The guards came in because of the noise.
When they saw what was in front of them, they stopped.
Me, standing alone. A spoon in my hand, dripping. Bodies on the floor around me.
They fanned out and called for backup. Two of them grabbed my arms. One — trying to establish something, maybe authority, maybe just nerve — told me to comply. I didn't. He raised his baton and brought it down on my shoulder.
I turned and looked at him. Nothing in my eyes.
"What is that," I said. "Are you swatting flies?"
He stepped back.
Another officer took my arm and said: "You'll serve the rest of your sentence in solitary."
"Solitary," I repeated. "Is that some kind of experiment?"
The way they looked at me — all of them — said the same thing without words. What is this thing.
"No," the officer said carefully. "It's a punishment. You go into a cell alone."
"That sounds fine."
He took me there himself.
———
The days passed.
Letters came from the Organization — through channels I never understood, finding me even there. They said many things. One of them said: We can get you out.
I tore every letter without finishing it.
I remembered the training Saka had described to me, and I began. Morning. Night. The sweat came off me in sheets. The cell was small enough that I had to adapt every movement, compress every exercise into the available space, and I did — methodically, without interruption, for close to seven years.
Then a letter arrived that wasn't from the Organization.
Nino graduated. She's in university now.
I felt something open in my chest. A warmth I hadn't touched in years.
———
On the morning of my release, another letter came — no name, no return address. Three words:
Check the news.
There was a television mounted near the processing desk. I looked.
BREAKING — Young woman, approximately 19 years of age, found dead.
I walked to the officer standing nearest the screen.
"What was the crime?"
"Girl was assaulted. Kidnapped, maybe."
"Her name."
He thought for a moment. "Nino, I think. I don't remember exactly — the report was about a week ago."
———
Nino.
She was taken?
How.
Why.
Is it possible that she —
The grief arrived all at once, total and structureless. The brightness I'd been carrying — the thing I'd kept alive through seven years of concrete and silence — went out.
I nearly killed him for telling me.
I walked out of the facility. Stopped on the steps. Didn't know which direction to go. Didn't know if direction was a concept that still applied to me.
The officer from processing came up behind me.
"This came for you. Arrived today."
He held out an envelope.
I looked at the handwriting.
Nino.
My chest collapsed.
I couldn't breathe. I tried — the way you try when you're drowning, when you know the mechanics of it but can't make your body cooperate — and the air kept leaving me, the way Saka left, the way everything leaves —
I lost consciousness on the steps.
———
I fell into a darkness with no floor and no ceiling and no walls.
No light to follow out.
Saka is dead. Now Nino.
Why do I always end up alone.
Then something spoke — not a voice, exactly. A point of dim light in the center of the black.
The dark is painful. Frightening. No one wants it. But who made it? Isn't the Organization behind what happened to her? They did it so the crime wouldn't be called murder — so the word would be something softer, something harder to prosecute.
The light faded.
I fell further.
Nothing. Just —
Empty.
Then a black hand appeared from above. I raised my right arm. Our hands touched.
A sound came — not human. Something older. Something underneath language.
This is only the beginning.
Then silence.
———
I woke to hospital light.
White ceiling. The hum of machinery.
I remembered — without choosing to — the warmth Nino used to give me when I came back from unconsciousness. The tears on her face when I opened my eyes. The specific quality of waking up and finding someone there.
The room was cold.
I found the nurse and asked: "What day is it?"
She hesitated — something crossed her face — and then said: "Monday. One in the afternoon."
"Thank you."
I looked at the window. A pale sky. A few scattered clouds. My reflection in the glass, thin and expressionless.
Then something else in the reflection — at the edge of the door behind me. Fingers. Dark, wrong somehow, curled around the doorframe.
A sound inside my skull: psst.
I turned fast.
Nothing there.
The nurse was watching me. "Are you alright?"
I didn't answer her. I looked at the window instead.
"Today is Monday," I said. "I'll kill them all by Friday."
I stood up.
She moved immediately — hands out, voice raised: "Stay where you are. Your condition is serious. Your heart can't take this."
"Don't worry about my heart," I said. "It's seen worse."
She kept refusing. Wouldn't step aside. I assessed the situation with the detached clarity that had become my default register, and arrived at a solution.
I'm told I'm not unpleasant to look at. Why not.
I took her hand. She looked up at me, startled — something shifted in her expression. I guided her gently to the bed, and while she was still processing the confusion, I secured her there and walked out.
She was shouting before I reached the door. I closed it behind me.
———
I ran.
And immediately hit the wall.
My legs wouldn't hold a straight line. The hallway kept tilting. I made it out of the hospital on momentum and stubbornness alone.
No weapons. No allies. No fixed point.
I needed to move. I had a direction.
Then I saw her — the girl with the glasses. Moving quickly, checking over her shoulder, heading toward a building I didn't recognize.
I followed.
She stopped on a side street and met someone — a man I'd never seen. She spoke quietly. He answered.
"Did you take care of what I asked?"
"Yes. The girl — right?"
"Yes."
A pause.
Then she said, almost to herself:
"Tai. You belong to me now. And I will have you."
(End of Chapter 34)