The fluorescent lights in the intake room of the Vancouver Parole Center hummed with a low-frequency buzz that vibrated in the marrow of Hannah's teeth. It was a sound she knew intimately—the sound of institutional waiting.
She sat on a plastic chair that had been bolted to the floor, her back rigid. To her left, a man in a stained tracksuit was vibrating his left leg so violently the floorboards seemed to groan. To her right, a woman with "LOVE" tattooed across her knuckles was weeping silently, the tears carving clean tracks through the grime on her cheeks.
"McKay. Office four," a voice barked over a crackling intercom.
Hannah stood. Her joints felt like rusted hinges. She walked down a narrow hallway that smelled of industrial floor wax and desperation.
The parole officer, a man named Miller, didn't look up when she entered. He was drowning in a sea of manila folders. His skin had the grayish tint of a man who hadn't seen a vegetable or a sunset in years.
"Sit," Miller said. He flipped a page. "Hannah McKay. Ten years. Fraser Valley. Manslaughter, narcotics possession with intent. Released on statutory release with residency condition. You're assigned to the Beacon Transition House."
"I... I was hoping to look for my own place," Hannah said. Her voice felt like it was being pulled through gravel. "I have some savings from my work in the prison laundry. Not much, but—"
Miller finally looked up. His eyes were tired, devoid of malice but also devoid of hope. "You have twenty-four dollars in your pocket, McKay. The 'savings' in your trust account won't clear for two weeks. And even then, who's going to rent to a woman who hasn't held a legal job since the previous administration?"
He shoved a packet of papers across the desk. "Beacon House. Bed 14. Curfew is 8:00 PM. Random UAs. No contact with known felons. If you miss one check-in, you're back in the van to Abbotsford. Do you understand?"
Hannah looked at the papers. The ink blurred. "I understand."
The Beacon Transition House was a Victorian-style home in East Vancouver that had been gutted and repurposed into a warehouse for broken souls. It was a place where the wallpaper was peeling like sunburned skin and the air was thick with the scent of unwashed bodies and cheap tobacco.
Hannah was shown to a room with four bunk beds. The air was stagnant, heavy with the sound of snoring and the metallic tang of a radiator that leaked.
"Top bunk is yours," a woman said. She was sitting on the lower bunk, rolling a cigarette with practiced, skeletal fingers. Her name was Brenda, and she had spent more of her life behind bars than out of them. "Don't leave your shoes on the floor. The girl in Bed 12 steals anything that isn't nailed down."
Hannah climbed up. The mattress was a thin sliver of foam that offered no comfort. She lay there, staring at the ceiling, where someone had carved the words GOD IS DEAD into the plaster.
The next three days were a descent into a specific kind of cruelty.
In prison, there was a code. There were rules—violent, unspoken, but consistent. At the Beacon, there was only chaos. She watched as the other residents traded their meager food vouchers for pills in the hallway. She heard the wet, ragged coughs of the sick who were too afraid to go to a clinic. She watched a girl no older than twenty break down in the kitchen because she couldn't remember her mother's phone number.
It was the proximity to the "criminality" that began to erode her. In the institution, you could distance yourself by retreating into your own mind. Here, the world forced you to mingle. She was expected to sit in "group circles" and share her "journey" with people who were already planning their next score.
"I'm not like them," she whispered to the dark on the fourth night.
"Yeah, you are," Brenda's voice drifted up from the bunk below. "You're wearing the same gray socks, McKay. You're eating the same gray meat. The only difference is you think you're a protagonist in a movie, and we're just the extras. Trust me, the city doesn't see the difference."
The final straw came during breakfast on the fifth day. A man named Silas, a regular at the house who had been in and out of the system for thirty years, took an interest in her. He sat across from her, his eyes yellowed, smelling of menthol and rot.
"I know your face," Silas said, leaning in. "The university girl. The one who took the fall for that kid... what was his name? Dermin? He's doing real well for himself, you know. I saw him in a magazine. Tech Company.Big suit. Big smile."
Hannah's spoon hit the bowl with a clatter. The mention of the name—Dermin—was like a spark dropped into a dry forest.
"I don't know who you're talking about," she said, her voice trembling.
"Sure you don't. But he knows you're out. I bet he's real worried about what a girl with nothing to lose might say." Silas reached across the table, his hand hovering near hers. "I could help you find him. For a price."
The cruelty of it—the casual way he traded in her trauma while she ate her cold oatmeal—snapped something inside her. She looked around the room. She saw the flick of a needle in the corner. She saw the way the house manager ignored the blatant drug deal happening by the fridge. She saw a dozen people who had accepted that they were garbage, waiting for the city to haul them away.
I am not garbage, she thought. I am broke, but I am not garbage.
She didn't pack. She didn't have anything to pack. She waited until the house manager was distracted by a fight breaking out in the TV room—a dispute over the volume that was quickly escalating into a flurry of fists.
Hannah walked out the front door.
Technically, she was breaking residency. Technically, she was a fugitive the moment she missed her 8:00 PM curfew. But the fear of the van wasn't as strong as the suffocating horror of staying in that house.
She walked until her feet bled through her thin socks. She avoided the main streets, sticking to the alleys where the new glass towers cast long, protective shadows. She felt the twenty-four dollars—now down to twelve after buying a bus pass—burning in her pocket.
She stopped in front of a laundromat with a "Help Wanted" sign in the window and a small, illegal-looking apartment listing taped to the glass next to it. Studio. Cash only. No questions.
It was in a part of town where the streetlights were mostly broken. The building was a narrow, three-story walk-up that looked like it was leaning against its neighbor for support.
She called the number from a payphone. The man who answered sounded like he had a throat full of broken glass.
"I have two hundred dollars," Hannah lied, her heart hammering against her ribs. She would find the money. She would sell her blood, her hair, her very soul—but she would not go back to the Beacon. "And I don't need a lease."
"Come to the back alley," the voice said. "Unit 3B."
The apartment was a coffin with a window. It was twelve feet by twelve feet, with a hot plate, a sink that dripped with a rhythmic tink-tink-tink, and a mattress that smelled of cedar and old sweat.
But it was hers.
When the man left, taking her last twelve dollars and her promise to have the rest by Friday, Hannah locked the door. She turned the deadbolt, then the chain. She pushed a heavy wooden chair against the handle.
She sat on the floor, her back against the door, and listened to the silence. It wasn't the silence of a cell. It was the silence of a void.
She was thirty-one years old. She had no money, no friends, and the police would be looking for her within twelve hours.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the old Motorola flip phone. It wouldn't turn on. The battery was a bloated, useless thing. But she stared at the black screen anyway.
In the reflection, she saw the "prison stare" again. But beneath it, there was a new flicker—a cold, sharp light. She wasn't just surviving anymore. She was hunting.
"I'm coming for you, Dermin," she whispered to the empty room.
The drip of the sink answered her. Tink. Tink. Tink. The clock was finally ticking on her terms.