The walls were white again.
Dr. Leslie Orn's office had once been a room of soft colors and warmer lies—scented candles, fake empathy, a glass case of awards no one had verified.Now, it was painted in blood.
She sat in her chair, wrists duct-taped to the armrests, head tilted just enough to give the illusion she was listening. Her eyes had been replaced with mirrors—small round discs glued into the sockets—reflecting her own mutilated face to anyone who dared look close.
And in her lap, a tape recorder.Identical to the one found with Camille.
The message this time was shorter:
"She told me pain was a thought. So I showed her one."
Mara stood at the threshold, fists clenched at her sides.
Two deaths in three days.Both staff from Institution #8.Both directly tied to her file, her memories, her scars.
"Who found her?" she asked quietly.
Officer Crane gestured toward a security guard.
"She was already like this when I opened the door," the man said, shaking. "But the lights were on. And the radio was playing. Over and over."
"What radio?"
He pointed to the shelf. A dusty old speaker.
Mara walked to it and pressed play.
A static hiss… then a child's voice.
"She told me crying was noise pollution. So I learned to cry with my bones."
Mara's stomach churned.
She remembered that voice.
It belonged to him.The boy with the notebook.The boy no one touched, no one claimed.The one they all ignored because he didn't lash out.He simply… watched.
And now he was returning every lesson, every punishment, every phrase they used to control him—reversed, twisted, weaponized.
Across the city, he scribbled a new diagram on the wall — a spiderweb of faces and quotes. At the center: Mara.
He no longer needed to kill to make his point.Now, he was waking her up.Forcing her to remember what they turned her into.What she turned herself into.
He opened a new page in his notebook.Wrote a name at the top:
Patient #15 – Vex, MaraSymptom: Obedience.Diagnosis: Memory repression.Prescription: Re-exposure to pain.
He smiled.
"You forgot me, Mara.Now, I'm reminding you of you."
Back at HQ, Mara poured over her sealed records in a locked room.
She found a scanned transcript — one she didn't remember ever speaking aloud:
DR. ORN: Do you think the boy in the rec room frightens you because he doesn't smile?MARA (17): No.DR. ORN: Then why don't you speak to him?MARA: Because he remembers things I want to forget.DR. ORN: What kind of things?MARA: The ones we're all pretending didn't happen.
She dropped the file. Her pulse raced.
How much had she forgotten?
What did she help cover up?
And why, when she closed her eyes, could she still hear the boy humming?