Page 47 of Somno Slave

By the time I step out, nausea sits thick at the back of my throat.

I leave my hair wet for work because my hands shake too badly trying to pin it up properly the first time. It takes three attempts before I decide to leave it there with a strand that keeps catching between my lips.

The viewing room smells like burnt coffee and old paper when I walk in. Peter’s already there, sleeves rolled to his forearms, flipping slowly through a folder thick enough to split at the spine. Mike sits beside the monitors eating crisps loudly enough to irritate Sean, who looks one comment away from murder.

I move toward my chair too quickly. My bag slips off my shoulder when I pull it forward, knocking hard against the desk. Papers spill halfway out before I catch them.

For one awful second, nobody says anything. I shove everything back inside too fast, fingers clumsy against the pages. My notes crumple slightly beneath my grip.

Peter watches the whole thing over the top of the folder. “You alright, Ainsley?”

“I’m fine.” I plaster a fake smile on my lips.

His eyes stay on me a second too long before he looks away.

I lower myself into the chair and force my attention onto my notebook instead.

My handwriting looks wrong. Letters pressed too hard into the paper. Words written over twice. One entire paragraph scratched through violently enough that the pen tore clean through the page beneath it.

I stare at the damage for a second too long before my eyes lift toward the glass.

Deogal sits exactly where they left him.

Still.

God, the stillness of him.

Bruising still darkens parts of his face from earlier sessions, yellowing now at the edges, but it somehow makes him look worse instead of weakened. More lived in. More real. His bottom lip is split faintly at one corner, dried blood gathered there in a dark rust-coloured line that keeps dragging my attention back no matter how many times I force it elsewhere.

The overhead lights flatten everything else in the room except him.

His wrists are restrained low today. Thick metal cuffs biting into skin already rubbed raw from the last few sessions. Angry red indentations disappear beneath the sleeves of the jumpsuit whenever he shifts. Not that he shifts much. That’s the worst part.

Anyone else would be slumped by now. Exhausted or furious.

He just sits there beneath the lights with his head slightly lowered and his breathing slow enough that sometimes I catch myself staring at his chest waiting for movement. Waiting to make sure he’s still human.

The hours drag by. My attention stays on him like there are hooks behind my eyes.

Across the room, Peter flips another page in the file.

“We’ll need to rework the overnight rotation if this carries on,” he says without looking up.

Sean swears quietly beneath his breath. “I did twelve hours yesterday.”

“You’ll survive another six.”

Mike snorts. “Easy for you to say. You went home.”

Peter ignores him completely. “We split the nights properly so nobody gets burned out.”

Burned out.

The phrase lands strangely in my chest. Because exhaustion already hangs over the room thickly now. I can see it in Sean’s eyes. Mike’s shorter temper. The coffee cups overflowing the bin beside the monitors. And somehow, through all of it—Deogal still doesn’t look tired.

“What about her?” Sean asks suddenly.

The sound of his voice jerks my attention away from the glass hard enough that my stomach drops.