Chapter 28 Sub Level Eight

Chapter 28 Sub Level Eight
 Nyla POV

I woke up to the sound of someone breathing, the chair across from my bed had a body in it and I did not recognize the exact way someone could just sit there like they had permission, like they owned the morning, and then I blinked and saw Dr. Voss looking at me.  I wanted to scream because she wasn’t supposed to be here, not before the technician came, not even without knocking, and my mouth opened and I said, “You didn’t knock.”

She didn’t look surprised. She just said, “I have a key. And you have thirty minutes before the technician arrives. I plan to use every single one of them. Sit up. Pay attention. I won’t stop talking.”

I sat up slowly, pulling the blanket around my shoulders, and I said, “You do realize this is against all the rules, right?”

She did not answer with words. She set a small case on the floor by her feet, and it clicked into my brain that it wasn’t just any case. It had weight, it had presence, it was dangerous. I said, “What is that?”

“A folder. Photos. Something you need to see. You can either look or not. You won’t like not looking. Sit.”

I sank back onto the bed, hugging my knees, because the way she said it made it feel like a trap and maybe it was, and I said, “I don’t want to see whatever it is.”

“You will,” she said. “And you will listen. No interruptions.”

I laughed because that was a lie. I always interrupted. I always needed to know more and more and more, even if it hurt. “You’re asking the impossible,” I said.

“I’m asking the necessary questions,” she said. And then she opened the case and pulled out a thin folder and set it on her lap and opened it like she was peeling the skin off a secret.

The first photo slid out, plain paper, corners soft from copies, and I looked at it and my stomach dropped because the woman in the picture was my mother and she was younger, much younger, smiling slightly, standing in a corridor I knew too well, a corridor that looked exactly like the one outside my room, and I froze and I whispered, “Mom?”

“She is alive,” Dr. Voss said flatly. “That is the earliest photograph. Seventeen years ago.”

“I was eleven,” I said. “She couldn’t have” My voice cracked before I could even finish and I stopped.

“She couldn’t have left you. She didn’t,” Voss said. “She has been here.”

I shook my head and said, “No. That’s not real. You’re lying. This isn’t”

“I am not lying,” she said. “Look.”

She slid the next photo toward me. And the next. And the next. The years passed in printed paper and copied images, my mother standing, sitting, eyes tired, sometimes blank, sometimes focused, always in controlled environments, all of them familiar yet foreign. The dates stamped the prints it was seventeen years ago to eleven months ago. 

She had been inside this place, in this system, for seventeen years, and the last one was taken eleven months before I arrived. I couldn’t speak. I could not breathe properly. My hands shook.

“Why is she here?” I asked finally, my voice trembling so much I didn’t recognize it.

“Sub Level Eight. Long term care,” Dr. Voss said.

I laughed but it was ugly, bitter, and unfunny. “Sub Level Eight. And why?”

“She was the first successful bonding subject in Owen’s program,” Voss said, as if it were a fact, not a horror story, and my brain skipped a beat. “Successful. But incomplete.”

“Successful? You’re talking about my mother. She wasn’t sick. She didn’t ask for this. She didn’t volunteer for anything.” My voice rose and I clenched the blanket so hard it hurt my fingers.

“The program didn’t require illness. She was the first that worked.”

“So you let him do this to her?” my anger increased.

“I worked with him,” Voss said, quiet, not defensive.

“Then you let him. You’re complicit.”

“I am not innocent,” she said simply. “But she was his first success. She’s alive because Owen kept her alive. Her being alive is useful to the program.”

“Useful?” I said, my throat closing. “You’re saying… you’re farming my mother.”

“Yes,” she said.

I wanted to throw something, punch the wall, but I couldn’t. I just sat there, trying to make sense of what she said. I tried to think but all the pieces were jagged. I whispered, “Why? Why show me this now?”

Voss closed the folder and set it in the case. “Eleven years ago, you did not have a way out.”

“And now I do?” I asked, voice almost shaking.

“Yes. Now I believe you do.”

“What way? Tell me what you mean.”

“I am not explaining further,” she said.

“That is cruel.”

“I know.”

I shook my head. “I don’t even know where to start. How do I even, how do I..”

“Not yet,” she said, and she stood, taking the case with her, leaving the room empty four minutes before the technician arrived like she had promised.

I tried to act normal during the monitoring check. I ate the food they gave me through the slot, I answered questions with the practiced calm I had perfected over years, and I sat on the bed, still as stone on the outside. Inside, though, I was moving every memory, every map I had memorized, connecting dots with a frantic precision that made my head ache. Sub Level Eight. Sub Level Six.

My room is Four. Zane in Cell Block Seven along Two and Three. Marcus’s shaft. The maintenance shaft. If it reached Eight, my mother was reachable. And if she was reachable, leaving without her wasn’t an option.

The hours crawled. I counted seconds. I imagined shafts and security cameras, I imagined guards sleeping and doors failing. I imagined reaching her, holding her hand, telling her I was here.

When evening came, the nervous young technician arrived again. She handed me the monitoring kit and did not leave a note. Her hands trembled slightly, barely noticeable, but I saw it. And tucked inside the lining was something heavier, larger than usual, and I knew immediately it was meant for me, not for anyone else.

I waited until she left and pulled it under the blanket. A small handheld device, outdated, no network connection, warm like it had been used recently. I turned it on, heart hammering, and the screen lit up. One message. Four words.

Two days. Be ready.

I whispered, “Who sent this?”

No answer.

I held it close to my chest. “You better be telling the truth,” I said.

The room stayed silent. My mind raced. Two days. Every second counted now, and my pulse thudded like a drum in my ears. I thought about my mother, about all those years she had spent there, alive but unreachable, eyes staring, hands moving slightly, trapped in an endless loop. I could feel her, even without touching her, and the thought made my chest ache.

I spoke aloud, because I had to, because I could not carry it silently anymore. “I will find you. I will.” My voice broke slightly and I bit my lip, trying not to scream, trying not to draw attention, trying to plan and act and survive all at once.

The device blinked once, and I swore it was a nod.

I leaned back against the wall, pulling the blanket tight, whispering numbers, maps, levels, shafts, cell blocks, sub-levels. Planning impossible things, thinking about timing, timing, timing, security, timing.

The first thought that came to me was Zane. If he could reach me through the shaft again, if he could move unseen again, if he could fight the guards again, we could coordinate again. If not, I would have to go alone.

I thought about Voss’s words, about believing I had a way out, about what she had left unsaid. That uncertainty gnawed at me. I whispered again, “Tell me what to do. Someone tell me what to do.”

The room was quiet except for my own voice bouncing back.

I looked at the device again. I did not know who sent it, I did not know if it could be trusted, but the words were clear. Two days. Be ready.