The dark hallway opens into a corridor with white walls and black doors. Numbers sit where names should be, crisp and utilitarian. Each door bears a smear of color near its handle. Red, blue, green, one that glints mother-of-pearl like a seashell at a bad wedding. The floor is so clean it humiliates every memory of dirt I have ever carried.
Air hums inside the corridor, alive with static. I can feel the vibration through my bare soles, a whisper of electricity searching for skin to own. The hum syncs with the pulse in my throat. It wants to be music and a threat at once.
"Choose a door," he says.
"Why these?" I ask.
"You chose them," he answers, and the certainty in his tone chills me more than the cold tile.
The smear of color I reach for is the color of old bruises, violet edging toward brown, the shade that means healing or rot depending on the light. My fingers hover before the handle, waiting for permission I will never be given. The metal smells faintly of blood that has been cleaned too well. When I press down, the latch sighs open like something relieved to breathe.
The room beyond is crowded with frames turned to face the wall. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. The backs form a grid of brown paper and wire. The silence in here is not absence; it's density. It smells of glue, dust, and the seconds after a fight when everyone wonders if it's really over.
"Turn one over," he says.
"No."
"Turn one over," he repeats, firmer now, the weight of a doctor who has stopped pretending a question is a choice.
I chose the frame nearest my knee. The wire bites my thumb. The paper cracks. When I turn it, the glass catches the dim light and throws my face back at me before revealing the photograph beneath. For a heartbeat, I hope it's blank. It isn't.
A mouth. Mine. The lower lip is split, and the upper lip is smiling. A smile I had kissed while it bled. I remember the warmth, the taste of iron and citrus. A promise kept until it killed me. My stomach folds inward.
The attention at my sternum tightens. My breath breaks against it, a warning and a test. I set the frame down and choose another because obedience has always been easier than silence.
A hotel room blooms inside the next frame. A lamp gives off yellow light too small for the bed it guards. The shadow of a hand stains the wall. It could be mine. It could be his. I flip the frame back before the shadow moves.
A third frame. A bathroom counter. Mascara streaked like war paint, a ring in a dish waiting for a ferry that never came. I want to laugh and cry, but the sound would echo, and echoes belong to him.
"Enough," I say.
"Say what you see," he replies.
"I see worship," I tell him, "and an altar that was not worthy."
The pressure at my sternum eases, not kindly, like a scientist releasing a specimen to see if it will crawl. I imagine him behind the glass, making neat notes in the margin of my soul.
"Forty seconds," the overhead woman says, her voice sterile as the walls.
"Extend thirty," a male voice counters. I try to picture his face, but I get only a tie with a stain shaped like an island that doesn't exist.
"Denied," she replies. "Audit in six."
Jonah's palm lands on my shoulder, a small mercy disguised as procedure. He hums one low note. The tone surrounding me folds an octave lower, and the room unthreads. The hallway melts into smoke. The frames turn away without my help. The air tastes metallic.
A new image pushes forward, faster, hungrier. I reject it. The rejection costs. Pain coils around my throat like a leash. The pulse spikes, reprimanding. My vision flares white, then fades to the gray of used film.
"Tell me what you need," the voice says. The correct answer is control. The true one crawls out anyway. "Someone who doesn't leave."
"I am here," he says. "I will not leave you."
Relief opens like a wound that finally drains. It slicks my mouth, tastes like yes. I hate him for knowing exactly how to say it, hate myself more for believing him.
"Twenty seconds," the woman warns.
Jonah adjusts the drip with two deliberate clicks. Cool floods the line, spreading through my veins like moonlight poured into flesh. The tone thins. The second frequency falls to a whisper. The attention lifts from my heart and slides along my throat, a hand pretending not to touch. I arch toward the pretense and loathe the instinct even as I follow it.
"Begin taper," she says.
The chair beneath me exhales. The mesh loosens a fraction. The black loses its iron taste. Somewhere behind the glass, a keyboard clicks. The hum of machinery tilts back to its ordinary register, the heartbeat of a place that believes it's saving the world.
Cables shift in their housings. Someone sets a cup down too hard. The tiny clink is almost human. It feels like a mercy when sound stops being divine.
"Rest," the voice says. "Do not speak."
"That isn't how this works," I answer, spite threaded through exhaustion. My throat is raw. My courage sounds small, but it is still mine.
Something brushes my mind, a brief amusement, as fleeting as breath, and disappears. He leaves silence in its place, proof that he can.
"Disconnect in five," the woman announces.
Five ticks. Four. Three. The warmth that lived in my chest slides under my ribs and hides, as if it had ever belonged to me. Two. One.
The tone dies.
Darkness returns stripped of meaning. It is only dark again.
The visor lifts. Jonah's face hangs above me, upside down, kind in the way of people who have seen too much helplessness and kept their hearts anyway. He wipes sweat from my temple. The cloth smells faintly of mint. The air kisses the skin it exposes and makes me shiver.
"How do you feel?" he asks.
"Occupied."
The corner of his mouth twitches. Almost a smile, almost pity. He checks the monitor, then glances toward the glass. I follow his gaze. The pane gives me back a ghostly reflection of myself layered over the vague outline of a man who hasn't moved in a very long time.
"Hydration," Jonah says.
A straw finds my mouth. The water is room temperature, perfect in its mediocrity. I sip, swallow, and listen to the sound of my own throat. It sounds like someone else learning to live again.
"Good," the woman says from the ceiling. "We have what we need."
The overhead lights brighten in a gradual curve. The lab's walls reclaim their sterile authority. The mundane world rushes back in, too loud, too bright. I should feel safe. Instead, I feel stripped.
Cassian's outline doesn't move. He could be a statue carved from the idea of restraint. For a moment, I think he's gone, but then the faintest tilt of his head tells me otherwise. Watching. Assessing and maybe admiring his work.
Jonah unhooks the IV and peels the sensor pads from my skin. Each one leaves a small pink ring that will fade by morning. He hums that same note again, softer now, like an apology he can't speak.
"You did well," he says.
"Did I?" My voice cracked. He doesn't answer. He folds the mesh cap neatly and sets it aside as though tidying grief.
I stare at the mirror until my reflection blurs. Behind the glass, the shape that is Cassian leans closer, close enough that I know he can see the tremor in my jaw. The line between scientist and savior is so thin I could split it with a breath.
The intercom crackles once. A man clears his throat. Not Jonah. Not the woman. Him. "I am not finished," he says.
It isn't loud, yet it fills every nerve I have left. I'm not sure if he means the session or me. Either way, he's telling the truth.
I close my eyes, and the dark behind them grows violet, the color of old bruises, of doors I opened when I should have run.