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“He was shocking your system so that it would be vulnerable to whatever he was saying,” Dr. Bradley murmurs. “Some believe the answer is to painfully shock the patient until they don’t respond to the stimuli, but I find that barbaric. I think you can break it yourself. What else would he do?”

“Dr. Xav wanted me to believe that everyone had forgotten about me,” I mutter. “He showed me a video of Roark face fucking another man, and I was so tired, I believed him.”

“The photos were real, but he twisted what happened,” Orion rumbles. “The asshole did it so she’d be even more susceptible to his words.”

“Then, we know how he did it,” my therapist says with a nod. “Pain, tearing away your support systems, making you believe you aren’t loved.”

“But I am,” I tell her, staring at the ring on my finger and Orion. “I’m very loved and Xav is a dead motherfucking liar.”

“Exactly,” Dr. Bradley says with a feral grin before smoothing out her expression. “So let’s take you back to the night Xavier Pontus underestimated you, shall we?”

“Okay,” I agree. “What do you want me to do?”

“It sounds cliche, but lay down and close your eyes. Visualize what happened. I’m going to count down from five. When I get to one, you’ll be in the room with Ina and Grant. I want you to pay attention to the details that happened right before and right after. Can you do that?” Dr. Brantley asks.

As I nod, Orion leans forward. “I suggested purposefully triggering her to see if she can break the suggestion. Lennon doesn’t have her knife on her, and I can protect myself from her. I want to prove to her that she’s so much stronger than she believes.”

“That’s… interesting,” Dr. Bradley murmurs. “I still want her to see how she broke the suggestion or rather redirected it before, but I would like to see what Lennon does with a follow up of her trigger word being used immediately afterward with a command. Are you open to this, Lennon?”

“Yes,” I tell her. My tone is a lot more confident than I feel right now, but now that the idea is in my head, I have to go forward with it.

Laying back, I force air through my lungs as I close my eyes.

“Lennon, you’re safe and nothing can hurt you in this room. You are so strong. These are past events that you’ll be viewing. Is that understood?” Dr. Evelyn’s voice is low as she talks to me.

It feels as if it gets darker too behind my eyelids, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she turned down the lights.

“Think back to just before the library, what was happening?” she asks.

“I was walking down the hallway from my cell,” I remember. “I felt… numb. Broken, even. No one had come for me and I was starting to think that the only way I would get out was because I did it myself.”

Orion doesn’t say a word, but I know he’s listening.

“We’re going to start counting from five now. When I get to one, you’ll be back at Hidden Hills but completely safe. You’ll be viewing these events as if they were happening,” she tells me. “Five…four…three…two…one.”

The slow and steady counting sends my mind back to that time. I can feel fingers gripping my arms as I walk to the library. I was so beaten down and tired, I didn’t care that he was leaving bruises at the time.

The door to the library opens and I remember my confusion as I see Nurse Imelda tied to the chair. I wanted to feel something, anything, but the dark and permeating numbness filled me completely.

“Nurse Imelda looks angry,” I say softly to Dr. Bradley. My voice sounds detached and calm. I should feel upset by this, but I’m floating in a state of safety. “There’s so many people in the room, I felt as if I was on display. A part of me wanted to know why the nurse was in the library, but I didn’t want to draw attention to her.”

“And then what happened?” my therapist asks.

“Grant asked why I looked nervous and told me he was expecting a performance. Nurse Imelda was a government agent sent to infiltrate the hospital. The entire time… she kept watching me with kind eyes. It was as if she knew what was coming…”

My cheeks are wet and I realize I’m crying. I never realized how at peace Nurse Imelda looked until now. She expected to die that day.

“Grant said that Hidden Hills was a prototype for Kentucky to model other institutions after, and I remember how upset that made me. The numbness started to fade away to fury,” I rasp. “Xav pushed a hunting knife into my hand, saying that he needed my help. He told me he wanted me to kill Nurse Imelda, told me to be a good girl, and then triggered me.”

“What happened then?” Dr. Bradley asks softly.

“I looked at Nurse Imelda, even though everything was hazy yet sharp. It’s hard to understand,” I whimper. “Everything went dark when Xav triggered me, but I think that was my mind protecting me. Things look murky."

“You’re doing fine,” Orion murmurs soothingly.

“I turned away from Nurse Imelda and stabbed Xav. Then, I forced myself to follow the command by killing everyone that wasn’t Imelda,” I whisper. “I lost myself, I chased after Collymore and killed him. I can hear the knife as it split his skin like butter…”

“But did you hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it?” Dr. Bradley asks. There’s no mention that murder is bad, that’s not how she works. She’s the therapist to mercenaries, after all.