Stay calm.
My hands are open against the cot, palms flat, claws in. The shift is holding at a point I can manage: jaw heavier than it should be, shoulders too wide, but the teeth aren’t crowding, and my fingers still look like fingers.
Close enough.
I can work with close enough. If someone walks in, they need to see a man who can talk, reason, and answer questions without cracking their glass.
A man.
That is the part that matters.
Voices in the corridor.
Two people. A man and a woman. The man’s voice is low, measured, someone used to giving orders without raising his voice. The woman’s is clinical. Quick. They’re talking about me.
“…shift cycling has dropped significantly since the last sedation. Heart rate stable. Cortisol levels are still elevated but trending down—”
“And the magic? The sound waves?”
“Dormant since the last episode. No spikes.”
The containment door opens.
The man is tall. White-haired, dark-skinned. The same careful stillness I saw through the cracked glass when the doctor was in the observation room. Viktor Parlance. Director of this place. I’ve heard his voice through the intercom. Never face-to-face. Never in my cell.
He’s not in my cell now. He’s in the observation room, the cracked glass between us. The woman beside him wears a white coat. Tablet in hand. She pulls up my readings without looking at me.
Parlance looks at me.
His eyes move across the cot. The restraints. My hands…open, flat, deliberate. He takes his time. Reading me. Looking for what the numbers don’t show.
“He’s been stable for the last six hours,” the medic says. “Best window we’ve had since intake.”
I draw in a breath and focus on being calm.
“I can hear you,” I say.
Parlance’s chin lifts. The medic stops tapping her tablet.
“I know you’re talking about me.” My voice is rough. But the words are human. Formed. Clear enough. “And I know what my readings say.”
Viktor studies me. “You’re lucid.”
“I’ve been lucid. The gas makes it hard to show that.”
“The incidents suggest otherwise.”
“They were reactions to specific triggers,” I say. “Hands on me. Locked rooms. Sable being taken away. I’m not saying that makes them safe. I’m saying they weren’t random.”
I keep my voice level and my hands flat on the cot. Every movement controlled. Deliberate.
“I’m cooperating. You can see that.”
“What I can see,” Viktor says, “is a man who shattered inches of impenetrable glass two days ago. Who has required three sedation cycles. Whose magic has damaged monitoring equipment and injured staff.” He folds his arms. “You may be lucid right now. But you’ve shown too many signs of instability for me to take this at face value.”
My jaw tightens. I want to argue. I want to tell him why the glass cracked…that Sable was crying, that she was walking away, that my body couldn’t tell the difference between losing her and losing everything. But that argument proves his point, not mine.
“I understand,” I say. “What do you need from me?”
