CHAPTER 22
ARIA
I couldn’t ignore it anymore—the way they looked at me.
Not openly, not in any welcoming way, but with furtive glances, nervous flickers of the eyes, and quick, uncomfortable shifts away the moment my gaze lifted to meet theirs.
It was like I’d become something they didn’t know how to handle.
Not a person anymore, but a glitch—an anomaly thrown into their carefully constructed system.
I could feel it in the way their eyes slid over me, hesitant and unsure. Like I was a question they couldn’t answer.
Like I was dangerous just by existing in their space.
A variable they hadn’t accounted for.
A contamination in their perfect little experiment.
And maybe that’s what I was now—something they couldn’t control. Something they feared might unravel everything.
No one said it out loud, of course.
They kept their distance with polite smiles and clipped professionalism, but the unease was thick in the air.
I felt it.
I breathed it.
They didn’t know what I’d become.
And the terrifying part was—I didn’t either.
I was starting to feel like a stranger in my own skin, and judging by the way they looked at me, they agreed.
Their silence confirmed it—their quiet stares, the awkward sideways glances, the way conversations died the second I stepped into a room.
I wrapped my arms around myself as I walked, the sterile white corridors of the research facility pressing in on all sides. It wasn’t just cold—it felt clinical, too clean, too detached.
And yet, despite the chill, the eyes watching me burned hotter with every passing day. Not just observing—assessing. Calculating.
Each person I passed seemed to stiffen. Some held their breath. Others averted their gaze entirely, as if just looking at me might taint them somehow.
I caught snatches of conversation that died the moment I came near. Hushed voices fell to silence like a curtain being dropped mid-scene.
Eyes flicked away. Backs turned too quickly.
“Did you see the—”
“—marked again. Third time this week.”
“Protocol says she shouldn’t even be—”
“She’s responding well… better than we predicted.”
“We can’t risk—”
And then nothing. Just the sterile hum of overhead lights and the squeak of my shoes on polished floors.
But their words clung to me like static.
Marked. Responding. Risk.
Each syllable pierced like a needle beneath my skin, sharp and impossible to ignore. They weren’t just talking about data or outcomes. They weren’t simply observing.
They were tracking something.
Managing something.
Containing something.
And that something… was me.
A pair of nurses turned into the corridor just as I did.
Their laughter faded instantly the moment they saw me.
One of them offered a tight-lipped smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Good morning,” I said, out of habit more than anything.
She flinched like I’d touched her.
“Morning,” she muttered, not looking back.
They hurried past.
I stared after them, pulse fluttering.
I wasn’t imagining it.
I wasn’t welcome here.
This place, this lab—whatever it had once been meant to be—now felt more like a cage.
And me?
I was the anomaly in their sterile little world. An experiment that no one had expected to behave this way.
The experimental trials had begun a month ago.
Thirty days of silence, sedation, and secrets. They said I was helping.
Said this was for the good of the future.
But no one explained what they were doing.
No one answered my questions.
Just cold smiles and needles.
Blank forms and hollow reassurances.
I was ferried to the lab like freight—escorted, monitored, put under, and returned to my room with the efficiency of someone loading and unloading cargo.
Each session left me more fragmented. A little more hollow. A little less me.
And then there were the dreams.
Every time the anaesthesia pulled me under, when the white lights bled into darkness, and the machines faded into silence, I fell into that world.
A place suspended in shadows and heat and memory.
And he was always there.
Lian.
I didn’t know his name at first. He never spoke it. But somehow I knew.
As though I’d known it long before this all began. Before the drugs. Before the lab. Before the silence.
The dreams weren’t dreams. They were experiences.
Too vivid.
Too felt.
His eyes—piercing, unreadable—haunted me long after I woke. His voice, low and commanding, slid under my skin and stayed there, vibrating in places I didn’t understand.
Sometimes he touched me gently, as though I might break.
Other times, it was rough, desperate, needy, like we were both starving for something we didn’t dare speak aloud.
And I—God—I responded to it.
I hated that.
Hated how real it felt.
Hated how my body betrayed me in sleep, arching into his touch, melting beneath his mouth.
I’d wake breathless, flushed, trembling.
The imprint of his fingers was still warm on my thighs.
My body humming with a hunger I didn’t ask for.
Didn’t want.
But the worst part?
I wanted it again.
I began to crave the dreams.
To expect them.
Sometimes I’d lie in bed, wide awake, waiting for them.
Waiting for him.
Who was he to me?
And why, when I knew I should be afraid, did I feel safe in his arms?
Safer than I ever felt in this godforsaken place?
Sometimes I caught glimpses of the lab techs watching me after a session.
Their eyes were careful, clinical. But there was something else there too. Like they knew.
Like they were watching to see how far I would break.
“Subject 37 is responding unusually,” I once heard one of them murmur just before the door closed behind me.
Unusually.
Was that what I was now?
A deviation.
An unexpected outcome.
They never spoke to me about the dreams. But I saw the way they watched me as I woke. Like they were waiting for a report I didn’t know I was supposed to give.
And still, no answers.
Just more sessions.
More silence.
More dreams.
And then came this morning.
I woke up in my bed like always.
But this time, the sheets were twisted, the thin cotton shirt clinging to my skin, soaked through in places.
I sat up slowly, heart already pounding. My legs were sore. My skin buzzed with a lingering sensitivity that made me shiver.
Then I saw the stains.
Sticky. Damp. Dark.
At first, I panicked.
“Oh God,” I whispered, touching the fabric with trembling fingers.
“What the hell...?”
It wasn’t mine.
The scent hit me—sharp, masculine, musky—and I froze.
It was his.
Lian’s.
I shot to my feet, staring at my clothes, my skin, my hands. My breath came in shallow gasps as the room tilted slightly around me.
“No. No, no, no. That’s not—That’s not possible.”
But the scent didn’t lie.
The ache in my body didn’t lie.
The memory of his hands, his mouth, the way we moved together—
I sank back down on the edge of the bed, head in my hands, trying not to spiral.
Was it still a dream?
Or had I slipped into something else entirely?
Had the barrier between dream and reality been breached?
Had he breached it?
The idea should’ve terrified me. And part of me was terrified. But beneath that fear was something darker.
Warmer.
A thrill I couldn’t silence.
What was happening to me?
What was he?
And why—God help me—why did I want it to happen again?
No...no...no.....