Anna POV
"Do you want in?"
Kael's voice lands, heavy, like a stone dropped into water that doesn't shiver.
For a moment I only look at him. Not the table between us. Not the file by his hand. Just him.
And then his words hit something buried. Something that's been waiting.
The air in the room thins.
My pulse shifts from steady to quick. The present blurs at the edges, replaced by another room, another table, another man.
Same question.
Different uniform.
I'm younger. My hair is shorter, skin pale from too many weeks without real daylight. My wrists are cuffed to the metal ring bolted into the table. There's a camera in the corner, a little red light staring at me without blinking.
The man across from me isn't Kael. He's heavier in the jaw, cleaner in the way his suit hangs, the fabric stiff from pressing. His hands are flat on the table, fingers spread like he's making sure I can see he's not carrying anything.
"You want in?" he asks. His tone says there isn't a no that won't cost me.
I remember the sound my own voice made — flat, like it didn't belong to me.
"What happens if I don't?"
He'd smiled then. Not wide, not kind — just a slow curl at the edge of his mouth that told me the real answer wasn't going to be said out loud.
"You won't survive out there."
The room smelled like metal and citrus cleaner. Somewhere in the walls, a vent rattled, pushing stale air past my face. My fingers itched to be free of the cuffs.
I never said yes.
But the next time I opened my eyes, I was in a different building.
Different locks.
Different rules.
The memory tears away as quick as it came, like someone cutting the film.
The weight of the cuffs from that other room still clings to my wrists, even though they're bare now. The echo of that man's smile — the one who told me I wouldn't survive out there — sits in the back of my mind like a shadow that's learned to wait.
Kael is still watching me, steady, waiting for my answer. Kael isn't smiling. He's not bluffing, either. That's the difference. The last man wanted me scared into a choice. Kael wants to see what I do when I'm not scared.
I draw in a slow breath, ready to speak.
And then something catches.
It starts as a tightening in my chest, small enough to ignore if I wanted to. But it spreads into my ribs, into my arms, into my jaw. The air in the room grows thick, heavy, pressing against my skull like the walls have leaned in.
My vision smears at the edges. Kael's face stays clear for a second longer, sharp and framed in that wrong yellow light. Then the floor tilts, the table swims, and my hand slides uselessly across the surface, trying to find an anchor.
Heat floods my skin. Every muscle loosens at once.
The tag in my boot is still biting my ankle.
It feels far away now… like it belongs to someone else's body.
My head dips forward without permission. The table's edge is cold against my cheek for a fraction of a second before everything falls out from under me.
The last thing I see before the dark closes is Kael moving — fast enough to catch me before I slide from the chair.
***
Light comes first.
Too white, too sharp.
The air smells of disinfectant, sterile and thin, but underneath is something faintly metallic. The blood is mine.
I'm on my back. The sheets are rough, stiff from too much washing. My left arm is heavy. I turn my head and see the IV line disappearing into the crook of my elbow, taped down in clean, clinical strips. Clear fluid drips from a hanging bag, each drop a metronome ticking away the time I've lost.
A shadow moves at the edge of my vision.
Kael.
He's leaning against the wall, arms crossed, the way someone stands when they've been there too long already. His jacket is gone, sleeves rolled to the elbow. The light catches on the faint sheen of sweat at his temple, and I wonder if it's from rushing me here or something else entirely.
"You're awake," he says. Not relief. Not warmth. Just observation.
My throat is dry enough to crack when I swallow. "Poison."
He doesn't flinch. "Still in your blood. Low dose. It'll burn out in a day or two."
The words fall between us, heavy. I don't ask how he knows.
It's in the way he says it.
Like he's seen this before.
I push myself up on my elbows, but my arms give out halfway, and the effort sends a slow roll of nausea through me. The IV line tugs. Kael's hand closes around the stand before it tips, steadying it.
"You passed out before you answered me," he says.
I meet his gaze. The room hums faintly with the rhythm of the machines, but in the space between us there's only the echo of his earlier question: Do you want in?
I don't answer now either.
My voice might work, but my head isn't ready to hand him anything yet.
Kael pushes off the wall. "You'll stay here until you can stand without falling over," he says, turning toward the door.
The door clicks behind him, leaving me with the beeps, the hiss of the IV, and the weight of the metal tag against my ankle inside my boot.
Still mine.
Still hidden.
I close my eyes, letting the sound of the monitor pull me under again. Not into sleep — into thinking.
If I strip it all down — the memories I don't have, the ones that try to push through, the instincts I can't control — there's one thing left: I am built to survive.
That sounds simple, but it's not. Survival isn't just eating and breathing. It's knowing which threats to watch and which to ignore. Which people to stand beside and which to put in the ground. Which words to say out loud and which to leave unsaid so they can't be used against me later.
The strange part is… I don't remember learning any of that. I woke up with it. Like it's written into me at a level memory can't touch.
It's why I can read Kael without knowing him. Why I clock every guard, every camera, every timing gap in this place without trying. Why I can taste poison in my blood and feel no panic.
Normal people ask: Why me?
I ask: What next?
But here's the part I don't like admitting: survival alone isn't satisfying. It never has been. If all I wanted was to live, I could have slipped away the first time I had the chance. I didn't. I stayed. I tested boundaries. I looked Kael in the eye instead of avoiding him.
Which means I'm not just surviving anymore. I'm… circling.
Maybe it's instinct looking for a purpose to attach to. Maybe it's the other part of me — the one I don't trust — sniffing out a hunt worth committing to. Either way, it makes me dangerous, because a survivor who stops running starts building. And the thing I build might not be something anyone here wants.
I keep telling myself, I'm waiting to answer Kael because I want more information. That's partly true. But it's also because I know the second I give him a yes, I'll be done waiting. And whatever comes next will happen fast.
I guess I've always been that way, even if the details are gone.
The more I think about it, the more I have to face what I've been avoiding:
When I killed Argo, there was no rush of adrenaline, no racing heartbeat. Just the clean mechanics of movement. Knife. Target. Force. Twist. Withdraw. It was like my body was running a checklist it had run a hundred times before, and my mind was only there to observe it. Afterwards, there was no guilt, no satisfaction — only the thought of food.
That's not how most people work. Most people need to feel something, even if they hide it. Relief, disgust, triumph, horror. Something to prove to themselves they're still human. Ah....How other people react? I wouldn't know. Doesn't matter.
But I just moved on. That scares me more than any missing memory.
I've started to wonder, if emotions are like muscles — if me stop using them, they weaken. Maybe mine atrophied a long time ago, and what's left is only the minimum needed to pass for normal.
I still feel things, but they're muted. Compressed. A flicker instead of a fire.
The tag in my boot means something to me, I'm sure of it now— but it's not the kind of meaning that warms me. It's a colder kind, like a lock clicking shut.
And trust…I can't tell if I can't do it, or if I just don't want to. Trust makes me predictable. Predictable makes me easy.
It's like there's a layer of me that belongs to something else — to whoever built the person I used to be. That layer is still running, still following... I'm just the passenger. Maybe that's why I never panic.
And if that's true, then I'm not really deciding anything at all. I'm just waiting for the part of me I don't control to decide for me.
The not knowing is dangerous, yes, but it's also clean. I can imagine I was anyone. Someone better. Someone worse. Someone who didn't flinch at killing, but for the right reasons.
Right now, I can still tell myself I'm acting this way because I have to. That the coldness is temporary.
But if I remember and it turns out this is the only way I've ever been… then the choice is gone. And without choice, all I am is the passenger.
Every other moment is layered — questions, calculations, dangers that might be real or imagined. But the moment I commit? All of that falls away. There's only one thing left to do, and I do it.
No hesitation.
No static.
And here's the truth I don't want to say, even to myself: Kael's question "Do you want in? " might not be an offer at all. It could be bait.
And the worst part is, I'm already halfway to taking it. Not because I need what's on the other side. But because I want to feel that quiet again.