The latte was perfect. Too perfect. He sat back in the chair, cup warm between his palms, eyes moving from the balcony to the inner doors as he sipped. Somewhere under the caffeine and bandages, his instincts were starting to wake up again.
Escape.
The word rolled around his head as he stared at the drapes. In some storybook version of his life, he'd slide out the balcony doors, scale a trellis, melt into the gardens and be gone before anyone noticed. He imagined it for a beat: climbing down marble columns with blistered feet, dodging motion sensors he couldn't see, slipping past gates he didn't know existed while a hundred cameras watched him from angles he hadn't even found yet.
He snorted softly into his coffee. "Yeah. Sure. Because that's going to happen."
