I didn't say anything as I left the control room.
No thank you. No glare. No whispered curses.
I just walked.
One foot in front of the other.
Down the sterile hall. Past the flickering overhead lights.
Out of the cold, monitored quiet and into something even worse—my own head.
I kept walking until the corridors blurred. I didn't know where I was going.
Didn't care.
I passed another handler, two hybrids, a cart of weapons, and someone screaming behind a closed door. None of it touched me.
Not really.
What the hell was I doing here?
The image of Nine, kneeling like a doll on that padded platform, wouldn't leave my mind. His pale skin marked where he'd been slapped. His hands, so small and obedient, pressed where he was told to press. His mouth forming those dead, polite smiles.
"Smile."
"You're prettier when you pretend to like it."
"Good boy."
I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead. Hard. Like I could shove the thoughts out of my skull if I just pushed hard enough.
What was I doing?
I thought I knew the answer. I thought I'd made peace with it.
I was here for the shelter. For the girls. For Mira and Dev and all the little lives that depended on me. I'd made a deal. I'd play their game, earn their protection, keep the wolves from the door.
But this?
This was a maze of monsters. And I wasn't sure if I was the rat anymore or just another cog in the cruelty.
I stopped walking.
There was a dented bench against one wall. I sat.
Slumped forward, elbows on knees, fingers tangled in my hair.
A camera clicked above me—its tiny whir a constant reminder that even this moment wasn't mine. I was never alone here. Never unobserved. Not really.
I closed my eyes. Breathed in.
What was I supposed to do now?
I wasn't strong enough to challenge the system. I wasn't important enough to demand change. I barely had permission to see Nine, let alone stop what they were doing to him.
And yet… every time I looked at him—every time I saw how still he sat, how carefully he obeyed, how silent he remained—I felt something tear open inside me.
He wasn't a toy.
He wasn't a thing.
They might've built him that way. Designed him to be nothing but pleasure and pliancy and blankness. But he felt. I'd seen it. The way his eyes flickered when I spoke. The way his expression faltered just slightly when I left the room too quickly. The whimper I heard when the cane landed on his thighs.
He was trying to survive.
Just like me.
Maybe worse.
I leaned back, head hitting the wall with a soft thud. Let the silence pool around me.
I didn't have answers. I barely had a plan.
But I had this one small thing—the ability to be there. To sit with him. To speak to him. To let him be seen, if only for a moment.
It wasn't justice.
It wasn't revenge.
But maybe it was something.
And maybe, for now, that had to be enough.