Mira
The room smelled wrong.
Upstairs, Arden always smelled faintly of citrus cleaner and something sweet and false, as if the walls themselves were trying too hard. Down here, the air was thinner, touched with metal and old dust, a sour reek hiding beneath the sterile top layer.
The door sighed shut behind her. She heard the electronic click of the lock, soft as a tongue against teeth.
"Sit," Dr. Brant said.
The chair in the center of the room was metal, bolted to the floor. No padding. No armrests. A ring in the concrete beside it like something you'd see in a horror movie's idea of a hospital.
Mira didn't move.
"You've already taken me downstairs in the middle of the night," she said. "We've crossed the 'do I get a choice' bridge."
"Everyone has choices," Brant said mildly. "Some merely come pre-labeled."
He waited, hands folded behind his back. He could wait like that for hours if he had to, she knew. He had the patience of certain predators and certain bureaucrats.
Her heart beat a thick, dull rhythm against her ribs.
If I refuse, he notes it down as "noncompliance," she thought. If I agree, he notes it down as "cooperation under stress." Either way, I become a sentence in his report.
She sat.
The metal drank up the warmth from her skin. Gooseflesh climbed her legs.
"Good," Brant said, as if she were a dog who had finally obeyed a simple command. "Bare your left forearm for me, please."
He moved around her. The room spun with him: gray walls, gray floor, gray mirror. The glass to her right was black from this side, but she knew better than to pretend it was simply a wall. Her reflection stared back at her faintly, ghosted by the darkness, eyes too wide.
A camera watched from the corner of the ceiling, a small red light winking a steady pulse.
She rolled up the sleeve of her Arden-issued sweatshirt. Her hand shook only a little. She looked at it until it stopped.
Brant swabbed the inside of her arm with something that smelled of rubbing alcohol and mint.
"No needles," he said, reading the flinch she refused to show. "Not tonight."
"Lucky me," she said.
He affixed small round sensors to her skin: one on her forearm, one higher on her bicep, another on the side of her neck where the pulse beat loudest. The cold glue made her shiver.
"Heart rate. Skin conductance. Respiration," he said. "We have baseline data, of course, but environmental variance is always helpful."
"For what?" she asked.
"For knowing where to apply pressure," he said simply.
The honesty was worse than any lie would have been.
He moved to the wall and touched a panel. A screen slid out of the ceiling and descended until it hung in front of her, angled slightly downward. Dark, for now.
"Tonight will be… conversational," he said, straightening. "Think of this as an interview. You like interviews. You watch enough of them."
She thought of the flickering talk shows in the common room, the hosts with teeth like polished piano keys, their questions shallow as puddles.
"You're not much of a host," she said.
"I've never been accused of being entertaining," he said. "But I have been told I'm thorough."
He took a chair from against the wall and carried it into the circle of light around her, placing it just outside the reach of her legs. He sat with the ease of a man who owned the room, the building, the people inside it.
"Let's start with something simple," he said. "Tell me what you think Arden is."
She stared at him.
"A clinic," she said. "A recovery center. A place where you help damaged people learn new coping strategies."
His smile crept up on his face more than it appeared.
"And what do you believe Arden is," he asked, "when you're not reciting the brochure?"
The screen in front of her flickered to life.
Footage rolled: the common room yesterday, herself and Damian bent over the puzzle. Her own hands, blurring, the way her fingers had tightened on a piece before she forced them to relax. Damian's brief glare at the camera in the smoke detector.
Her stomach plunged.
They recorded everything, she knew that, but seeing herself from outside, from above, made it real in a way the red light in the corner never had.
"An experiment," she said quietly. "This is an experiment."
Brant's eyes warmed, the way some people's did when they saw a child take its first step.
"Closer," he said. "You're part of a cohort in a controlled environment. Variables introduced, responses observed. You aren't the first, nor will you be the last. But you're one of the more interesting subjects."
"Subjects," she repeated. "Not patients."
"Does the label change the outcome?" he asked.
"It changes whether you sleep at night," she said.
He chuckled, and her skin crawled.
"You assume I sleep," he said.
On the screen, the camera angle shifted. A hallway. Staff walking. A person in a blazer. Then a new figure.
Mira leaned forward despite herself.
The consultant from earlier. The man with the visitor badge. The one the staff called Hale.
He stood in the corridor, hands at his sides, watching the map on the security screen, silent as gravity.
"Interesting reaction," Brant said, glancing at the numbers on his tablet. "Heart rate spike, slight breath hitch. Tell me what you saw when you looked at him."
"Someone bored," she said.
"Try again," he said.
She watched the screen.
The recording showed Hale standing at the entrance to the common room. Kess bristling at his questions. Mira's own face turning toward him, her gaze flicking to the corners, back again.
"He didn't belong," she said. "Not the way your people do."
"In what way?" Brant asked.
"He saw the room first," she said slowly, searching for the feeling. "Not the people. Like he was reading a diagram. He walked like the floor was already mapped in his head."
"And my staff?" Brant asked.
"They walk like they're being watched," she said. "He walked like he's the one doing the watching."
Brant tapped something into his tablet.
"Perceptive," he said.
"Is he one of yours?" she asked. "Or one of theirs?"
"Which 'theirs'?" he asked mildly.
She thought of acronyms. Logos. The word AEGIS stitched on the security badges.
"He's not just here to count your cameras," she said.
"Perhaps," Brant said. "Perhaps not. In my experience, people rarely are only what they claim to be. You, for example, are not here simply because you 'won't take your pills,' despite what your intake paperwork says."
"Those pills made me feel like I was drowning on dry land," she said.
"And we gave you a different kind of water," he said.
The sensors hummed faintly on her skin.
"What do you want from me?" she asked.
"Coherence," he said. "Patterns. I want to know what you do when the frame around your world shifts. When routines break. When people outside the usual scripts appear."
"You want to know if I can tell a wolf from a shepherd," she said.
"I want to know if you'll run toward the wolf," he said. "Or away."
The screen changed again.
A form filled the glass: lines of text, numbers, acronyms. Her name at the top. TRAN, MIRA. Below that, a paragraph in neat clinical language.
> SUBJECT DISPLAYS HIGH COGNITIVE FLEXIBILITY AND EMOTIONAL INTUITION. RESISTS DIRECTIVE AUTHORITY IN PRIVATE WHILE COMPLYING IN GROUP CONTEXTS. HIGH POTENTIAL FOR FUTURE ORGANIZATIONAL UTILITY IF ADEQUATELY CONDITIONED. HIGH RISK OF EXTERNAL DISCLOSURE IF RELEASED WITHOUT INTERVENTION.
Mira read the word utility three times.
"What is this," she asked. Her voice was too thin.
"An internal assessment," Brant said. "From early in your stay. The wording is inelegant. I've refined the categories since."
"Organizational utility," she said. "So we're back to being tools."
"Everyone is someone's tool," he said. "Even me. Even your mysterious consultant. The question is not whether you are used, but how, and for what."
"You don't believe in free will," she said.
"I believe in constrained will," he said. "And in making those constraints explicit. It's kinder, in the long run."
"You're not kind," she said.
He tilted his head.
"And yet," he said, "we are both here because other people made worse choices than I do."
The screen shifted again.
A photo.
She almost didn't recognize herself.
Fourteen. Hospital gown. Eyes swollen from crying. A plastic bracelet tight on her wrist, ink blurred. Her father in the doorway behind her, shoulders slumped, face turned away.
Her stomach lurched.
"Stop," she said.
Brant watched her, not the screen.
"First attempt," he said. "Overdose. Sloppy method, but sincere intent. The hospital recommended inpatient care. Your father refused."
"Stop," she said, louder.
"He took you home," Brant went on, as if reciting a recipe. "Locked away anything sharp. Hid the pills. Raised his voice when you dissociated. Silence for weeks afterward. Your second attempt was less sloppy."
"Stop," she shouted.
Her pulse roared in her ears. The edges of the room fuzzed.
Her hands grabbed for something that wasn't there. A blanket, a railing, anything.
"Breathe," Brant said, almost gently. "In. Out. You know how. We've practiced, haven't we? Use the skills Arden has taught you, Mira. Count the breaths. Name five things you can feel. You're very good at this, when you want to be."
She forced air in, out. Counted. The cold of the chair. The sting of the adhesive. The rough hem of her sweatshirt against her wrist. Her teeth grinding. The slickness of sweat on her palms.
"That's it," he said. "See? You are not drowning. Not right now."
The screen faded to black.
Her chest still heaved.
"Why are you showing me that?" she asked. "To prove you know where I've been? You read a file. Congratulations."
"To show you that you've already survived worse than me," he said. "People like me frighten you because we are clinical. Measured. But the real harm in your life has always come from people who loved you and didn't know what to do with their love."
Her throat tightened.
"You don't get to talk about my father," she said.
"On the contrary," Brant said, "he is essential to my understanding of you. The first jailer is always important."
She wanted to hit him. To claw his eyes out. To wipe that mild, academic expression off his face.
She stayed on the chair.
Skin conductance: spike. Heart rate: spike. Respiration: spike.
He watched the numbers steady as she dragged herself back from the edge.
"Good," he murmured. "Good. See? You can choose. Not the circumstances, but the response. That is what I care about. That is what they care about."
"They," she said. "Your 'organization.'"
He smiled again, small and secretive.
She filed it away.
"What happens to me if I tell your consultant what Arden is?" she asked.
He blinked once, slowly.
"I wondered when you'd ask that," he said.
"Will you write another note?" she asked. "HIGH RISK OF EXTERNAL DISCLOSURE, need to be moved to the Orchard? That's what you called it, isn't it? When kids get 'picked' for the next level."
His eyes sharpened.
"You've heard that name before," he said.
"A friend did," she said. "Said it like a curse."
"Then your friend listened at doors she shouldn't have," he said.
"Then you shouldn't have left them open," Mira said.
The camera in the corner whirred faintly as it adjusted focus.
Upstairs, in a room Nora watched, a red icon pulsed on the screen beside Mira's name.
Elena leaned over her shoulder.
"What's he doing?" she asked.
"Using trauma as a crowbar," Noor said. "He's running a controlled panic script. Pushing her into a high-arousal state, then seeing how fast she self-regulates."
"And the purpose?" Elena asked, though she could guess.
"Classification," Noor said. "He wants to slot her into a template: compliant, resistant, collapses, fights. It's his equivalent of stamping 'breakable' or 'bendable' on a box."
"Can you interrupt it?" Elena asked.
Noor's fingers hovered over the keyboard.
"I can trigger a fire alarm," Noor said. "Or a false system error. But if I do it too often, they'll harden the network. We'll lose access before the transfers complete."
"Is he going to hurt her?" Elena asked.
"Not physically," Noor said. "Tonight. This is data collection. The real damage is slower."
On the screen, Brant leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
"He's probing for her loyalty anchors," Noor added. "Who she runs to when doors crack. You. Holt. The consultant mask. The father. The other subjects."
Elena's hands curled into fists.
"And we sit here and watch," she said.
"For now," Noor said softly. "We move her in under forty-eight hours if the paperwork holds. That has to matter."
"If he breaks her before then, it won't," Elena said.
Noor watched Mira's face.
"She's not breaking tonight," Noor said. "Look at her. She's angry."
---
Brant studied Mira as if she were the only exhibit in a private museum.
"You think the Orchard is something to fear," he said. "Most people do, when they only see the edges. But it's just another room. Another set of tests. Not so different from this."
"Do you send everyone there?" she asked.
"Only the ones who show promise," he said.
"And the ones who don't?" she asked.
"They're redirected," he said.
"You mean discarded," she said.
"It depends whom you ask," he said.
He had a way of making horrors sound procedural.
"The man upstairs," she said. "Hale. Will he go to the Orchard too?"
Brant's mouth twitched.
"He's already been somewhere more efficient," he said.
"You know him," she said.
"I know his type," Brant said. "You do too, even if you don't have the vocabulary yet. Men like him exist to test fences. To see which subjects might slip through or bite."
"And which are useful," she said.
"Exactly," he said.
"What am I," she asked. "To you."
He looked down at his tablet, as if the answer might be written there.
"An interesting case," he said. "Someone whose survival instinct wears the mask of altruism. You'd burn your own file if you thought it would keep someone else's from being used as kindling. But you'd dress it up as a moral stance, not a reflex. That makes you valuable."
"Valuable," she said. "So you can sell me."
"So I can recommend you," he said. "To people who will pay attention to your talents."
"Talents," she repeated. "You make me sound like a resume."
"In many ways, you are one," he said. "Every interaction, every choice you make here is a line on it. That's what institutions do, Mira. They turn people into paperwork."
"And you help," she said.
"It pays well," he said. "And it allows me to steer some of the sharper knives away from the most fragile throats."
Her lip curled.
"You tell yourself that at night?" she asked. "When you go to bed in your nice house, with your nice kitchen, and your carbon monoxide detector that isn't also a camera?"
"Yes," he said.
For a moment, he didn't sound defensive.
He sounded tired.
"Some of us make peace with half-measures," he said. "Others break themselves chasing absolutes."
"You think I'm chasing absolutes?" she asked.
"I think you haven't yet decided what you're willing to live with," he said. "But you will. Everyone does, eventually. Or they stop living."
Silence stretched.
Her throat hurt. She realized only then that she'd been clenching it, fighting tears she refused to let him see.
"How long are you going to keep me here?" she asked.
"As long as it takes," he said.
"For what?" she asked.
"For you to answer a simple question," he said. "The next time your world shifts—another email, another consultant, another opening in the walls—who will you decide to be? The girl who jumped, or the one who stayed and watched?"
"I jumped," she said.
He tilted his head.
"Did you?" he asked. "You're here."
Her fingers dug into the edge of the chair seat.
In the mirror, her reflection's eyes blazed.
He smiled faintly.
"Session's almost over," he said. "But before we go, I'd like to run a small scenario."
He tapped his tablet again.
The room lights dimmed by a fraction.
On the screen, text scrolled.
> SCENARIO: FIRE EVENT – PARTIAL EVACUATION – STAFF SHORTAGE.
Sirens began to wail, low and distant first, then louder.
Red strobes flickered at the corners of the ceiling, bathing the room in rhythmic color.
Mira's body reacted before her mind did: surge of adrenaline, spike of fear.
"In the event of a genuine fire," Brant said conversationally over the noise, "our staff are trained to evacuate residents in order of vulnerability and risk. Some will be told to wait. Some will be told to move. Some will have to decide on their own."
"Is this real?" she shouted over the alarm.
"For the purposes of my data, it doesn't matter," he said. "Pretend it is."
The door remained closed.
The lock stayed lit, a small green eye.
"Help me up," she said.
"Can't," he said. "I'm only observing."
She braced her hands on the arms of the chair.
It did not move.
Her breath hitched.
"Of course," she muttered. "Bolted down."
Somewhere, something boomed—metal on metal, a door slamming hard.
Or a recording of one.
"Calm," Brant said. "You're safe. This room is fire-resistant. Solid concrete, reinforced door. You could sit here for hours while the rest of the building burns and you'd be fine."
"Comforting," she said.
"Is it?" he asked.
The sirens kept screaming.
She shut her eyes a moment, then opened them again.
The sensors tugged at her skin, every beat of her heart a number on his tablet.
He watched her, waiting.
He wanted to see if she would beg. If she would promise anything. If she'd trade truth for safety, self for system.
Her father had begged, the second time, in the hallway outside the psychiatrist's office. She'd heard him. "Just fix her," he'd said, voice breaking. "Make her normal."
She had promised herself, between one breath and the next, that she would never beg for anything again.
She exhaled slowly.
"If this place burns," she said, pitching her voice flat to keep it from shaking, "you won't be down here with me."
"Probably not," he said. "I'll be upstairs, coordinating."
"You'll save the docile ones first," she said. "The ones who make you feel effective. Then the ones who look good in your numbers. Then, if there's time, the rest."
He didn't deny it.
"So here's my answer," she said.
Sirens. Red light. The pulse of it in her skull.
"I don't trust you," she said. "Or your 'organization.' Or the man upstairs with the fake badge. I don't trust that anyone outside this room has my interests in mind."
"Fair," he said.
"So if the world shifts again," she said, "I'm not going to ask 'who do I run to.' I'm going to ask 'who do I drag with me.'"
He blinked.
"That's an unusual phrasing," he said.
"You wanted to know what I cling to when the floor falls out," she said. "It's simple. If I'm going down, I'm grabbing as many wires as I can."
"And you think that makes you powerful?" he asked.
"No," she said. "Just harder to file."
The alarms cut off so sharply the silence hurt.
The red lights flickered and died.
The room returned to its gray, humming state.
Brant glanced at his tablet, lips moving silently as he read the raw numbers.
"Interesting," he said again, softly this time.
He stood.
"We're done for tonight," he said. "You can go back upstairs."
"And if I don't?" she asked.
"Then I'll have staff carry you," he said. "But I'd rather you have the dignity of walking."
She wanted to refuse purely on principle.
But the thought of the stairwell, of fresh air from upper vents, of the hum of the common room, pulled at her.
She stood.
The sensors tugged free one by one as he peeled them off, leaving round ghosts on her skin.
He held the door.
She stepped through.
In the hallway, the world felt slightly tilted. The night-shift lights buzzed. Someone coughed in a far-off ward.
Brant touched her shoulder lightly.
"You did well," he said.
"If you're saying that," she said, "I probably didn't."
He smiled.
"Sleep, Mira," he said. "You'll need it. Things will be… lively soon."
"How soon?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
The door shut between them with a small, final click.
She stood there a moment, fingers brushing the marks on her arm.
They felt like targets.
---
When Mira's name flicked from BASEMENT back to FLOOR 2 – RESIDENTIAL on Noor's display, Elena let out a breath she had not realized she was holding.
"She's moving," Noor said. "Session ended."
"What did he get?" Elena asked.
"Enough," Noor said. "He knows she's not easily cowed. He'll mark her as 'high potential, high hazard.' That might actually help our case for moving her. No one likes sitting on a bomb."
"And the others?" Elena asked.
Noor tapped the screen, bringing up a separate window.
"Transfer requests filed," Noor said. "Two approved pending signatures. One flagged for 'additional justification.' HM-033 is stuck in a jurisdictional loop because some clerk in Family Services can't read the right box."
"Can we fix it?" Elena asked.
"We can patch around it," Noor said. "Forge built the system. We know where it leaks."
"Do it," Elena said.
Noor hesitated.
"We're cutting it close, Morrow," she said. "Every tweak I make increases the chance someone in Audit wonders why their files keep rearranging themselves."
"Forty-eight hours," Elena said. "That's all Kovács is giving us."
"That's all Krell gave us," Noor corrected. "Kovács doesn't realize she's on his schedule yet."
Elena rubbed at the ache between her eyes.
"Call Holt," she said. "Tell him Brant ran a basement scenario and that we're one clerk's mistake away from losing HM-033."
"And Damian?" Noor asked.
Elena looked at his name on the other screen.
Damian PROCTOR – STATUS: REST.
Rest.
No one in Arden rested. They simply lay still enough for the cameras to call it that.
"We watch him," she said. "We watch them all. And we hope our erosion is faster than their drills."
Noor nodded, head bowed over the glow.
On the screen, Mira's dot blinked once, then settled.
She lay down on her narrow bed, eyes open, listening to the building breathe.
In another part of the city, Amelia deleted a sentence in her draft, rewrote it, and hated both versions equally.
Kieran's phone buzzed on the table beside him.
He stared at the name: NOOR.
Outside, beyond all of them, Holcomb slept on its cracked foundations, the ghosts of Orchard children whispering in the pipes, waiting to see which way this time the ground would finally shift.