Not this vehicle.
Not these voices.
But this. Sealed air. Metal under my spine. Engine shuddering through the table beneath me—no, not a table. Transport bed. Different shape. Same purpose.
I’ve been moved before. Three times that I can remember. Maybe more. The drug folds one vehicle into another until every transfer has the same walls, the same straps, the same handlers pretending not to look at the thing they’re delivering.
And the destination is always a room.
A table.
Cold hands.
A clipboard.
Where are they taking me?
The thought comes and goes.
The drug pulls me under again.
Voices, the next time I surface. Fragments floating above me.
“—intake paperwork says he’s been at Ravenclaw two weeks—”
“—doesn’t look like two weeks of recovery to me. Looks like they just kept him under—”
“—not our problem. We deliver, they process—”
Process.The word sits wrong. It always does. I know what processing means. I know what happens at the other end of a transport vehicle. New facility. New intake. New numbers, unless the old ones still apply. But the old ones always still apply, and the file follows you. And Dr. Fell’s name is on every page.
The drug drags me down. I fight it. Lose.
The next time, I’m more aware. The sealed air is thick: antiseptic, diesel exhaust, the chemical smell of whatever they’re pumping through the ventilation. No windows. Metal walls. Something humming just below hearing, mounted to the ceiling, pressing a low-frequency buzz against the inside of my skull. Not the tone from Dr. Fell’s table, but close enough that my body responds before my mind can, muscles locking, jaw clamping.
I grow aware of the others. Three figures in dark uniforms. One watches a monitor. The other two are seated, relaxed. Routine. They’re bored. I’m cargo.
“Stable. Fifty-eight BPM. No spikes.”
“How long?”
“Maybe forty minutes. Roads are rough out here.”
I close my eyes. The hum from the device presses against the inside of my skull, and under it, my wolf paces in tight circles, sluggish, drugged, but awake enough to track the air for threats. The handlers smell like coffee and gun oil. They aren’t afraid of me. I’m just another delivery.
The vehicle lurches. The straps dig into my wrists, and the pain is old and familiar. For a second, I’m on a different transport, two years ago, maybe three. A windowless van with a broken suspension. A handler who sat too close. The facility at the other end had white corridors and a smell like bleach. Dr. Fell was waiting by the intake desk with her recorder in one hand and her pen in the other. She looked at me the way you look at something you ordered that finally arrived.
Not again. Please. Not again.
The memory breaks apart. I’m back in this vehicle. These straps. These voices.
“—heard he took out three fighters at Ravenclaw. Full shift, no warning—”
“—that was the first time. Second time, he broke the door frame clean through and went after a kid—”
“Went after a kid?”
“That’s what the report says.”
