Chapter 183 up
Nyla lay on the asphalt, her breathing shallow and broken.
Each inhale felt like dragging shards of glass into her lungs. Her chest rose and fell in an uneven rhythm, as if her body had forgotten how to breathe properly. Her vision blurred, the world above her trembling and splitting into layers, the daylight too bright for eyes that could no longer adjust.
The sounds came late.
First, footsteps. Hesitant. Approaching, then stopping—as if the people didn’t know whether they were supposed to get involved. Then whispers—fragments of sentences, words colliding without ever fully reaching her mind.
“Oh God—” “There’s blood—” “Call an ambulance—”
Someone knelt beside her. Nyla felt the vibration through the ground before she felt it through her body. A stranger’s hand touched her arm carefully, as though afraid she might break if pressed too hard.
“Ma’am? Can you hear me?” the voice asked.
Nyla didn’t answer.
Not because she couldn’t hear, but because her voice no longer occupied the same place as her thoughts. Words piled up behind her throat, heavy and unmoving. She opened her mouth, but only a rough, painful breath escaped.
Evan.
The name pulsed in her head, stronger than any physical pain. Every heartbeat carried the same image: a small face turning back toward her, eyes filled with terror—not because of the men dragging him away, but because of the distance that had been forced between them too fast, too violently.
She tried to move.
Her body responded with a wave of pain so intense her vision dimmed. Someone held her shoulder, gentle but firm.
“Don’t move,” the voice said. “An ambulance is on the way.”
An ambulance.
The word felt unreal. Too large. Too official for something that had happened so quickly and so brutally.
A siren sounded in the distance.
At first it was only a faint echo, as if coming from another part of the city. Slowly, it grew louder—rising and falling, cutting through the air, announcing that the outside world had finally noticed something was wrong on this quiet stretch of pavement.
People began to gather.
Nyla felt their presence like pressure in the air—a loose circle forming around her body. Shadows moved above her, slicing through the sunlight. Strange faces. Some filled with concern, some with curiosity, some already carefully distant.
None of them were Evan.
Her thoughts spun, searching for explanations the way someone gropes in a dark room. Fragments of memory flashed without order: hands pulling, the dull sound of bone meeting flesh, the sensation of falling, blood at the corner of her mouth.
And those faces.
Not the faces of obvious criminals. Not exaggerated cruelty or uncontrolled rage.
Calm faces.
Efficient.
As if they had been completing a task.
The realization made her stomach twist.
This hadn’t been a robbery gone wrong. It hadn’t been random violence. There had been no panic in their movements, no hesitation. Everything had been measured, fast, precise.
Someone had ordered this.
The thought arrived slowly, but once it did, it refused to leave.
Who?
Names circled her mind without daring to settle. Faces that smiled politely across conference tables. Voices that spoke about procedure, stability, the child’s best interests.
The system.
The word felt cold and vast—something without a single face, but with many hands.
Was this what happened when subtle methods no longer worked?
When persuasion, paperwork, and evaluations failed to move a child who had already chosen?
Someone pressed cloth to the corner of her mouth. Nyla flinched, pain flaring sharply. Blood. She could feel it now—warm and sticky, mixed with tears she hadn’t realized were falling.
“The child…” she tried to say.
Her voice came out hoarse, barely audible.
“The child,” she repeated, weaker this time.
The people beside her exchanged looks.
“Easy,” someone said quickly. “Focus on breathing.”
Breathing.
She inhaled again, gasping. Her chest felt too small for the air she needed.
The siren was closer now.
She closed her eyes—not in surrender, but in survival. But behind her eyelids, Evan’s image grew sharper. His voice. His scream. The words he had thrown like a shield:
She’s my person.
Her tears flowed freely now, soaking into her hair, into the pavement beneath her head.
Someone spoke louder, likely on a phone. Words like assault, abduction, the child was taken reached her in broken pieces.
Abduction.
The word struck her with new force. Not just as a crime, but as a declaration of power. A message.
We can take what we want.
She felt another vibration—a large vehicle stopping, doors opening. Quick footsteps. Voices that were more trained, more controlled.
“Adult female,” someone said. “Reduced responsiveness. Facial trauma and possible rib injuries.”
New hands took over. Latex gloves brushed her skin, cold and impersonal. Her neck was stabilized, her body moved with careful efficiency that still sent sharp pain through her, pain she didn’t have the breath to scream through.
She was lifted onto a stretcher.
The sky shifted above her. Buildings slid out of view. The circle of onlookers broke apart, replaced by metal sounds and clipped instructions.
Through it all, her mind clung to one unbearable truth:
They hadn’t panicked when she fought.
They hadn’t hesitated when she fell.
They had simply adjusted.
Like a plan that had accounted for resistance.
Like a system that had run out of patience.
The siren was directly above her now, screaming into her skull until the world felt ready to shatter. She closed her eyes again, her body finally giving in to exhaustion and pain.
But before darkness fully claimed her, one last realization cut through—sharp and terrifying:
If this had truly been an order,
if this had been the system deciding that violence was the final option,
then Evan hadn’t just been taken.
He was being transferred to a place where his voice—and his choice—were no longer welcome.
That thought locked itself into her mind as the world slipped away.
The siren continued to wail, carrying Nyla’s broken body from the scene.
And somewhere else, far from that narrow street, a child was being led into a room he had not chosen—while the same unanswered question hung in the air, waiting for the next chapter:
Who had ordered this?
And how far would the system go now that its mask had fallen?