Page 9 of Cipher's Baby Girl
I switch camera views, following her as Angel walks with her through the compound and back to her room. She moves with a kind of careful precision, taking up as little space as possible, never brushing against anyone or anything. Another survival adaptation.
I need more cameras, more angles—both inside and outside her room.
I know it’s intrusive.But watching is what I do. I observe, surveil, analyze patterns, identify threats, and neutralize them before they can materialize.
What Idon’tdo is interact. Interactions are messy. Difficult. Especially for someone like me, whose social skills were nearly absent from birth, and then further stunted by abuse before being deliberately erased during government "training."
Rummaging through the supply closet in my quarters behind the surveillance room, I gather the equipment I'll need to install additional cameras tomorrow. Three Axis Q6215-LE PTZ network cameras with 1080p resolution and night vision capability. Two Sennheiser MKE 400 directional microphones. One infrared motion sensor. All connected to my private server via an encrypted wireless network.
I check my equipment meticulously, testing each device, ensuring optimal functionality, the whole time telling myself the additional surveillance is just security, just protection. I ignore the voice in my head that whispers it's something else entirely—because that has no place in my calculated existence.
Sleep, when it finally comes, is no escape. It never is.
Blackness. Disorientation. The smell of mold and human excrement. The sound of water dripping somewhere to my left, exactly 37 drops per minute. My wrists burn from the metal restraints, infection setting in where the skin has broken.
"Tell us about Operation Blackbird," the voice says in accented English. I've given him a name in my head—The Professor, for his cultured tone and precise diction.
I've been here before. I know what comes next. The rough cloth over my face. The water. The drowning that never ends.
Yet, I say nothing.
The cloth descends. I try to brace myself, but you can't brace for drowning. Water pours, filling my nose, my mouth, my lungs. My body betrays me, thrashing against the restraints, desperate for air that isn't coming. Forty-seven seconds. That's how long a human can experience simulated drowning before the brain shuts down from panic.
When they finally remove the cloth, I'm gasping, choking, my body convulsing with the desperate need for oxygen.
"Your government has abandoned you," The Professor continues conversationally. "They reported you killed in action two months ago. No one is looking for you. You've been erased, just like all the people you erased for them."
I don’t doubt he's telling the truth.
"We can do this for months," The Professor says. "Years, if necessary. You're already dead to them."
The cloth descends again. This time, I see Rose's face, and I am no longer the tortured, but the torturer. Rose watches me, seeing the monster beneath my skin.
I wake with a violent jerk, sheets tangled around my legs, sweat soaking through my t-shirt. My hand automatically reaches for the knife under my pillow, gripping the handle as reality slowly reasserts itself.
My room. My bed. The compound. Safety.
The clock reads 3:17 AM. Three hours of sleep—more than usual. I swing my legs over the side of the bed, sitting with my head in my hands as the remnants of the nightmare fade, leaving behind a throbbing pain in my temples.
I pull off my sweat-soaked t-shirt, the cool air hitting the scars that cover my torso and back—thick, ropey reminders of electrical burns, knife wounds, cigarettes pressed into flesh. I run a hand over the scar on the side of my face, a souvenir from my escape when I killed seven men with my bare hands and a makeshift knife fashioned from a metal bed frame.
I pull on a fresh shirt and head back to my surveillance room. I already know sleep won't return tonight.
The compound is quiet at this hour, most of the brothers are either sleeping or in their rooms fucking.
I pull up the compound schematics and mark where I'll place the new cameras. One in the hallway outside her room, positioned for maximum coverage of her door. One covering the window from the exterior. Another at the stairwell nearby. I calculate optimal angles, fields of view, potential blind spots.
More coverage means better protection.
That's all it is—protection. Not possession. Not obsession. Just protection.
Yet, deep inside, I know the truth. That what she most needs protection from is me. That I, with my blood-soaked hands and fucked-up mind, am the most dangerous threat of all.
Chapter 3
Rose
Steam rises from the pot as I lift the lid, and the rich aroma of simmering beef and spices fill the kitchen. My stomach growls—even after three days of regular meals, my body still reacts to food like I might never eat again.
