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C lipped words. A garble of sound. Blurry faces and streaks of light.

I’m being moved. Carried away.

My eyelids feel like leaden paper weights as I struggle to keep them open long enough to identify something. Voices seep into my psyche, unidentifiable and strange.

Gibberish.

I part my lips to speak, but only a frayed moan flutters past my lips. No words make it through. Just agony.

It feels like I’m underwater, a mermaid, floating through vivid coral and schools of fish. I become a character in a book with fins and jewels and water-spun hair, soaring skyward toward a happy ending. Sunlight on my skin, legs made for running, a voice that holds power and new songs to sing.

But the dull ache pounding between my legs squashes the fantasy. Sweat trickles down my temple in a slow-motion glide as I teeter on a rolling cot, my belly in cramps and my weightless arms glued to my sides. Strapped down and tied.

I’m not swimming.

I’m sinking.

The agony falls out again; a cry for help, a plea for mercy. “Please…”

Please, set me free.

Please, let me go.

Please, carry me to the room next door, so I can release my dying breath in the arms of someone I trust. He can sing me my favorite song, and I’ll have a final moment of peace before I slip away for good. I’ve earned that. I deserve that.

I don’t want to die here.

Mostly…I don’t want to die alone.

Minutes trudge by in a painful haze as I’m carted through the door and into my familiar hell. The straps release. My body is no more than a lifeless sack of skin and bones when I’m rolled off the gurney and deposited on my stiff cot. I land in a heap, strings of hair scattered across my face, legs half-dangling over the mattress, and one arm sprawled out while the other drapes across my chest.

I blink countless times, but everything is still a fog. I think it’s Roger walking away from me. A mass of lumbering cruelness. “Roger,” I call out, my voice full of scrapes and holes.

The figure pauses midway to the open door.

It is him.

My only chance at getting out of here.

“Please,” I croak. “Please, don’t leave me.” I try to soften him with sympathy. Appeal to a part of him I know must be there, hidden deep and buried.

He makes a sound that’s part-grunt, part-sigh. His hesitation sends a meager wave of strength through me, and I inch up on my elbows as they shiver and shake. I can hardly move, remnants of the anesthesia still coursing through my blood.

I glance at my wrist, where the bracelet used to reside. I’d taken it off earlier, hiding it underneath my pillow. If I can find it, I can lure him closer, slip it into his pocket, and?—

The door slams shut.

No.

I collapse backward with a wail, just as a chain drags across tile on the other side of the wall, and I curl my knees to my chest and cry.

“Everly.” His voice sounds far away, but there’s no mistaking the urgency bleeding into my name. Isaac taps the partition between us. “Bee… Hey, talk to me.”

“I…I can’t…”

“Tell me what they did to you. Where they took you.”

“I don’t know. They knocked me out…I don’t…” I squeeze my thighs together, hissing through the sting. “They took my eggs.”

Hopelessly, I sob.

My vision clouds, adding to my unraveling. My voice cracks, and my sanity splits. The drugs are still pumping through my veins, rendering me sluggish. Vulnerable. If they tried to kill me now, I’d be helpless to stop it.

I wrap my arms around my knees and weep into the starchy pillow. Isaac is right beside me. I feel him there, closer than ever. If I zoned out long enough, I could imagine his breath fanning across my face, his voice right next to my ear, vibrating through me.

How could I let this happen?

He’s a number.

A casualty.

A tragedy waiting to happen.

And somehow, I’ve come to care about his well-being just as much as my own. Twice the pain, double the loss.

“You need to keep it together. This isn’t over yet.” His tone is calm yet firm. He’s trying to reach me, but he can’t. “Listen to me. We’re not done. We have a plan. The next time that brainless fuckhead brings you food, get the bracelet on him, and I’ll…”

His voice fades out.

My cries taper off, weakening to sniffles, then to nothing. I inhale a breath as my eyes shut, Isaac’s words lulling me back underwater, where sunshine kisses the surface with a golden glow. My fingers lift as bubbles churn, and I reach for the dappled light, anxious to breach it.

But it’s just another wall.

Darkness finds me the moment my eyelids peel back open.

It’s quiet. Too quiet.

My muscles ache, and I realize I fell asleep as a tangled mess of limbs. Eyes dry and burning, I blink half-a-dozen times and extract my sticky cheek from the pillowtop as my body pulses with residual pain. When I try to move, my equilibrium wobbles, and I tip off the mattress, the cold floor a shock to my skin.

Everything hurts.

Groaning, I flick my lamp on until the room is bathed in crimson lowlight, then crawl back on the cot. I pull the blanket up over me as my teeth chatter from the chill.

The silence turns eerie when I twist to face the wall.

Issac.

He was talking to me, trying to soothe my sadness before I drifted away, lost to the void.

Panic creeps inside me, and I slap a hand to the wall, eager to hear his voice again. But it hardly makes a sound, my strength no more than a feeble breeze against a brick pillar. “Isaac?”

Nothing.

Oh, God…did they take him?

Anxious heat filters through me, only heightening the cramps and knots in my stomach. If he’s gone, I won’t survive it. I can’t do this alone. Not anymore.

I curl my hand into a fist and start pounding. “Isaac.” My voice sounds like I’ve smoked ten packs a day through a permanent lung infection. “Isaac, say something. Please.”

Slap, slap, slap.

His chain moves.

Relief sweeps through me so hard I collapse back to the mattress like a puppet with its strings cut. “You’re still there.”

He makes a drowsy, grumbling sound, telling me he was asleep. “To my profound excitement.”

“I thought… I thought you…” Tears prickle the back of my throat as I curl closer to the wall. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

His shackles drag over to me and his voice loudens. “You okay?”

Okay is code for alive .

Neither of us is okay. I’m not sure we ever will be again. “I-I don’t think I have much time left,” I say brokenly, splaying a flat palm to the divider, pretending it’s his hand to mine. Human touch. “They took what they needed from me. They?—”

“They still need to implant the eggs into the recipient, yeah? That’s how it works?” He pauses. “You have time. They aren’t getting rid of you before the transfer is successful. And who’s to say there won’t be more?”

I swipe the wetness off my cheeks, absorbing his words.

Maybe he’s right.

Maybe there is still time.

For me, anyway…

“What…what about you? Do you have an hourglass?” I realize I don’t even know how long I was in that operating room. My plate of lunch still sits beside me, ice cold. “How long was I gone?”

“Few hours, maybe. Then you slept another three or four.” A short pause. “No hourglass.”

I swallow, closing my eyes as I sprawl out on my back, pulling the blanket to my chin. “I’m cold,” I murmur. The pain in my abdomen throbs, and my teeth chatter at double the speed. “I hurt all over. It feels like they eviscerated me.”

“Fight through it.”

My eyes water again. “I don’t know if I can.”

“You have to. There’s no other choice.”

Choice.

I had the power of choice once. My choices led me here. “I don’t have any fight left. Everything is…so hard.”

He goes silent, and I wonder what he’s thinking. His mind is a labyrinth. I’m constantly anticipating his next words—what he’ll say to make me laugh, muse, question, or rage. Isaac has seen things. Worse things than me; I’m certain of it.

When he doesn’t respond after a few minutes, a stab of loneliness tugs at me. Maybe I was fishing for a reaction. A grand speech or wise words. A shot of conviction to my despair.

I should know him better than that.

My fingers curl around the edge of the blanket. “You have nothing to say?”

“What, that you’re done fighting?” He makes an abrasive sound. “I’m not the kind of guy to talk anyone off the ledge, Bee.”

Frowning, I pull myself up on unsteady forearms. “You’re the only guy I have.”

“And for that, I’m sorry.”

“Isaac, stop.” I inch closer to the wall, wincing as my body pulses with resistance. “I know you care. You don’t need to put up a wall with me.” My nose wrinkles as I clear my throat. “Figuratively.”

“You think you know me, huh?”

I waver, lowering back down to the cot. “I know enough.”

“Enlighten me, then.”

“I think, at your core, you’re a good man,” I say, tucking my hands underneath my cheek. “Decent, honest. Fiercely protective of the ones you love. But you wear a mask, so people can’t see the real you. To you, vulnerability is a disease, a weakness.” My eyes begin to adjust as I stare at the barrier of red-stained white. “Something bad happened to you. Something awful. And maybe you’ve always blamed yourself for it, even though it wasn’t your fault. It couldn’t be. But you feel deeply, more than you let on. You’ve internalized your losses to the point where you reject genuine emotion, connection…feeling. It’s easier that way. Safer.”

No response.

I scan the wall, my heartbeats more alive as I drink in the reflective stillness. “Am I on the right track?”

“Hmm,” he grouses, shifting in place. “Are you my therapist now?”

“Do you have a therapist?”

“People see therapists so they can change. That would imply there’s a point in trying. Or that I care.”

“Change isn’t the word I would use. Therapy is about growth. That’s something anyone can benefit from, right?” When he doesn’t reply, I chew on my cheek, hoping I’m reaching him in some small way. “Closing yourself off doesn’t do you any favors, Isaac. It’s lonely. Cold. Life will always be filled with loss and heartache, but that’s what makes us stronger. We carry those hardships with us, always, but we don’t let them define us.”

“Easy for you to say.” His tone is clipped and bitter. “You’ve led a privileged life up till now. A pretty face with pretty people catering to your every whim. Fame and fortune.”

“My pretty face is what put me here, rotting away in this prison.” My chest heaves, my emotions heightening. “It’s a curse, not a gift.”

“And it’s what’s keeping you alive right now.”

I release a humorless laugh. “You think I haven’t suffered? Grieved? Struggled?”

He doesn’t reply.

I sit up, wincing when I cross my legs. He’s shutting me out again, pushing me away. A defense mechanism to dull his pain and avoid letting any more inside. “Talk to me,” I plead softly, pressing my forehead and hand to the wall. “Tell me what hurt you.”

Still, nothing.

“Isaac.” I inhale a shuddery breath, curling my fingers. “Tell me why you hate the world.”

Twenty-two seconds go by before he admits it. “Maybe I do hate the world.”

Laced through the bitterness, there’s a trace of vulnerability I’ve been longing to hear.

A tear leaks from my eye and travels down my cheek, warm and light. Swallowing, I close my eyes and wait for more.

He pauses. Five more beats until he says the words that break my heart.

“But the world hated me first.”