pool of blood with chilling precision just to keep his combat boots clean... Why hadn't he left a single scratch on her skin? A single sentence echoed through the dark, twisting corridors of her mind: "I cannot let you die just yet." That godforsaken "just yet" felt less like a mercy and more like a death sentence—a noose slipped around her neck, leaving her waiting blindly for someone to kick the stool out from under her. What was his ultimate goal? What did he want from her? She ransacked the dusty archives of her mind, tearing every memory and every spoken word to shreds in desperate search of an answer, but she found nothing but pitch-black obscurity.

  In the exact second she felt utterly crushed and breathless beneath the weight of her thoughts, a familiar, mechanical sound rang out from the heavy door—the only barricade between her and the outside world.

  Click. The cold clatter of gears grinding inside the lock snapped the erratic bouncing of Serevia's leg like a brittle twig. She tensed her joints, ripping her fingers away from her lips and forcing her muscles into a rigid, defensive coil as the door slowly swung ajar. The scent of spiced food flooding the room announced the intruder's identity seconds in advance. The silhouette lingering at the threshold was the brunette maid—the girl seemingly swallowed whole by her white jumpsuit, the one who had carried every single bite Serevia had stomached for days, her eyes stubbornly nailed to the floor. Bound by invisible padlocks clamped over her lips, this timid shadow who performed her duties without uttering a single word slipped silently into the room once more, balancing a steaming silver tray in her hands.

  Yet, the silhouette slipping over the threshold did not wear the monotonous jumpsuit from yesterday. She had gathered her brunette hair at the nape of her neck in a remarkably careless, hastily pinned makeshift bun; loose strands that had escaped the tie tumbled down her slender neck like a messy waterfall. The dress she wore, however, was a white so pure it practically defied Sarcos's suffocating arrogance. Vibrant, multicolored floral patterns bloomed across the immaculate fabric, its texture so delicate she almost feared looking at it would tear it. Serevia could not tear her eyes away from this walking garden that had sprouted in the middle of her cell.

  It was impossible to even fathom such a garment existing out on the mud-caked, soot-choked streets of Caduta, streets washed endlessly by acid rain. She thought of her own tattered rags, the ones heavy with grime that had practically fused to her skin, the clothes she hadn't been able to peel off for months. The delicate fabric before her brushed against the suppressed, stolen youth buried deep inside the thief, stirring a subtle, stinging ache. It was beautiful... Beautiful enough to hurt, and it absolutely did not belong in this hell.

  The maid set the metal tray down on the table's smooth surface with a soft clatter. Not even the scent of warm food mingling with the air could snap the taut, invisible wire strung between them. Instead of instantly dropping her head to the floor as she always did, the stranger hesitated for a fraction of a second and locked her eyes on Serevia, huddled at the corner of the bed. Deep within those hazel irises, swirling just beyond the pure terror, lay the unbridled curiosity of an oblivious, sheltered child. She stared as if screaming, Who are you? As if demanding, Why are you here?

  The two girls slammed their gazes into each other in a silent, violent collision under the sterile white lights. Two entirely different worlds—one sharpened by the brutal cruelty of the streets, the other condemned to silence in a gilded cage—weighed each other in a heavy, ice-cold span of a few seconds.

  This frozen communication shattered the second a ruthless alarm triggered inside the maid's mind. The feeble spark of curiosity in her hazel eyes died instantly, giving way to that familiar, submissive panic. Scrambling as though struck by an invisible whip, she spun on her heels and took a frantic step toward the door. The shrill squeak of her shoes scuffing against the floor made Serevia's last drop of patience violently overflow. The words she had swallowed back for days finally ripped through her throat and spilled from her lips.

  "Did they cut your tongue out?"

  As her voice slammed against the walls and ricocheted back, it tore from her throat far harsher and grittier than she had anticipated. It carried the raw, jagged intolerance of a street survivor.

  "Why won't you say a single word?"

  These sharp, rapid-fire questions nailed the brunette girl to the spot, freezing her halfway to the door as if a bullet had just caught her in the spine. She rooted her feet to the floor, her frail shoulders hiking up to her ears in sheer terror. She refused to turn around, yet Serevia could clearly read the rigid tension seizing the maid's back—the hairs bristling at the nape of her neck, the breath tying into a violent knot in her throat.

  Serevia could practically see the colossal, crushing weight bearing down on the stranger's shoulders. The silhouette standing before her was desperately trying to keep her balance in the dead center of a fractured bridge suspended over dark abysses—torn between speaking and remaining mute, between outright rebellion and total submission. If she took one step forward, she would walk right into a noose; if she turned back, her own silence would crush her alive.

  As the suffocating weight of the cell's silence reached an agonizing breaking point, Serevia dragged a fresh breath into her lungs to violently shatter this fragile hesitation.