Rossie did not know if she had slept.
She "woke" with a body-wracking jolt, the kind that follows a traumatic fall. But she was not on the cold marble floor of the main room. She was in a bed.
The bed was a monument. It was a vast, king-sized slab, draped in silk sheets so fine and heavy they felt like liquid. The thread count was not a number; it was an insult. She was lying in a room that was clearly "hers." The second arch on the left.
She sat up, her heart hammering a frantic, bird-wing rhythm against her ribs. The ruined silk party dress was gone. In its place, she wore a simple, long-sleeved chemise of the same impossibly soft, cool material.
She didn't remember changing. She didn't remember being moved.
A cold, spider-like dread crawled up her spine. He had... handled her. Like a doll, a piece of property, moved from one box to another.
She scrambled off the bed, her bare feet landing on a rug that muffled all sound. The room was beautiful, and it was dead. Like the rest of this place. Done in shades of charcoal, cream, and a deep, bruised purple, it was the perfect picture of an interior designer's portfolio. It had no personality. It had no life. It had no her.
A massive, walk-in closet stood open to her left. It was full. Not with her clothes, but with a new wardrobe. Racks of them. Simple, elegant, exquisitely made trousers, blouses, and gowns in a palette of dark, subdued colors. Nothing bright. Nothing loud. Nothing that was her. Everything, she noted with a fresh wave of nausea, was perfectly, exactly her size.
"No," she whispered, her voice a dry rasp in the silent room. "No."
This was not a bad dream. This was not a kidnapping she could be ransomed from. This was an erasure.
The shock that had frozen her last night—or this morning, or ten years from now, how would she even know—cracked. And beneath it was a deep, boiling well of pure, undiluted rage.
He thought he could own her? He thought he could move her and dress her and delete her?
"You bastard!" she screamed.
She grabbed the nearest object—a heavy, crystal perfume bottle from the vanity (it was unscented, of course, just a prop)—and hurled it at the wall.
It hit the dark, paneled wood with a dull thud and dropped to the carpet. It did not break.
Her scream, like her violence, had been absorbed. The room's acoustics were dead. The sound traveled no further than her own ears before it was smothered by the oppressive luxury.
She ran from the room, through the dark wooden archway, and burst back into the main lounge.
It was exactly as she had left it. Empty. Silent. The impossible view of Jakarta glittered beyond the void-walls, a static, beautiful, mocking photograph of a world she had lost.
Maher Xander was nowhere to be seen.
"Coward!" she shrieked, her voice raw. "Show yourself! Where are you?"
Silence.
The silence was the answer. It was the punishment. It was the cage.
"No," she panted, her eyes wild. "No. I'm not playing."
She looked at the void-wall. "You want me?" she yelled at the silent city. "You want me to be a good little prisoner? No."
She grabbed a vase from a side table—a heavy, porcelain thing that looked absurdly priceless. She ran at the wall, at the view, at the memory of her old life, and threw it with all her strength. "I hate you!"
A normal window would have shattered. A normal wall would have marked.
This wall did neither.
The vase, which she had thrown hard enough to kill a man, flew toward the glass. Just as it was about to make contact, it slowed. Its kinetic energy was visibly stolen, leeched out by an unseen force. It hung for a single, impossible second, suspended in the air an inch from the surface. Then, its velocity completely gone, it dropped.
It fell straight down, landing perfectly upright on the plush rug. Unbroken.
Rossie stared, her mouth open, her scream-sore throat now tight with a new, colder terror.
This wasn't a prison of glass and steel. This was a prison of rules. His rules. And the laws of physics were not on the menu.
"Fine," she whispered, a hysterical giggle rising in her throat. She backed away. "Fine. You want to play? Let's break something else."
She turned from the wall and surveyed the room. His room. His prison. His property.
She started with the desk. She swept her arm across its polished surface, sending antique-looking inkwells, a heavy brass letter opener, and stacks of what looked like parchment scattering across the floor. It wasn't satisfying. The thick rug muffled their landing. Nothing broke.
She ran to the massive bookshelves. She grabbed at the leather-bound volumes, pulling them from the shelves and throwing them to the ground. Thud. Thud. Thud. They landed like dead birds. She tore at the pages. They were thick, like cotton, and refused to rip easily.
She was a toddler having a tantrum in a bank vault. Nothing she did mattered. Nothing left a mark.
She ran through the archways, one by one.
A library. Miles of books, all of them smelling of sandalwood and old paper, but no dust. No air.
A gallery. Paintings of landscapes she had never seen, of cities that looked both ancient and futuristic.
A dining room, with a table long enough for thirty guests, set for no one.
A kitchen. A cold, stainless-steel temple, fully stocked with food she did not recognize. Vegetables and fruits that were perfect, waxy, and utterly artificial in their flawlessness.
And in every single room: no windows. No doors. No vents. No service elevators. No path to the outside world.
She was in a box. A self-contained, perfectly sealed, luxurious box. Maher's "Rule 3" was not a threat; it was a simple statement of architectural fact.
She finally stumbled back into the main lounge, her rage exhausted, her body slick with a cold sweat. She collapsed, her back sliding down the side of a carved wooden column, and drew her knees to her chest.
She was left with nothing but the truth.
She was trapped.
She could not get out.
She could not be found.
She could not even break a vase.
The rage evaporated, leaving behind the cold, empty, terrifying void that had lived inside her all her life. But now, the void wasn't just in her. She was in it.
She sat there. She didn't know for how long. The glittering lights of the city outside the void-wall never changed. The sun never rose. It was always night in Maher's cage.
She watched the small, fake rivers of headlights flow, and she wept. Not with the hot, angry tears of before, but with the cold, silent, hopeless tears of the truly damned.
Time ceased to have meaning. It was just the now. The here. The never-ending.
A sound.
A soft click of a shoe on the marble, twenty feet away.
Her head snapped up.
Maher Xander stood by the desk she had tried to vandalize. He wasn't even looking at her. He was shrugging off a dark grey suit jacket, his back to her, as if he had just walked in the door.
But there was no door.
He placed the jacket on the back of his chair and began, with methodical calm, to pick up the inkwells she had thrown.
"A... strenuous morning, it seems," he observed, his voice holding no anger, no surprise. It was as flat and calm as if he were commenting on the weather.
He picked up the heavy brass letter opener. He inspected it, wiped a non-existent smudge on his sleeve, and placed it perfectly parallel to the edge of the desk.
Rossie, still huddled by the column, found her voice. It was a broken, hoarse croak. "Where... where were you?"
"Tending to business," he replied, still not looking at her. He moved to the bookshelves and began picking up the volumes she had scattered. He re-shelved them in an order she couldn't discern. Thud. Thud. Thud.
"What... what day is it?" she whispered.
"It is Tuesday," he said. "10:47 AM." He checked a sleek, silver watch on his wrist. "Your... display... began approximately four hours ago."
The blood drained from her face. Tuesday. The party was... Sunday. She had been here for more than a day. And the view... the view was still night.
"The view," she whispered, pointing with a trembling finger. "It's still night."
"The view is what I wish it to be," he said, finally turning to face her. His silver eyes were as cold and clear as the crystal bottle she had failed to break. "I find the daylight in this city... garish. It is more... calming... this way."
He took in the sight of her. A feral, broken creature in a borrowed chemise, her hair matted with tears and sweat, her eyes red and puffy.
"You are a monster," she breathed.
"I am a creditor," he corrected her, with no emotion at all. "You are a debt. I am simply... collecting."
He walked toward her. Rossie flinched, pressing herself against the column, but he stopped a few feet away, looking down at her.
"Do not confuse your rage with strength," he said, his voice quiet, but carrying in the dead air. "It is merely a symptom of your new reality. A tantrum. You will adapt, or you will break. It is, as I told you, irrelevant to me. The contract is satisfied either way."
He held out a hand. Not to help her up. But to point.
"You have made a mess," he said.
He turned his back on her and walked toward one of the dark archways, his footsteps a steady, maddening click-clack on the marble.
"Clean yourself up," his voice drifted back. "Dinner is at eight. Do not be late."
He disappeared into the shadows of the archway.
Rossie was left alone in the vast, silent room. She looked at the books on the floor. She looked at the perfectly placed inkwells on the desk. She looked at the unbroken vase on the rug.
The outline had been right. The silence was the weapon. The indifference was the punishment. He hadn't raised his voice. He hadn't laid a hand on her.
He had simply waited for her to break herself. And she had.