November 29th, 2025.
Hugo Hollands, Age 25.
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The soap skittered past my foot like bait. Someone laughed low behind me. A palm skimmed my hip, testing the air the way men do when they think the room belongs to them.
I didn't remember the start of it.
Not the shove. Not the words. Not the look that tipped something sideways inside my skull.
All I remembered was the weight of my knuckles meeting someone's face over and over, a rhythm with its own warrant, the kind of motion that carried its own purpose without asking my permission. Water from the showers ran in thin streams around us, trickling across the tiles, pooling under my knees. My breath tore in and out of me, sharp enough to sting the back of my throat.
The guy under me tried to curl away, but I had a grip on the back of his head, holding him in place while I drove another hit into him. And another. And another. The sound didn't even register as sound anymore. It blended into the ringing that had been drilling through my ears since the moment I snapped.
I kept thinking I was done being the quiet one. The easy one. The one they tried every angle on just to see how I'd react. I was tired of feeling watched, measured, prodded like I was some fun little weakness for them to push around until I broke. I was tired of Tucker's voice behind me in the cell, calling me pretty boy. Tired of the lingering eyes in the corridor. Tired of the laughter that echoed after lights-out like someone waiting for me to slip on my own shadow.
Maybe that's what led me here. Maybe not. The truth felt slippery, refusing to stay in my hands long enough for me to claim it.
All I knew was my fists kept landing, and the world around me tightened into a single point. I could smell the cheap soap from the showers, the staleness of the room, the breath pouring out of the guy beneath me in short bursts. I could taste something sharp on my tongue, something that reminded me how long it had been since I'd slept without feeling like I needed to defend myself even in dreams.
A hand snatched at my arm.
I didn't stop. My body didn't even hear the order behind it.
Another hand pulled, this one stronger, and my balance lurched. Water splashed across my knees as I tried to tear myself back into the fight, but the grip on me tightened near my elbow, wrenching me upright. My palm slipped against the tile, and the shift in weight cracked a shot of pain through my shoulder.
"Hollands!" A voice cut through the ringing, though it sounded warped, stretched thin, like it was coming from underwater. "That's enough!"
I couldn't tell if it was enough. My heart kept pounding like someone was still swinging at me. Like someone still had their hand on my throat.
The guard dragged me away from the man on the ground. My feet slid across the wet floor, leaving streaks of water and something darker behind us. My chest heaved; breaths came too fast, too uneven, as if the fight hadn't ended, only moved inside me.
The ringing sharpened—not concussion; the mark heating like a coin in a fist—until it swallowed every other sound. The guard's grip dug into my arm hard enough to bruise, hauling me out of the shower block, past bodies pressed against the tiled walls, past faces watching me with wide eyes or cruel smirks or that blank, hungry curiosity inmates always carried when someone snapped.
I tried to say something—anything—but my voice felt locked behind my teeth. My jaw clenched on its own, like the muscles didn't trust the silence between words.
The corridor blurred as the guard shoved me forward. The echo in my ears swallowed whatever he shouted next. My hands kept twitching, still shaped like fists, as if my body hadn't gotten the message that it was over.
I barely remembered who I'd been hitting. Only that I'd reached a point where I couldn't take another whisper behind me, another look angled like pity or threat. I was tired of being the easiest target in a room full of people waiting for one.
The ringing didn't stop. It swelled, thick and relentless, beating at the inside of my skull like someone trying to get in—or trying to get out.
And I still didn't know which one it was.
The room they brought me into didn't look like anything that belonged to justice. It looked like a storage space someone had emptied just enough to pretend it had authority. A single table in the middle. Two chairs. A buzzing light overhead that made everything feel washed thin, like the air itself didn't want to be here.
They sat me down across from a disciplinary officer whose expression said he had already seen too much today to care about another inmate losing control. A second guard leaned against the door, arms crossed, eyes fixed on me with the same polite boredom officers wear when they expect trouble.
A file sat open on the table. Papers spread inside it like the remains of something dissected.
"Hollands," the officer said, tapping the first page with the back of his pen. "Charges for assault. Excessive force. Injuring an inmate during showers. You understand what this means?"
"I understand." My voice scraped itself out of me. My hands rested on my knees, still shaking from something I didn't want to name.
The officer exhaled through his nose, lifted a paper, and read without looking at me, his tone flat. "You're claiming self-defense. So let's hear your statement. All of it."
I swallowed once. The room felt too close, like the walls were waiting for me to lie.
"He came onto me," I said. "In a weird way."
The officer lifted his eyes for the first time. "Explain."
I wet my lips. "He threw a bar of soap on the ground. Told me to pick it up. Before that he'd been following me around. Always waiting for me to be alone. You can ask Tucker."
The officer blinked slowly, then raised a brow. "You befriended Tucker?"
"I didn't befriend anyone," I said, sharper than I meant to. "He's my cellmate, and he's been around enough to see what's been happening."
The officer leaned back, studying me with new interest, as if the mention of Tucker shifted the shape of the story. He nodded to the guard by the door.
"Bring Keiser in."
The guard stepped out. I heard footsteps. The shuffle of someone being guided down the hall. Then Keiser appeared in the doorway—taller than I remembered, though that might've been the bruising pulling his features into something monstrous. His right eye was swollen shut. His cheekbone had turned a deep shade, stretching across half his face. Dried blood marked the edges of his mouth.
His wrist still had a smear of soap. Same hand that brushed my side.
The officer's muttered "damn" cracked the room open for a second.
He didn't hide his shock well.
He flicked his gaze toward me. Then back to Keiser. Then to the file again.
"You want me to believe this was self-defense?" he asked.
I leaned forward, hands braced on the table as if my body couldn't hold still anymore.
"Sir," I said, "I've never been to jail. I've never stepped foot in a police station. The only time I went into one was to visit someone. I don't know how this works. I don't know the rules. I don't know what's normal. And some guy tried to force himself on me in a shower. What was I supposed to do? Stand there? Let it happen? I'm panicking. I'm losing my mind in here."
My chest tightened. Words came out too fast, like steam escaping a crack in metal.
The officer rubbed a hand over his jaw, then glanced at the other guard with a look that carried something close to disbelief.
"This kind of force…" he began, motioning vaguely toward Keiser. "Coming from someone your size."
He paused, flipping the sheet in the file with two fingers.
"Keiser here is—" He gestured loosely at the man beside him, as if Keiser's broad frame answered the rest for him. "You get my point."
Keiser kept his head lowered, jaw clenched, breath uneven. For the first time since I hit him, I looked at him without anger clouding the shape of his face. I felt something flicker in my stomach, something I didn't want to acknowledge too quickly.
The officer tapped the table twice. "Step outside. Both of you."
The guard opened the door. Keiser walked out first. I followed, the fluorescent corridor cold against the back of my neck.
We stood side by side in the narrow space, three feet apart. The officer's voices murmured behind the door—too soft to understand, too sharp not to feel.
Keiser didn't look at me. He stared forward, arms at his sides, shoulders rigid.
I stared at him.
Not with fear. Not with regret. Something else. Something that unfurled slowly inside me, a warmth crawling through my limbs, a realization that spread from my breath down to my fingertips.
I'd gotten him on the ground. Pinned him. Held him there. Hit him until the guards tore me off.
He was taller. Broader. Stronger.
And I'd broken through him like he was made of paper.
My heart thudded once, hard enough that I felt it in my throat.
That felt good. God, it felt good.
A rush moved through me—not triumph, not cruelty—something darker, something cleaner, something that tasted like the moment before surrender and the moment after victory at the same time. Power hummed—no, not hummed, it thrummed—through the marks Corvian had carved into my soul, something ancient twisting beneath the voice of my conscience.
Is this the marking? The thought slid through me before I could stop it.
My palms tingled. My jaw unclenched only to tighten again with the memory of my fists meeting his skin. The reality of it coursed through me in a way nothing human ever had.
Keiser shifted slightly, glancing down the hall, refusing to look my way.
But I saw it now—how his shoulders had changed around me. How he held himself a little more carefully. How his breath shortened when I moved even an inch.
And an unsettling truth sank teeth into the inside of my mind—
I wasn't weak. I wasn't prey. I wasn't the quiet boy in the corner anymore.
My strength wasn't normal. It wasn't human. And it didn't feel wrong.
It felt like something inside me had finally stopped hiding.
They called us back inside once the officers finished conferring among themselves. The guard motioned for us to re-enter the room, and Keiser stepped through first, moving with a stiffness that made his injuries look heavier than before. I followed him, the door closing behind us with a dull click that seemed to seal the air in place.
The disciplinary officer waited at the table, elbows planted on its surface, fingers laced as if he had reached a conclusion he didn't enjoy but intended to deliver anyway. His eyes moved between the two of us with a measuring gaze, something colder than suspicion yet sharper than judgment.
He tapped the folder once.
Then looked directly at me.
"You're the magician," he said. "Hugo Hollands."
The title dropped into the room like a stone into still water, ripples stretching into every corner. My throat tightened. I nodded once.
The officer scratched his chin, the gesture slow, thoughtful, almost like he was trying to understand how I had ended up breathing the same air as men like Keiser.
"And they let you share a cell with someone?"
A quiet scoff escaped him—not amusement, more disbelief, edged with something that carried the aftertaste of fear.
He leaned back, studying me with renewed scrutiny, as if the fight made more sense now that he remembered the headlines, the case files, the rumors sliding through the halls of this place faster than truth ever did.
"Well," he said, lifting the paper again, "I've made a decision."
His tone hardened, flattening into the shape of authority.
"Hollands, administrative segregation for ten—investigative hold pending PREA review."
The number struck me like cold water poured over the back of my neck. Ten days. Enough to lose track of time. Enough to forget the sound of people breathing near me. Enough to feel the walls press inward until my mind stopped knowing where my thoughts ended and the cell began.
The officer didn't let the weight of it settle before continuing.
"As for you, Keiser," he said, turning his head only slightly toward the man beside me. "Don't fuck around to find out. You don't know what this guy is capable of."
Keiser's jaw twitched. He didn't raise his eyes.
The officer went on, voice carrying a low warning that seemed to reach past Keiser and land on everyone in the room, guards included.
"Lucky the rumor mill's wrong and you didn't light him up."
My heartbeat stilled for a moment. The words brushed the edges of a truth only I and Corvian knew. It was an offhand remark from someone who thought he was referencing rumors, but something inside me tightened as if the joke had hit a live wire.
The officer flipped another paper, skimmed it, then laid it flat on the table again.
"Keiser, you're getting six days in seg. Medical first. Then confinement."
Keiser didn't move. His breathing stayed shallow, controlled, as though he had swallowed whatever reaction wanted to rise.
The officer shut the file, a sharp finality in the sound.
"Take them."
Two guards stepped forward. One reached for Keiser, guiding him toward the door, the other gesturing for me to follow. I stood slowly, the shift in posture sending a rush of sensation down my arms—tension, the residue of adrenaline, the strange pulse of something unfamiliar simmering beneath my skin.
As they led us out of the room, I caught Keiser's profile. His swollen eye, the split lip, the hollow under his cheekbone. He looked away from me the second he sensed my gaze.
But I could still see the way his shoulders stiffened. The way he kept his distance with intention. The way his breath sharpened when the guards moved us nearer to each other.
I felt it again— that strange electric certainty, that realization that his size hadn't mattered, that something inside me had cracked open and didn't intend to close again.
The corridor stretched ahead of us, a long throat of fluorescent light. The guard's hand touched my arm, not roughly, but with a kind of wary firmness that made it clear they were touching a threat, not a person.
Ten days in the dark waited for me.
But the part of me still vibrating from the fight—the part that had knocked Keiser to his knees—didn't feel afraid.
It felt awake.
The hallway felt too narrow, too loud with footsteps and the scrape of keys along the guard's belt. My wrists throbbed from the grip on my arm, each step tugging something inside me tighter. The unit smelled of sweat and soap and dried breath, the kind of trapped air that never changed, no matter how long you lived inside it.
We rounded a corner, and Tucker appeared out of nowhere—shoving past two inmates, breathless, eyes wide like he'd been waiting for this exact moment.
"Hollands," he said, voice pitched somewhere between awe and disbelief. "Did you actually do what I heard you did?"
I didn't slow. The guard didn't let me.
But I turned my head just enough for him to see the look on my face.
"I did," I said. "And I'll do it again."
Something in his expression twisted—respect, maybe, or fear dressed up as admiration. I wasn't sure. The guard tugged my arm harder, but I held Tucker's gaze for another second, letting the words settle in him like a warning sliding under a door.
"When I come out of solitary," I added, "you better remember, Tuck—protection costs."
A smile touched my mouth. Not kind. Not cruel. Something colder. Something that felt like truth at last.
Tucker's mouth fell open, the confusion spreading slowly, as if he couldn't decide whether to take it as a threat or a promise. He stayed frozen there, staring after me, while the guard yanked me forward again.
We reached the solitary corridor. The air changed—thicker, quieter, swallowing sound. The guard unlocked a door and pushed it open with his shoulder. The cell waited inside, a rectangular box of stale air and pale walls. No bedframe. Just a slab. A toilet in the corner. A single overhead bulb casting its sickly light.
They shoved me in.
The door slammed behind me with the kind of force that makes your bones tighten on instinct. The bolt locked. Footsteps retreated.
And silence rose like water. The second breath still wouldn't come. Jurisdiction had the tether under glass.
I stayed near the door for a breath, then dragged my hands through my hair. Fingers scraped against my scalp. My skin felt too warm, as if a fever was gathering under it. Something restless burned along my spine, crawling up my neck and settling behind my eyes.
This can't keep going. This heat. This pressure. This stupid, constant tightening inside me.
I paced once, twice, the walls following me like they wanted to memorize the rhythm of my steps. My thoughts rolled too quickly, hitting one another like stones.
If I set this place on fire— even if I could— that wouldn't save me. That wouldn't give me freedom back.
They would put me down like an animal. They would erase me just to stop the nuisance.
I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead. The light buzzed above me, flickering at the edges, making everything look too sharp.
The first court session was in two days. Two days.
The thought crept in slowly at first, forming in the back of my mind like a bruise that refuses to stay hidden, and by the time I recognized it, it had already taken over the room with its quiet certainty: if Logan couldn't get me out of here, then this place wasn't a pause in my life—it was the rest of it. The cell felt smaller with every breath, the kind of small that squeezed the air thinner until breathing turned into an effort, and I found myself sitting forward, elbows braced against my knees, feeling the weight of the truth settling into the space between my ribs.
If Logan failed, there wasn't another path to take or another miracle waiting somewhere out of sight. There was no contingency plan I had stored away, no backup, no one else to call. I had placed everything onto him without even realizing I had done it, and now the possibility of him failing opened under me like a pit. The walls seemed to lean in as if they too understood what it meant: years, maybe decades, in this place, waking to the same dead air, the same silence, the same version of myself.
Poppy's voice rose from a distant memory, so sharp and dismissive it almost felt like she was standing beside me again, arms crossed, shaking her head like she always did when she saw me heading toward disaster. She had told me to hire a lawyer—told me I needed someone real, someone whose job was protecting people like me before the ground gave out beneath their feet. She had said it plainly, almost carelessly, as if the warning should not have required much thought on my part. And I had dismissed her with the kind of confidence only an idiot could afford.
I remembered telling her I couldn't risk it, that I couldn't have a lawyer digging into my life, knowing the things I did, the things I carried. The idea of trusting someone with the truth felt more dangerous than any crime I had ever flirted with. I'd believed that back then, believed it so completely that it became an excuse bound tightly to my pride. I thought that as long as I stayed out of trouble—or at least stayed clever enough—I wouldn't need anyone, not even someone who could shield me from a system that chews people up without blinking.
And now here I was, sitting in the dim light of solitary confinement, realizing just how stupid that had been.
I had money. More than enough. Enough to hire someone sharp, brutal, informed—someone who could have stood between me and this nightmare long before it ever began. I could have bought safety instead of sinking every paycheck into things that made me feel alive for a second and empty again the minute I stepped out of the store. I could have used it for something that mattered. But instead I spent it on clothes I didn't need, accessories I wore because they distracted me from myself, lip rings I bought because I liked the way they looked on me under club lights, as if looking put together was the same as being put together.
The memory turned sour in my stomach, the kind of regret that crawls under the skin and refuses to loosen its grip. I leaned back, dragging my hands through my hair, feeling heat gather at the base of my skull. The room felt too warm, too still, too aware of every mistake I had made up to this point. My breath sharpened as the realization took shape—if Logan couldn't pull off some miracle in two days, then I would stay here. I would rot here.
But Corvian— Corvian felt far away.
He felt like someone who had stepped back and decided not to reach forward again. Someone who had watched me get dragged under and thought, Well, this is the shape of fate after all.
If he had ever promised anything, it was smoke. If he had sworn on my life, then my life must not have been worth much.
Maybe I was never the exception he made me believe I was. Maybe I was exactly what Igor had been: a vessel, a placeholder, a convenient body to carve power into and discard when purpose shifted.
A tool. Nothing more.
I sat down on the slab, elbows on my knees, fingers laced into my hair as the heat in my chest crawled higher. The room pressed in with every breath, and the mark inside me pulsed once, a deep ache that felt too close to shame.
Two days.
Two days until the world decided what to do with me. Two days until Logan tried to keep a promise that wasn't his to make. Two days until Corvian either remembered me—or didn't.
I lowered my head, breathing hard, and for the first time since they dragged me out of that shower…
I felt like I was burning from the inside out.