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I sat straight up in bed as if I’d heard a gunshot, covered in sweat.

“Oh god, oh good frigging god.” I put a hand on my chest and tried to slow my breathing, throwing myself back against the damp pillow. “Good god, no.”

There are images and words and memories you can’t recall without getting gut-punched. They’re the things that haunt you for years, the feelings that get trapped despite your best efforts to set them loose so you can run away from them. They are the most horrid things, because they come from inside you. This—Rose being burned alive, nothing more than a piece of herself, in pain—this was as bad as it could get, and I couldn’t find a way to shake it off.

And then I realized what it really was. I clasped my own forearms where the veins were the bluest. They hadn’t taken it, not yet. After all, a nightmare is still a dream, isn’t it?

Click.

I spun to face the door, and sure enough, a line of yellow light appeared. I should have jumped to the side, ready to spring out at whoever came through. I should have been exercising, keeping limber, pumped up for action. I could hear Wab—“Stay ready, Frenchie. As a wise sage once said, if you stay ready, you ain’t gotta get ready.” But the sad truth was, I was grateful—grateful that someone was coming, that someone was even out there, and hopeful that they had a granola bar in their pocket. So I cupped my hands over my brow to shield my eyes from the harsh light and waited.

Once the door was fully open, I had a hard time looking up, so I took in as much of the room as I could before hands grabbed me.

I was dragged down a hallway. Not that I didn’t want to go just about anywhere if it meant being out that room, but the lighting out there was too bright, and I couldn’t see past a squint and blur and needed to be held up and pulled ahead. Toward what, I couldn’t have imagined. And that was saying a lot, since I had been imagining my long-gone mother in this place.

What did I know at that point? I knew from the small glimpses I’d seen before leaving that my room was white—white walls, white bed, white sheets, white toilet, white sink. Only the blanket had color, a soft blue that didn’t match the rough scratch of its texture. And fingerprints of dirt and old blood smeared on the walls.

I knew that the hallway was painted a light grey, that ahead, every ten feet or so, there was a bright fluorescent light buzzing on the ceiling, and that the floors were cement buffed to a high polish. I knew that my escort was not a Recruiter. He was some kind of new danger we hadn’t named yet. Instead of shorts and a windbreaker, he wore a black coat and dress pants in the same material. His shoes were black and low heeled. I couldn’t keep my eyes focused long enough to consider his face.