“You said I was never a number.”
“You’re not.”
The silence stretches. The bird sings. The mist moves.
“I haven’t found it yet,” she says. “Your name. I’ve been looking, but—”
“Rafael.”
She stops. Looks at me.
“That’s my name.” It sits in my mouth, strange and familiar at the same time. “Rafael.”
Her lips part. “You remember? How?”
I look down at my hands. The cuts from the restraints are still red around my wrists, and the number on my forearm is still there, black and ugly against my skin.
“I don’t know. It just came back.” I look at her. She’s staring at me with an expression I can’t read, and her eyes are bright again; the same brightness from when I told her I’d heard her talking to me.
She is quiet for a second, as if she’s afraid to move too quickly and scare it away.
“Rafael,” she says, softer this time.
In my own mouth, the name feels rough. Uncertain. In hers, it sounds like it might belong to someone real. A man who had students, and coffee on the piano, and music under his hands.
“It suits you,” she says. Then she smiles, small but real.
I look back at the number on my arm.
Maybe it did once.
I don’t know if it does now.
I don’t know what kind of man it belonged to, what he liked or ate or played. I just know it’s mine, and hearing her say it makes the knot in my throat ease in a way I haven’t felt since before the facility.
The moment holds. The mist moves. The bird sings.
Then the sound comes.
Low. Rhythmic. Mechanical. Distant but getting louder, cutting through the morning air. Not rain. Not wind. Something with blades.
Rotors.
My wolf’s head snaps up inside me. My body goes rigid.
“Helicopter,” Sable says. She’s moved from the window. Her voice has shifted, not the warm tone from a moment ago. The flat, decisive tone of someone assessing a situation. “Search pattern. Coming from the south.”
She crosses to the door. Opens it a crack. Listens.
The sound gets louder. Moving north along the ridge.
She turns to me. Her face has gone still. I can see her thinking, the options running behind her eyes, fast and practical.
The helicopter is an answer to every practical problem in the room. Transport. Shelter. Medical care. Someone else taking responsibility for what happens next.
For me, it is straps and sealed air. A locked room. A stranger’s hand deciding how much of me gets to stay awake.
All she has to do is step outside.
