Page 20 of Heresy
I start with my body—the only territory that is still exclusively mine. Muscles scream in protest as I force them into a push-up, then another, the pain becoming a prayer. Sit-ups until my core is a knot of fire. Pacing my three steps until my legs ache. Sweat drips into my eyes, a salty reminder that I still possess something they haven't stolen. The physical discomfort is a welcome proof of agency in a space designed to eliminate all choice.My body is the only thing I own,I think through gritted teeth.I will not let them make it weak.
Next, I fight the silence with memory. I close my eyes and rebuild my art in a mental gallery, starting with a favorite: a single, stubborn weed growing through a crack in a sidewalk. I reconstruct every detail with obsessive precision—the texture of the concrete, the exact shade of chlorophyll green, the way the light caught the edge of a single leaf like a benediction. Each remembered image is another brick in a fortress built against the encroaching madness.
This becomes my new reality. Exercise until I ache. Rebuild art until my mind is sharp. I eat every crumb they provide, not from hunger, but because nutrition is fuel for resistance. I am a survivor learning to extract strength from degradation, a ghost haunting her own captivity.
I am in the middle of this new routine, my mind focused, when an unfamiliar sound rips through the silence. A sharp, metallic scrape from the other side of the door.
Then the heavy, unmistakableTHUDof the bolt being pulled back.
My heart still launches into my throat, a caged bird thrashing against bone. But this time, I don't freeze. I straighten my spine, plant my feet, and face the door.
I am no longer the same woman they locked away. I am something harder.
Let them come.
EIGHT
THE RHYTHM OF THE CAGE
HEX
The clubhouse breathes in darkness, but it is not at peace. It’s the tense, watchful quiet of a beast feigning sleep. The air, usually thick with stale beer and smoke, is electric tonight, charged with the ozone of an approaching storm.
I’m at the head of the church table, the wood still warm from the dozen bodies that surrounded it an hour ago. The emergency meeting was short, brutal, and ended with no good answers. Across from me, Rook stares at a cracked cell phone on the table, its screen displaying our newest problem: a photo. It shows one of our gun crates, the Serpent Cycle Works logo clearly visible, sitting in the back of a Sin Santos pickup truck. The photo was sent from a burner, the message a simple declaration of war:Your move.
"They're not just hitting our supply lines anymore," Rook says, his voice a low growl. "They're parading our business in the open. They're trying to force our hand, make us come out into the street."
"The Santos aren't this smart," I counter, rubbing the back of my neck where a headache is starting to form. "Someone witha bigger brain is feeding them this strategy. Someone's pointing them at our weak spots."
"Cain," Rook says, the name dropping into the silence like a stone.
The ghost I've been chasing for years. A rival I thought I'd buried. My gaze drifts to the name carved into the back of my chair. ABEL. The two names are forever linked, a curse I can't escape.
"We need to retaliate," Zero says, his voice coming from the shadows where he stands by the door. "A show of force. Hit their leadership. Hard."
"And walk right into their trap?" Rook shoots back. "Theywantus to start a war in the open. That's when the Feds come knocking. This is a chess game, not a bar fight."
I hold up a hand, silencing them both. The weight of the crown presses down. On one side, a ghost from my past is orchestrating a war. On the other...
On the other, a ghost in a cage is waging a war inside my head.
"Handle it," I say to Rook, my voice flat, tired. "Shut down the route. Find the leak. I need to think."
It’s a dismissal. Rook and Zero share a look—a flicker of concern I choose to ignore—before they nod and retreat, leaving me to the silence.
I stand and walk out of the church room, the weight of a two-front war on my shoulders: one for the soul of my club, the other for the tattered remains of my own.
The clubhouse breathes in darkness—abeast collapsed into exhausted slumber. Empty beer bottles stand likeamber sentinels on scarred tables, ashtrays overflow, and the air hangs thick with testosterone and the metallic tang of unspoken threats. The only light emanates from my personal altar: the cold, blue-white glow of security monitors painting my face in shades of digital purgatory. A half-empty glass of Macallan sweats beside my hand.
This has become my ritual. My addiction.
For five nights running, after the last brother has stumbled off to his room, I migrate here. To Glitch's sanctuary. To the nerve center where digital eyes never blink. I sit in his chair, and I watch her.
The feed from her cell flickers on Monitor Three. At first, this was an operational necessity, a security protocol. Now, it is something else entirely. A compulsion that operates below command. An obsession that feeds on itself.
I watch the montage of her resistance. The pacing—three steps one way, pivot, three steps back, a caged wolf learning the exact dimensions of her trap. The brutal regimen of self-punishment—push-ups until her body trembles, a testament to a will that refuses to surrender. The stillness—sitting motionless on the thin mattress for hours, staring at a wall as if she can see right through it, right through me.
She should be broken by now. They all break. The silence is a surgical instrument, designed to hollow out a soul from the inside. It always produces the same results: tears, screams, bloody knuckles on steel.
