(Mira's POV)
The first thing I noticed wasn't the darkness.
It was the way the air felt wrong.
Too thick. Too warm. Like it had been breathed too many times before it reached my lungs. Like the van itself was holding onto other people's fear and recycling it.
The engine hummed beneath me—not loud, not quiet. Controlled. A steady vibration that crawled up through the metal floor and into my bones, into my teeth, into the tight knot behind my eyes. Every bump in the road sent a dull jolt through my spine, reminding me that I was moving, that I was being carried somewhere I hadn't chosen.
The windows were blacked out.
Not tinted. Blacked out.
No slivers of streetlight. No blurred buildings. No accidental flashes of direction. Just sealed darkness, like whoever planned this didn't want even the smallest mistake.
My wrists weren't bound. That almost made it worse.
