Thorne stopped. His back to me now.
“She’s a blank slate,” he muttered. “A shell with shadows stitched on top.”
“Maybe I’m exactly what I said I was,” I whispered. “Nobody.”
He turned back toward me, that cold edge returning. But now it was tinted with something else—curiosity. Calculation.
“You’re not nobody,” he said. “You’re a mystery. And Ihatemysteries.”
Then he strode out the door without another word.
Slade waited a beat, then jerked his chin. “Up.”
My legs protested, but I pushed myself to standing, swaying slightly. The corridor blurred at the edges as I followed him, each step scraping through the ache in my skull from Thorne’s failed invasion.
But beneath the pain… there was something else. A flicker. A spark.
Hope.
If Thorne couldn’t see who I was—then maybe they couldn’t use it. Not yet. Not in the way they wanted.
Outside the interrogation chamber, Phoenix and Leo were waiting, standing with Thorne. They were talking in low voices, and I didn’t need to hear the words to know they were about me.
Their conversation halted the moment Slade and I emerged. All three of them turned to look at me, their gazes sharp and unreadable.
I felt like prey stepping into the open.
Slade shoved me forward without pause, ignoring the others as we passed. I didn’t look at them. I didn’t need to see their expressions to feel the weight of their curiosity. Their suspicion.
The walk back to my room was a blur—grey walls, humming lights, the ever-present hum of something deep beneath the surface. Then the door slid open.
Slade gave no warning, no parting words.
He shoved me inside, and the door hissed shut behind me.
The door sealed shut behind me with a hiss, leaving me alone in silence so thick it pressed against my chest. I stood there, unmoving, for a long breath. Two. Three.
Then I collapsed.
Not onto the bed. I didn’t trust it. I slid down the wall instead, my body folding like paper until I was curled in on myself on the cold floor.
My head ached. Not in the way a headache settled behind your eyes—this was deeper, like something had clawed through my mind and left splinters behind. Thorne had dug as far as he could. But the past wasn't there to find.
He’d tried to tear through the fog, and when he came up empty, his frustration had crackled through the air like lightning. But I hadn’t faked the blankness. I didn’t even know who I was before the alley. Before the shadows.
Just six years of memories. Just scraps.
I was tired. Not just bone-tired—soul-tired. The kind of tired that seeps into you when you’ve been hunted, dragged, questioned, violated. When even your thoughts aren’t your own anymore.
My hands trembled, so I tucked them under my arms, trying to make myself smaller. I pressed my forehead to my knees and just breathed.
In.
Out.
In.
They didn’t break me.
