Page 104 of Whispers in the Dark
Will.
And that... wasn’t gone yet.
“Bray,get him to Med Bay 2. Full isolation. I want all system access firewalled except mine,” she said, already peeling off her gloves and reaching for a fresh set.
Bray nodded yet stared at Monroe. He released the brake and began pushing the stretcher. Alex didn’t stir. His face was ashen, jaw slack, a rivulet of blood trailing from his ear. Oxygen hissed softly over his mouth, fogging the mask.
One of the techs hesitated. “Monroe, should we log the protocol override?”
“Log it under my authority,” Sybil snapped. “And if you have any problem with that, you can explain it while writing Alex Marcel’s death certificate.”
The tech fell silent.
Monroe said nothing. She stood in the shadows of the room, arms folded, unreadable. But her silence wasn’t surrender. It was calculation. She was deciding how and when to retake control.
Bray wheeled the stretcher out. Sybil followed, walking fast, already shouting for cold compresses and a Foley catheter. She didn’t look back. If she did, she might’ve seen the faintest twitch at the corner of Monroe’s mouth.
A smile.
Med Bay 2 was sealed.Dim. Quiet.
Alex lay on the central gurney, doubled bags of fluid flowing into the catheter in his neck. His chest rose and fell in short, struggling intervals. A tiny amount of urine was being produced. His vitals had stabilized—barely. Enough to keep him from dying. Not enough to keep him from breaking.
Sybil stood beside him, monitoring the EEG herself. His brain activity was spiking in irregular bursts. Not seizures—resistance. Flashes of memory, sensory overload. A mind trying to outrun reprogramming.
She leaned in, speaking to him in a low, steady voice, not a clinical voice but a personal one. “Alex… listen to me,” she said.“They’re trying to rewire you. But your mind’s still pushing back. That’s good. That means you’re still in there.”
He didn’t move. Didn’t open his eyes.
But his hand twitched.
Just once.
Sybil noted it and kept it to herself. She reached down and placed her hand lightly over his wrist. “You hold on, Alex. Because if they turn you into something else, they win.”
Two floors above,Monroe stood at a long glass window, watching the surveillance feed of Med Bay 2. Her arms were crossed, her face expressionless.
Behind her, Bray Maddox stepped in silently. “You let her pull him back,” he said flatly.
“I let her think she did,” Monroe replied. “Letting him die now would be a waste. Vance still believes she can save him. That gives us time.”
“Time for what?”
Monroe turned, her eyes cold and sharp. “To finish breaking him properly.” She handled a vial of neon-yellow liquid.
Bray said nothing.
Down in the med bay,under sedation, Alex Marcel’s fingers twitched again—this time curling weakly toward a memory.
A name. Not his own. Charlotte. He was still fighting. And they had no idea how far he was willing to go to win.
Thirty-Five
NINE DAYS SINCE ALEX’s DISAPPEARANCE
The prison lookeddifferent at dawn—harsher, uglier. Not because of the light, but because of what Brad and Ethan had come for.
The security gate buzzed open with a mechanical groan, and the guards barely made eye contact. They knew who these two were. And they knew this wasn’t a courtesy call.
