Time moves differently when you know you’re going to die.
I’ve been counting heartbeats since Markus left, each one a small rebellion against the revelation that my husband—my ex-husband—orchestrated my daughter’s disappearance and my own imprisonment. Six years of grief, six years of searching, six years of blaming myself for not watching carefully enough, and the answer was sleeping next to me every night.
The candles have burned lower, wax pooling on their metal holders like tears frozen in time. I sit with my back against the concrete wall, knees pulled to my chest, trying to process the magnitude of betrayal while keeping my mind sharp enough to survive whatever’s coming.
Wren is alive. That thought circles through my consciousness like a prayer, the only thing keeping me anchored to sanity. While I spent six years chasing ghosts and building cases around phantom suspects, a stranger was keeping my daughter safe.
The irony would be funny if it weren’t so devastating.
The sound of the lock turning jolts me from my spiral of self-recrimination. Different footsteps this time again. The rhythm I’ve learned to associate with meal deliveries and psychological manipulation disguised as pastoral care.
Raina.
The door opens with its practiced whisper, and she steps inside carrying the usual tray. There’s something different about her today—an energy, an excitement that makes my skin prickle with warning. She’s dressed in the same flowing white dress, hair pulled back in that effortlessly perfect bun, but her eyes are brighter than usual. Almost fevered.
“Good morning, Dalia,” she says, setting the tray down on the wooden chair with ceremony that suggests this meal is somehow more significant than the others. “How are you feeling today?”
I look up from my position against the wall, letting exhaustion and defeat color my expression. It’s not hard—most of it is genuine. “Tired.”
“That’s understandable. But you should be excited too.” She moves closer to the bars, close enough that I can smell her lavender oil. “Today is special.”
Special. The word carries weight, implication that makes my stomach clench with dread.
“How so?” I ask, my voice hoarse from days of limited conversation and poor air quality.
Raina’s smile could power a small city. “It’s your last day here. Tomorrow night, you’ll be called to your true purpose.”
There it is. The timeline I’ve been dreading, delivered with the enthusiasm of someone announcing a birthday party. Tomorrow night. Less than thirty-six hours to figure out an escape that seems increasingly impossible.
But impossibility has never stopped me before.
“My true purpose,” I repeat, letting the words roll around in my mouth like I’m tasting them for the first time.
“You’ve been chosen, Dalia. Selected for transformation. It’s the greatest honor we can bestow.” Raina’s voice carries that breathless reverence I’ve learned to associate with true believers. “You should be grateful.”
I study her face through the bars, noting the genuine excitement there. This isn’t performance or manipulation—she truly believes that being selected for whatever horror they have planned is a privilege beyond measure.
“I’ve been thinking,” I say slowly, letting uncertainty creep into my voice. “About what Vale said during his visits. About being a vessel.”
Raina’s eyes light up like fireworks. “Yes?”
“I didn’t understand at first.” I shift position, moving from my defensive crouch to sitting cross-legged, more open, more receptive. “I was too caught up in my old identity. Detective Rowe. Mother. Wife. All these labels that I thought defined me.”
“Labels are chains,” Raina says, stepping closer to the bars. “They keep us trapped in limited understanding of our potential.”
“But sitting here, in the silence…” I pause, letting my gaze drift to the candles flickering against the walls, remembering Jonas Vale’s ramblings. “I think I’m starting to see it. The bigger picture.”
“Tell me what you see.”
This is the crucial moment. If I misjudge her psychology, if I push too hard or not hard enough, this conversation ends with me sedated and helpless. But if I can make her believe…
“My whole life has been about searching,” I say, injecting my voice with the kind of wonder that comes from genuine revelation. “Searching for answers, for justice, for my daughter. But maybe… maybe I was searching for the wrong things.”
Raina’s breathing has quickened slightly. She’s leaning forward now, hands resting on the bars that separate us.
“Wren,” I say, and the name still hurts to speak, but I use that pain to color my words with authentic emotion. “I spent six years believing she was taken from me. But she was chosen, just like me.”
“Yes,” Raina breathes, her knuckles going white where she grips the metal.
“And if she was chosen, if she was called to serve something greater than herself…” I stand slowly, movements deliberate and non-threatening. My legs shake slightly from malnutrition and days of inactivity, but I use that weakness to suggest vulnerability rather than desperation. “Then maybe my grief was just selfishness. Maybe my search was me trying to interfere with something sacred.”
“The families of the chosen often struggle with understanding,” Raina says, her voice taking on the cadence of practiced doctrine. “It’s natural to feel loss when you don’t comprehend the honor being bestowed.”
I take a step toward the bars. “I understand now. And I’m grateful.”
“Grateful?”
“That I can take her place.” The words come out in a rush, like a confession I can barely bring myself to make. “If Wren was meant to be chosen, and something interfered with that calling… then maybe this is my chance to make it right. To serve in her place.”
Raina’s face transforms. The practiced empathy gives way to something rawer, more genuine. Religious ecstasy, like she’s witnessing a miracle unfold before her eyes.
“You really mean it?” she asks, but there’s still a note of suspicion in her voice. “This isn’t just fear talking? Desperation?”
I need to be more convincing. Need to sell this performance with everything I have left.
“I know how this must sound,” I say, letting my voice crack. “A few days ago, I would have fought this. Would have called you all insane.”
I let the silence stretch for a moment, for more impact.
“My whole life has been preparation for this moment.” I move closer to the bars, close enough that my own hands could reach through if I wanted them to. “Every case I solved, every victim I fought for, every sleepless night searching for Wren—it was all leading here. To this understanding.”
Raina’s pupils are dilated now, her breathing rapid and shallow. “And you’re not afraid?”
“I’m terrified,” I admit, because some truth makes the lies more believable. “But not of transformation. I’m afraid I’m not worthy.”
“The calling doesn’t make mistakes,” Raina says with absolute certainty. “If you’ve been chosen, it’s because you’re exactly what’s needed.”
I take another step closer, until I’m pressed against the bars, my hands reaching through to cover hers where she grips the metal. Her skin is warm.
“Will it hurt?” I ask.
“There’s pain, yes. But it’s temporary. The transformation transcends physical suffering.” Her voice drops to a whisper, intimate and conspiratorial. “You become something more than human. Eternal.”
“I want that,” I say, meeting her eyes with all the sincerity I can muster. “I want to be worthy of what Wren would have given. I want to honor her by taking her place.”
Raina leans closer, her face now inches from mine through the bars.
I let bitterness seep into my voice, thinking about Markus and his revelations, about the marriage built on lies and the search that was doomed from the start. “My whole existence was built on deception.”
“You see the truth now,” Raina says. “The pain of your old life was just preparation. The vessel must be emptied before it can be filled.”
This is it. This is my moment.
“I see it,” I whisper, slowly shifting my fingers from covering hers to gently gripping her wrists. “I understand now that this isn’t punishment—it’s providence. I was meant to be here. Meant to serve.”
“You truly see the purpose?” Raina asks, leaning even closer, her eyes searching my face for any hint of deception.
“I mean it,” I say, and then I move.
My hands shift from her wrists to the collar of her dress, fingers bunching the white fabric as I yank her forward with all the strength left in my malnourished body. I slam her forehead directly into the metal bar with a sound like a melon hitting concrete.
Raina’s eyes roll back and her legs buckle, but she doesn’t fall—I’m still holding her up by her dress, keeping her close to the bars where I need her to be.
Where’s the key?
Raina groans, consciousness flickering like a damaged bulb. She tries to pull away, but I maintain my grip, one hand still wrapped in her dress while the other searches frantically through the flowing fabric.
I feel awful but I ain't ready to die as sacrificial offering.
Her pockets are shallow, decorative rather than functional. I fiddle along the neckline, the sleeves, the hem of the dress, looking for any hidden compartments, any place where they might keep the means to open this cage.
Nothing.
“Where is it?” I demand, shaking her slightly. “The key to this cell, where do you keep it?”
Raina’s head lolls to one side, but her eyes focus with effort. When she speaks, her voice is slurred but audible. “No… no key…”
“Bullshit. Someone has to have access.”
She laughs, touching her forehead gingerly.
There must be an electronic lock. No physical key to steal, no simple solution to my imprisonment. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy. These people are too sophisticated, too paranoid to rely on something as simple as a physical key that could be stolen or lost.
“Help,” Raina calls weakly, though her voice barely carries beyond the immediate space. “Help me…”
But we’re underground, buried beneath layers of earth and stone. Soundproofed.
I release her dress and she staggers backward, nearly falling before catching herself. The meal tray is on the floor, porridge and water across the concrete in a pattern that looks disturbingly like a crime scene.
“There’s nowhere to go,” Raina says, her voice gaining strength as the shock of impact wears off. She’s looking at me through the bars with something that might be pity or satisfaction. “Even if you could get out of this room, you’d never make it past the compound. And even if you could escape the grounds… where would you run? We know who you are. We know everyone you’ve ever cared about.”
The threat is delivered without malice, just stated as fact. And the terrible thing is, she’s probably right. Even if I could somehow bypass an electronic lock I’ve never seen, navigate a compound I’ve never mapped, and evade guards whose numbers and training I don’t know, where would I go? My own husband was part of this. How deep does their influence reach?
I back away from the bars, hands shaking with adrenaline and crushing disappointment. The plan was so simple: get the key, escape, find help. But there is no key. There is no simple escape.
“How long?” I ask, though I’m not sure I want to know the answer.
“Until the ritual?” Raina straightens her dress with the practiced motions of someone accustomed to maintaining appearances despite chaos. “Tomorrow night. When the moon reaches its full phase.”
Less than thirty-six hours to figure out an escape from technology I can’t access, past guards I can’t count, through terrain I’ve never seen.
“The others,” I say, sliding down the wall until I’m sitting on the floor again. “Ruth Quinn. The woman in the farmhouse. Did they try to escape too?”
Raina’s smile is sad now, almost gentle. “They all tried, in the beginning. They all fought the calling. But in the end, they understood. They saw the beauty in what they were becoming.”
“What happens to the bodies? After the ritual?”
“There are no bodies.” She says it with the kind of certainty that suggests she genuinely believes it. “There’s only transformation. Transcendence. The vessel becomes something greater than flesh.”
Great. Elias won't even get to bury a piece of me.
But maybe it's better to be nothing than just an unidentified pair of hands.
I lean my head back against the concrete wall, feeling the cold seep through my skull. Tomorrow night, I join whatever collection of horrors they’ve assembled in the name of their salvation.
Raina moves toward the door, stepping carefully around the spilled food and blood. She pauses at the threshold, one hand on the door frame, and looks back at me through the bars with something that might be genuine sympathy.
“I hope you really did mean what you said about understanding,” she tells me. “About being ready to serve. It will be easier if you embrace it willingly.”
“And if I don’t?”
Her smile is gentle, pitying. “There are ways to ensure compliance. But they’re… unpleasant. I’d prefer not to use them.”
The door closes behind her with that familiar whisper of hinges.
I’m alone again, sitting in spilled porridge and the wreckage of my last hope for simple escape.
But I’m not dead yet. And as long as I’m breathing, as long as I can think and plan and fight, there’s still a chance. Maybe not for escape—that seems increasingly unlikely—but for something else. For making their victory cost them more than they’re willing to pay.
When they come for me, I’ll be ready. Not with compliance or acceptance or the peaceful surrender they’re hoping for, but with every ounce of rage and desperation I can muster.
I may not have a key to these bars.
But I have something they don’t expect: the absolute certainty that I’d rather die fighting than die as their vessel.
ns216.73.216.247da2
