I stopped sleeping.
It wasn't out of grief. Not anymore.
It was something colder. Sharper. A kind of waiting that didn't feel like waiting at all. I moved through the day like I was supposed to—handling tasks, answering questions, checking on the hybrids. I smiled when the handlers passed me in the corridor, nodded when the boss gave an order.
But something had shifted inside me.
Something permanent.
Every night, I waited until the red light on the hallway camera blinked out—flickered once, then went dark. A thirty-two minute window. Just enough time.
They said it was a glitch in the system. Power draw limitations, they told us. Automatic resets. Nothing to worry about.
They were wrong.
I started with Subject 047. The same creature I'd first noticed responding with thought rather than instinct. It watched me as I approached its cell—not with fear, not with rage, but something that almost felt like curiosity.
I didn't use the prod. Didn't use food either.
I just waited until it blinked. That was the sign. That it saw me not as handler, but something else.
I held up my hand. "Sit," I said.
It sat.
Then I stepped closer. "Watch."
From my coat, I pulled a strip of cloth—same color and scent as the guard uniforms. I tied it around a training dummy I'd smuggled down the hall earlier, then dragged it into the center of the room.
The creature's gaze followed. Sharp. Calculating.
"Wait."
I circled the dummy slowly, letting my fingers brush the cloth. "Only when I say."
Then I stopped. Met its eyes. "Attack."
It lunged so fast the dummy hit the ground before I could blink.
I didn't flinch.
"Good," I said quietly. "Now again."
Night after night, I did this.
I rotated creatures. Subjects 021, 047, 059. I learned their patterns, their tells. Which ones learned fastest. Which ones hesitated before following orders. Which ones remembered the sound of my voice even when I whispered.
They were monsters, yes. But they were monsters that listened.
To me.
And only me.
I never used the same commands twice. I changed the tones, the cues. Mixed in signals only I could replicate—phrases in languages none of the other handlers spoke, rhythm patterns tapped into the floor with my boot. I trained them like they were pack.
Because maybe, in a way, they were.
Broken. Shaped. Left in the dark too long. Just like us.
I didn't tell anyone.
Nyx paced restlessly inside me, sometimes humming approval, sometimes too quiet to reach. She didn't trust this plan.
But she didn't try to stop me either.
The bond with Nine was mostly silent now. Not gone—just… muffled. As if something thick and heavy had been laid over it. But sometimes, when I crouched in the dark of those training rooms and whispered a command, I'd feel a flicker in my chest.
A ripple of warmth. Of belief.
He was holding on.
I had to.
Because the truth was simple: no one was coming to save us.
Not the guards. Not the rebels. Not even fate.
If we wanted out—we had to tear our way free.
And when the time came, I would have an army.
Not of people.
But of creatures that had never known kindness… until me.
Creatures who now waited for the sound of my voice.