Chapter 4
Nyra
There’s a difference between silence and stillness. Silence means no one’s talking. Stillness means everything is listening. That’s what Sublevel 2 feels like. The elevator drags me down like a throat swallowing glass. My badge clears the checkpoint with a green flicker, the gate hisses open, and I step into a hallway that looks the same but doesn’t feel the same. Not anymore.I told myself I was done here. I told myself it didn’t matter. I told myself I didn’t care. I lied.
The corridor smells like bleach and chill metal, but something deeper has been stripped away. Before, the air had weight. Electricity. Heat coiled beneath every surface. Now, it’s sterile. Not safe...just blank. I kneel beside the chute at 7B. Same latch. Same cart. Same spot I saw him, only now, the ghost of that moment has been bleached out like a stain no one wants to admit ever existed. The latch sticks. I have to yank it twice before the jam clears and the linens slump into the bin like dead limbs. The blanket smells like detergent and metal and nothing else. No heat. No cedar. No him.
I glance to the corner wall. The viewing panel is gone. No bolts. No glass. Just smooth gray plaster poured flat and clean like nothing ever happened here. But I remember. I remember how my hand trembled. How my breath fogged the glass. How his eyes didn’t blink. That memory is a splinter beneath my ribs, and I press on it as I rise to leave. Except I don’t. Something in the air shifts. Not a noise. Not a draft. A trace. A thread of something, a scent; so faint it could be a lie. A whisper of warmth winding through the sterilized air like a question that hasn’t been answered yet. I freeze. It tugs at something deep in my chest. Low. Instinctive. Hungry. I follow; past the chute, past the broken silence, past a service door that’s always been closed and locked but tonight stands cracked just enough for possibility to leak through.
The gate to the next sector is usually secured and inacessible. Red badge access only. I don't have that level of clearance. But when I swipe my card, it beeps once, soft and low, like a secret being accepted. The gate clicks open. And I descend into Sublevel 3. Sublevel 3 feels like trespassing into someone’s buried memory. The walls are darker here. The lights weaker. Some flicker with that dying pulse of fluorescence that makes your bones itch. The air isn’t cold or hot; it’s wrong. Pressurized, metallic, thick with something unspoken. No signs. No chute stations. No handler desks. Just concrete. Just corridors. Just me and something that shouldn’t be here but is.
The scent finds me again. Slightly different. Richer now. Twisted. Feral. It rolls over my skin like fire-fed smoke, curling into every pore until I’m flushed and trembling and aching with something that can’t be explained. It’s him. But it’s worse. Sharper. Wilder. Like whatever thin leash held him together before has snapped and the pieces don’t want to be reassembled. I move toward it, step by step. Breath by breath. Following the scent like it’s carved into the walls. Deeper. Left. Then right. Until I stop in front of a door with deep gouges scratched into the steel frame. Claw marks. Real ones. Not for show. Not decoration. Marks left by something caged that didn’t want to be. Something that shouldn’t be. My hand hovers over the handle. No clearance required. No keypad. Just a plain metal latch that gives when I push. Of course it does. They never expected anyone would come here unless told. But no one told me to. I just came.
The door opens into a narrow corridor with no windows, no vents, no sound—only the dim strip of low-burning light near the floor, casting long shadows like reaching fingers. The scent hits me like a wave of heat through a storm drain. My breath catches. My knees weaken. It floods me, all-consuming and unmistakable: cedar and animal and blood and him. My fingers tighten on the cart’s edge. He's in the air now, coating my mouth, sliding down my throat like he’s already claimed the space inside me without ever touching me, and I haven’t even seen him yet. I glance up and there it is. The blackout curtain. Draped over what I assume is a reinforced viewing panel, the curtain hangs heavy, designed to keep eyes out and secrets in.
But the fabric isn’t sealed all the way. One corner hangs loose, swaying slightly like it was never meant to close fully. Like it wanted to be found. My breath sticks in my throat. I step closer. Careful. Quiet. Like the touching the wrong part of the floor might wake him. The moment my fingers touch the cloth, the air tightens. Like the room is holding its breath. I peel back the edge, just an inch, and I see him.
Not movement. Not a flicker. Just gold eyes, bright as flame, locked straight onto mine. No glass glare. No distortion. Just him. Watching. Like he never stopped. Like he knew I’d come. And worse, like he called me here. My pulse hammers in my ears. My whole body lights up in response, blood rushing so fast it drowns thought, heat spiraling down to places that throb and tighten and ache just seeing that gold. I can’t breathe. I drop the curtain. Step back fast.
But I don’t leave. I tell myself to walk away. To move. To run. But my body won’t listen. The air still hums with him; low, steady, like a pulse beneath the concrete. I just stand there, heart slamming against my ribs, lungs dragging in air that feels too hot to hold. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to.
I was not sent here. I shouldn’t be here. But somehow, I know this was always going to happen.