The message faded slowly from the wall, but no one moved right away.
For a few seconds, the Living Quarters stayed frozen in the pale afterglow of those words, every doorway open, every assigned name hovering beside its room like the facility had written them into place and expected them to stay there.
COMMUNAL ORIENTATION WILL CONTINUE IN THE DINING HALL.
EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT IS ENCOURAGED.
Wisteria stared at the empty wall long after the letters vanished.
The words were gone, but somehow they still felt present. Pressed into the air. Waiting for obedience.
Across from her, Juniper stood in the doorway of her own room with both arms wrapped around herself, her hair still tangled from waking, her mouth twisted into a shape that was trying very hard to be annoyed instead of terrified.
“Okay,” Juniper said quietly. “I have decided I don’t like being encouraged by walls.”
Wisteria let out a small breath, not quite a laugh. “Me either.”
“Good. Strong moral stance. We’re united already.”
The word united made both of them glance down at their wristbands.
STATUS: UNBONDED
Juniper immediately grimaced. “Nope. Too soon. Hate that.”
Down the hall, doors had begun to open wider as people stepped uncertainly back into the corridor. Some had changed into the clothes provided in their rooms. Others still wore the same soft, pale garments they had woken in, as if changing would be an admission that they were staying. Wisteria understood the instinct. The thought of taking off the clothes she’d woken in, of accepting folded replacements chosen by unseen hands, made her skin tighten.
A few people whispered to each other. A few didn’t speak at all. The Living Quarters had become quieter than the atrium had been, but not calmer. The panic had simply gone inward, tucked behind watchful eyes and stiff shoulders.
Marcus was near the far end of the hall, still refusing to enter his room properly. He stood with one hand braced against his assigned doorframe, glaring down the corridor like the Dining Hall itself had personally insulted him. Riven was a few steps away, leaning against his own doorway with loose, careless ease, looking not at Marcus but at everyone else, as if he was waiting to see who would break first.
Lucien stood almost exactly in the center of the hall.
Wisteria noticed that before she meant to.
He wasn’t blocking the way. He wasn’t ordering anyone around. He simply stood where frightened people could see him, his posture relaxed, his expression steady. The girl he had comforted earlier lingered nearby for a moment, then drifted toward another group only after Lucien gave her a small nod.
Dahlia, of course, was close to him.
She had changed.
Her new clothes were still facility-issued, soft and pale like everyone else’s, but she’d somehow made them look intentional. The sleeves were rolled neatly. Her hair had been smoothed down. She stood with one hip tilted, arms crossed loosely, like this was an inconvenient social event rather than an impossible prison.
Her eyes kept flicking toward Lucien.
Juniper followed Wisteria’s gaze and made a quiet sound of disgust. “She adapted fast.”
Wisteria looked at her.
“What? She did. Ten minutes ago she was emotionally wounded by the lack of closet space. Now she looks like she’s about to network.”
Wisteria’s mouth softened despite herself, but the humor didn’t quite reach her chest.
A gentle chime sounded overhead.
Everyone went still.
The same calm, genderless voice filled the corridor.
“Please proceed to the Dining Hall.”
No one answered.
The voice waited exactly two seconds.
“Communal orientation cannot continue until all participants have arrived.”
Juniper leaned toward Wisteria and whispered, “It’s giving disappointed teacher.”
“It’s giving threat,” Wisteria murmured.
Juniper looked at her. “Yeah. That too.”
The lights along the corridor shifted, guiding lines appearing along the base of the walls. They glowed softly, leading toward the main hallway. Not forceful. Not harsh.
Helpful.
Wisteria was beginning to hate anything in this place that pretended to be helpful.
Lucien was the first to move this time.
Not quickly, not dramatically. He simply turned toward the main corridor and said, “We should go together.”
It wasn’t an order. That was what made it work.
People moved after him.
Wisteria saw it again—that small, subtle surrender of motion. The way panic looked for a shape and accepted the first calm thing offered to it. Some followed because they trusted him. Others because doing anything alone felt worse. Even Marcus, after a few seconds of rigid refusal, pushed off the doorframe and stalked after the group.
Juniper stepped into the hall and reached back toward Wisteria without looking.
Wisteria took her hand.
The squeeze came twice.
Quick. Firm.
A private language forming already, though they had known each other less than an hour.
They followed the glowing path out of the Living Quarters and into the main corridor, where the labels still glowed along the doors they had seen before. REFLECTION ROOMS. DINING HALL. RESTRICTED WING. The last one remained sealed at the far end, colder than the rest, its label dim but unmistakable.
Marcus slowed when they passed it.
“We should be going there,” he muttered.
“No,” said Riven from somewhere behind him. “We should be doing exactly what the polite death building asked. Obviously.”
Marcus spun halfway toward him. “Do you ever shut up?”
“When I’m asleep.”
“Maybe try it.”
Riven smiled. “Tempting, but then I’d miss all your brilliant escape plans. So far you’ve shouted at a wall and glared at a door. Riveting stuff.”
A few people looked away quickly, afraid to be caught reacting. Dahlia gave a quiet laugh before she smothered it, then glanced toward Lucien as if checking whether he’d noticed.
Lucien had.
He didn’t laugh. He only glanced at Riven, and for a brief moment the air between them seemed to pull taut.
Then Lucien looked away.
It happened so quickly Wisteria might have missed it if she hadn’t already been watching him too closely.
The door marked DINING HALL opened as they approached.
Warmth drifted out first.
That was what startled Wisteria most.
The room was wide and high-ceilinged, though not as vast as the atrium. The walls were still white, but here they had been softened by warm panels of light that mimicked sunset without ever showing a sky. Long tables stretched across the space, each arranged with plates, cups, silverware, and pitchers of water clear enough to catch the glow overhead. Food had been set out in neat, inviting portions: baskets of bread, bowls of fruit, covered dishes releasing curls of steam into the air.
There were no staff.
No kitchen noise. No footsteps beyond theirs. No glimpse of anyone preparing anything.
Just food waiting for them like it had always known when they would arrive.
Juniper stopped at the threshold.
“No,” she said softly.
Wisteria looked at her. “No?”
“I mean—yes, technically I am hungry, which feels like a betrayal by my body, but also no. Mysterious facility dinner is how people die in chapter three.”
Wisteria’s eyes flicked toward the food despite herself.
Her stomach twisted again.
Juniper caught it and pointed at her with narrowed eyes. “Don’t look tempted. That’s how they get you.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face said bread.”
“My face did not say bread.”
“It whispered it.”
Wisteria almost smiled, then looked back at the tables.
Some people had already gone in. Hunger, exhaustion, and fear made strange companions, and hunger seemed to be winning first. A boy with sandy blond hair reached for a cup of water, hesitated, then drank like he couldn’t stop himself. When nothing happened, two others followed.
A girl with soft features and anxious eyes sat near the end of one table, staring at a bowl of soup like it might answer questions if she waited long enough. Beside her, a young man offered her a piece of bread before taking one for himself. Their hands brushed, and both of them pulled back too quickly.
Wisteria noticed the flicker at their wrists.
Barely there.
A pulse of light.
The girl saw it too. Her eyes widened.
The boy stared down at his wristband, then at hers.
Across the room, someone whispered, “Did you see that?”
Juniper’s grip tightened around Wisteria’s hand.
“Oh, that’s not good.”
The room shifted after that. Not physically, not yet, but socially. The air changed. People began looking at one another differently—not just as fellow captives now, but as possibilities. Threats. Escape routes with faces.
Wisteria hated it immediately.
Before, their fear had been pointed outward, toward the facility, toward the voice, toward the walls that opened and closed without permission. Now the fear had begun turning inward, passing from person to person like a fever.
Who was safe?
Who was useful?
Who was someone’s way out?
The seating had been arranged in pairs and small clusters, Wisteria realized. Two chairs angled closer together near one end. Three grouped around a smaller table. Benches long enough for crowds, yes, but broken by subtle spacing that encouraged people to choose who they sat beside.
Nothing here was accidental.
Juniper saw it too. Her face lost some of its forced humor.
“They want us to sit with people,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Like… intentionally.”
“Yes.”
“Cool. I hate group projects.”
Wisteria let Juniper pull her toward a table near the edge, not too close to the center, not too isolated either. It felt like the safest kind of compromise.
They sat side by side.
Juniper immediately turned the plate in front of her around like she was inspecting it for traps.
Wisteria watched the others settle.
Dahlia chose her seat with the care of someone selecting a stage. She didn’t sit directly beside Lucien at first; that would have been too obvious. Instead, she picked the chair across from him, close enough to hold his attention, far enough to pretend she hadn’t been aiming for it. Her smile was soft when she looked at him, a polished version of fear.
“You’re sitting,” she said.
Lucien took the chair at the end of the table nearest several anxious participants, not exactly near Dahlia, not exactly away from her.
“So are you.”
Dahlia’s mouth curved. “I figured if the food kills us, at least I won’t die standing.”
Riven dropped into a chair two tables over, facing the entire room. “That’s the spirit.”
Dahlia glanced at him, her smile sharpening. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
“Devastating.”
“You’ll survive.”
“People keep promising me that. Feels reckless.”
Wisteria felt Juniper lean close.
“They’re going to flirt, aren’t they?”
Wisteria kept her voice low. “That was flirting?”
Juniper looked pained. “Unfortunately, yes. Some people flirt like normal humans. Some people flirt like they’re negotiating over a crime scene.”
At the next table, Marcus remained standing.
He stared at the food, then at the ceiling, then at the nearest wall. “No one eats until we know what this is.”
A few people froze with forks halfway raised.
Riven lifted a piece of bread and took a bite.
Marcus’s eyes snapped to him.
Riven chewed slowly. Swallowed. Looked unimpressed.
“Bit under-salted,” he said.
Marcus took a step toward him. “Are you insane?”
“Hungry.”
“You don’t know what’s in that.”
“No,” Riven agreed. “But if they wanted to poison us, they could’ve done it while we were unconscious. Seems inefficient to wait for plating.”
That quieted more people than it should have.
Wisteria saw it pass across their faces—the horrible logic of it. The same thought landed in her own mind before she could push it away. Whoever had brought them here had already had access to their bodies. If they wanted them dead, they would be dead.
Which meant they wanted them alive.
For now.
Lucien reached for a pitcher and poured water into the glass beside him. Calm, deliberate, visible. He took a drink without hesitation, then set the glass down.
“It may be better to keep our strength,” he said.
Again, not an order.
Again, people obeyed.
A few began eating. Others followed slowly. Juniper looked at Wisteria, then at the bread, then back again.
“I need you to know that if I die from this, I’m going to haunt the menu.”
Wisteria tore a small piece from the roll in front of her. “Fair.”
Juniper watched her eat first.
Nothing happened.
After a long, dramatic pause, she took a bite of her own and closed her eyes.
“Oh, that’s upsetting.”
Wisteria frowned. “What?”
“It’s good.”
Despite herself, Wisteria tasted the bread again. It was good. Warm, soft, faintly sweet. Exactly the sort of comfort her body wanted and her mind distrusted.
The facility had given them terror.
Then rooms.
Then food.
Not kindness. Sequence.
A system.
Across the table, a young man with kind eyes passed a pitcher toward them. “Water?”
Juniper looked at him suspiciously.
He gave a small, tired smile. “I’m Theo. If that makes the water less ominous.”
Juniper accepted the pitcher slowly. “Marginally.”
Theo’s smile widened, just a little. “I’ll take it.”
Wisteria took the water after Juniper filled her cup. “Thank you.”
“No problem.” Theo glanced around the Dining Hall, his expression sobering. “Feels better when people are doing something normal.”
Juniper raised her cup slightly. “To fake normal.”
Theo huffed a quiet laugh. “Sure. To fake normal.”
Nearby, the soft-featured girl who had brushed hands with the boy earlier was still staring at her wristband.
“I don’t think it’s fake,” she whispered.
Her voice was small, but the room had quieted enough that several people heard her.
The boy beside her turned toward her. “What?”
She looked embarrassed immediately, cheeks coloring. “I mean… maybe this is horrible. It is horrible. Obviously. But what if the soulmate part is real?”
A few people stared.
Marcus scoffed. “You cannot be serious.”
The girl shrank slightly.
Theo stepped in gently. “What’s your name?”
“Nina,” she said.
Theo nodded. “No one’s saying you’re wrong. We just don’t know anything yet.”
Marcus laughed bitterly. “We know enough. We were kidnapped.”
Nina looked down.
“But if there’s someone here who’s actually meant for us,” she said, softer now, “then maybe they didn’t choose us randomly.”
The silence that followed was uncomfortable because Wisteria could feel it: the tiny, treacherous part of people that wanted that to be true.
Not the kidnapping. Not the rules. Not the risk.
But the idea that somewhere in this nightmare was the person who would choose them, understand them, save them from being alone in it.
That was the cruelest thing about the facility.
It had not only trapped them.
It had offered them hope with teeth.
Dahlia leaned back slightly, twirling a strand of hair around one finger as her gaze moved from Nina to Lucien.
“I think it’s romantic,” she said, though her voice held too much calculation to sound innocent. “In a terrifying, criminal way.”
Riven snorted.
Dahlia’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Just admiring your ability to accessorize captivity.”
Her cheeks flushed—not quite embarrassment, not quite anger.
Lucien spoke before she could snap back.
“We should be careful about accepting any part of this too quickly,” he said.
Dahlia’s attention returned to him at once.
Wisteria’s did too.
Lucien rested his hands loosely around his cup, his voice steady enough that the room seemed to settle around it again. “That doesn’t mean rejecting every possibility. It means we watch. We learn what the facility responds to. We don’t let fear make every decision for us.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Marcus snapped. “You’re already playing group therapist.”
Lucien didn’t bristle. Didn’t defend himself too quickly.
“I’m trying to keep people breathing,” he said. “That’s all.”
It was such a simple answer.
Such a good one.
Wisteria wanted to believe it.
Maybe that was the problem.
Juniper had gone quiet beside her, her food barely touched now. Her eyes were on Lucien, but not with Dahlia’s open interest or Nina’s fragile hope. Juniper looked at him the way she looked at the walls.
Like something that seemed useful.
Like something she didn’t trust yet.
Before Wisteria could ask what she was thinking, the lights shifted.
Not much.
Just enough.
A soft chime rang through the Dining Hall, delicate and pleasant, and every conversation died instantly.
The plates remained warm. The water in the pitchers remained still. The artificial sunset glow along the walls brightened by a fraction, bathing every face in gold that looked too gentle for the fear beneath it.
Then the facility voice spoke.
“Initial social assessment has begun.”
A low murmur passed through the room.
Juniper set her roll down slowly. “Of course it has.”
The voice continued.
“Participants are encouraged to engage honestly and remain receptive to emotional connection.”
The tables moved.
Not far. Not violently. There was no scraping sound, no jolt that threw anyone off balance. The furniture simply adjusted beneath them with horrible grace. Chairs angled closer. Small gaps narrowed. Entire tables shifted by inches, guiding bodies into new proximity before anyone could decide whether they wanted to move.
Juniper grabbed the edge of the table with both hands.
“Oh, I hate furniture with opinions.”
Wisteria’s chair turned slightly.
Toward Lucien’s table.
Only slightly.
Barely enough to notice.
But she noticed.
So did he.
Across the room, Lucien’s gaze lifted to hers over the soft glow of the table between them.
This time, he did not look away first.
The voice filled the room once more, calm and absolute.
“Please begin.”
The words didn’t echo.
They didn’t need to.
They settled over the Dining Hall like something placed carefully across a surface—smooth, deliberate, impossible to ignore. For a moment, no one moved. The tables had already shifted, the chairs angled, the distances between people quietly rewritten. All that was left was for them to obey.
Wisteria felt it before she understood it.
The pressure.
Not physical. Not visible. But there, steady and insistent, like the room itself was waiting for something from them. Waiting for them to fill the silence correctly.
Juniper exhaled slowly beside her.
“…begin what,” she whispered. “I hate instructions that assume I know what I’m doing.”
A soft pulse of light flickered along the wall.
Wisteria’s head turned instinctively.
The smooth surface near the far end of the room brightened, and lines formed—thin, glowing, deliberate—until a screen resolved out of the white. Not separate from the wall, not attached to it. Just… revealed.
Words appeared.
SHARE A MEMORY ASSOCIATED WITH SAFETY.
The room stilled.
Juniper blinked at it. “Oh.”
Another line formed beneath it.
SILENCE MAY DELAY PROGRESSION.
“…oh, absolutely not,” Juniper breathed. “We’re being emotionally blackmailed.”
No one laughed.
The quiet stretched, uncomfortable and expectant, until a chair scraped lightly across the floor. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic. But it broke something.
Nina.
Wisteria recognized her immediately—the girl who had spoken earlier, the one who wanted to believe there was something real in all of this. Her hands were clasped too tightly in her lap, her shoulders drawn inward, but she lifted her chin anyway.
“I can go,” she said, her voice small but steady.
Marcus made a disbelieving sound. “You can’t be serious.”
Nina flinched, but she didn’t stop.
“I used to—” She paused, swallowing hard, eyes flicking to the glowing words like they might vanish if she didn’t speak quickly enough. “I used to sit on the floor in my parents’ kitchen when I was younger. When it rained.”
Wisteria’s attention sharpened without her meaning it to.
Nina continued, softer now.
“The tiles were cold, and the windows would fog up, and my mom would leave the radio on even when she wasn’t in the room. And I knew she was somewhere nearby, even if I couldn’t see her.”
Her voice steadied as she spoke.
“I think that was the safest I ever felt. Just… knowing someone was there. Not needing anything from me. Not expecting anything.”
The last sentence lingered.
For a moment, the room didn’t feel like a trap. It felt like something else—something quieter, more fragile. A shared understanding that safety wasn’t always loud or obvious. Sometimes it was just the absence of demand.
Wisteria realized she had been holding her breath.
The light on Nina’s wristband pulsed.
Once.
Soft.
Juniper sucked in a breath beside her. “Did you see—”
“Yeah,” Wisteria whispered.
Across the room, others had noticed too. Heads turned. Eyes dropped to wrists, then lifted again, uncertain.
The facility didn’t comment.
It didn’t praise her. Didn’t correct her.
It simply waited.
Theo leaned forward slightly, his voice warm but careful.
“That sounds… nice,” he said. “Simple. In a good way.”
Nina gave him a small, grateful smile.
“I think simple is underrated.”
Marcus dragged a hand down his face. “This is insane. We’re just going to sit here and tell stories now? That’s the plan?”
Riven, lounging a few seats away, tapped his fingers lightly against the table.
“You could always try shouting at the wall again,” he offered. “That seemed promising.”
Marcus shot him a look sharp enough to cut.
“Or,” Riven continued, unbothered, “you could play along and see what happens. Unless you’re worried your safest memory is too embarrassing to share.”
A few people shifted.
The challenge hung there, baited.
Marcus didn’t take it.
But someone else did.
“I’ll go,” Theo said, glancing briefly at Nina before looking down at his hands.
He seemed to consider his words more carefully than she had, his fingers tracing the edge of his cup.
“My dad used to wake me up early on weekends,” he said. “Before anyone else. We’d go out to the backyard, and he’d make coffee, even though I wasn’t allowed to drink it. He said the smell was enough.”
A faint smile touched his mouth.
“And we’d just… sit there. Not talking. Watching the sun come up. It wasn’t exciting. But it was… steady.”
He looked up, meeting no one’s eyes directly.
“Nothing bad ever happened in those moments. Not that I knew of.”
His wristband pulsed.
Again, once. Quiet.
Juniper made a face. “Okay, I hate that it’s consistent.”
Wisteria’s gaze flicked to Lucien without meaning to.
He had been listening.
Not just hearing. Listening. His focus didn’t wander. His posture didn’t shift. He absorbed each word like it mattered, like it was something to be understood rather than endured.
When he spoke, it was almost inevitable.
“I remember a hallway,” he said.
The room quieted again, more naturally this time.
“It was in a hospital. Not for me,” he added, as if clarifying something no one had asked. “For someone I knew.”
His tone didn’t change.
“There was a bench near the end of it, just outside a room where I wasn’t allowed to go in yet. I sat there for hours. And every time the door opened, someone would come out and tell me the same thing.”
He paused, just long enough to let the weight of it settle.
“‘Not yet.’”
Wisteria felt something tighten in her chest.
Lucien’s gaze drifted slightly, not landing on anyone in particular, but not unfocused either.
“I think… safety, for me, was that moment just before the answer changed. When nothing had gone wrong yet. When it still could.”
Silence followed.
Not the forced kind. Not the waiting kind.
Something else.
His wristband pulsed.
Stronger.
Not just once.
Twice.
Juniper straightened slightly. “Okay. That’s new.”
Wisteria swallowed.
Something about that felt… important.
Lucien didn’t acknowledge it. He didn’t look at his wrist. He simply leaned back slightly, as if he had said exactly what he meant to say and nothing more.
Dahlia leaned forward, her interest sharpened.
“That’s very… intense,” she said, her voice softer now, edged with something almost admiring. “You’re good at this.”
Lucien’s eyes flicked to her briefly. “At remembering?”
“At saying the right thing.”
There was a beat.
Lucien didn’t answer.
Riven did.
“Same difference,” he said lightly.
Dahlia’s eyes snapped toward him. “Do you ever stop?”
“When it gets boring.”
“You must be exhausted, then.”
“Not yet.”
Their exchange crackled, brief and sharp, but the room didn’t fully react to it this time. The attention had shifted again, pulled back toward the prompt, toward the glowing words that still hovered patiently on the wall.
SHARE A MEMORY ASSOCIATED WITH SAFETY.
Juniper leaned closer to Wisteria, her voice barely audible.
“Do we have to?”
Wisteria looked at the screen.
At the people.
At the faint glow that had begun to gather around wrists, subtle but undeniable.
“I think…” She hesitated. “I think it’s watching for something.”
Juniper grimaced. “Yeah. Vulnerability. Emotional openness. The slow breakdown of personal boundaries.”
“…that too.”
Juniper huffed softly. “Great. Love that for us.”
She tapped her fingers against the table, thinking.
Then, before Wisteria could stop her, she raised her voice slightly.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll go.”
Wisteria turned to her.
Juniper straightened in her seat, rolling her shoulders once like she was bracing for impact.
“My safest memory,” she began, then paused, her usual humor flickering uncertainly at the edges. “Uh. Okay. This is… weirdly hard.”
Her gaze darted briefly to Wisteria, then away.
“I used to hide in my room when things got loud,” she said finally. “Not… dramatic loud. Just… people loud. Conversations that went too long. Too many expectations. That kind of thing.”
Her voice softened.
“And I had this old pair of headphones. They barely worked, but if I pressed them just right, I could hear music. And it felt like…” She shrugged lightly. “Like the rest of the world had been turned down.”
She gave a quick, crooked smile.
“Which was nice. Because I am very bad at turning things down on my own.”
Her wristband pulsed.
Once.
Wisteria’s throat tightened.
Juniper looked down at it, then back up, forcing a small laugh.
“Okay. Cool. That’s… not terrifying at all.”
Wisteria didn’t laugh.
Because the pattern was becoming clearer.
The more honest the answer—
The stronger the response.
Juniper nudged her lightly under the table.
“Your turn,” she whispered.
Wisteria’s heart skipped.
She hadn’t been ready for that.
Not yet.
But the room was watching now. Not just the facility. The people. The way their attention shifted, curious, measuring, waiting to see what she would offer up.
Lucien’s gaze found hers again.
Not pushing.
Not demanding.
Just… present.
That made it worse.
Wisteria looked back at the screen.
At the glowing words.
At the quiet promise that something—progress, safety, survival—was tied to what she said next.
Her fingers curled slightly against the table.
Then she spoke.
“I like rain,” she said.
It sounded too simple the moment it left her mouth.
But she kept going.
“Not storms. Just… steady rain. When it hits the windows and you don’t have to go outside. When everything feels… paused.”
Her voice lowered without her intending it to.
“No one expects anything from you in that moment. You can just sit there. And exist. And it’s enough.”
She didn’t look at anyone when she finished.
She didn’t want to see their reactions.
Her wristband pulsed.
Once.
Then—
A second time.
Softer.
But there.
Juniper’s breath caught.
“Okay,” she whispered. “You got a bonus pulse. That feels important.”
Wisteria swallowed, her chest tight.
Across the room, Lucien tilted his head slightly, as if committing the detail to memory.
Rain.
Windows.
Silence.
Something passed through his expression—brief, subtle, unreadable.
Then it was gone.
The screen flickered.
The prompt dissolved, replaced by a new line of text.
IDENTIFY A PARTICIPANT YOU FEEL LEAST THREATENED BY.
Juniper stared at it.
“…oh, they’re escalating.”
Wisteria didn’t answer.
Because this—
This was different.
This wasn’t about memory.
This was about each other.
Around the room, people shifted in their seats, glancing sideways, suddenly aware of every gaze, every proximity, every accidental moment of connection that had already begun forming.
The facility wasn’t just listening anymore.
It was narrowing the choices.
The new prompt glowed against the wall in clean white letters, brighter than it needed to be.
IDENTIFY A PARTICIPANT YOU FEEL LEAST THREATENED BY.
It should have been an easy question.
That was what made Wisteria’s stomach tighten.
It wasn’t asking who she trusted. It wasn’t asking who she liked or who she believed or who she would choose to stand beside if everything in this place suddenly went dark. It was gentler than that. Smaller. Almost reasonable.
Least threatened.
As if fear could be measured in degrees.
As if choosing the smallest danger made it safe.
Around the Dining Hall, people shifted in their seats, the earlier stillness breaking into something restless. Eyes moved too quickly now, darting from face to face, landing and sliding away. No one wanted to look too interested. No one wanted to look too afraid. The tables had moved them closer together, but somehow the space between everyone felt sharper than before.
Juniper leaned toward Wisteria, her voice low enough that it barely disturbed the air between them.
“I don’t like that question.”
Wisteria didn’t take her eyes off the wall.
“Me either.”
“It sounds like a trap.”
“Everything here sounds like a trap.”
“Fair point.” Juniper rubbed both hands down her face, then dropped them to the table with a soft thud. “Okay. I feel least threatened by you. There. Done. I answered. Can we leave?”
The words were spoken too quickly, with too much of her usual forced humor pressed around them, but Wisteria heard what was underneath. The need for something simple. The need to choose before the room could make the choice complicated.
Her wristband warmed.
Wisteria looked down.
So did Juniper.
Both bands pulsed once, a faint glow passing beneath the smooth surface like a heartbeat.
Juniper went very still.
“…oh,” she said softly. “It heard me.”
The band did not pulse again.
The wall did not congratulate her.
No voice spoke.
Somehow, the lack of response felt worse. The facility didn’t need to announce that it was listening. It had already proved it.
Across the table, Theo exhaled carefully.
“I think that counts,” he said, though he didn’t sound relieved.
Juniper stared at her wrist. “I hate that you’re probably right.”
A chair scraped farther down the room.
Nina turned slightly toward Theo, her face pale but hopeful in that fragile way that made Wisteria worry for her without understanding why.
“I think…” Nina began, then hesitated. Her fingers twisted together in her lap. “I think I feel least threatened by you.”
Theo blinked, surprised. “Me?”
“You offered me bread,” she said, embarrassed as soon as she said it. “I know that sounds stupid.”
“It doesn’t,” Theo said quickly. “It doesn’t sound stupid.”
Nina’s wristband pulsed.
Then Theo’s.
Not bright. Not dramatic. Just enough for the people around them to notice. Enough to make Nina inhale like she’d been given something precious instead of something terrifying.
A few whispers spread through the hall.
“There,” someone murmured. “It responded.”
“So that’s good, right?”
“What does it mean?”
Marcus shoved his chair back, though he had barely sat in it to begin with. “It means you’re letting it train you.”
Several people turned toward him.
His face was flushed with anger, but there was fear there too, showing in the hard set of his mouth and the way his eyes kept flicking toward the walls. He looked like a man trying to fight a room because a room couldn’t fight back in a way he understood.
“You answer questions, it lights up your little bracelets. You sit where it tells you. You eat when it gives you food. You start ranking each other like cattle, and somehow all of you are acting like that’s information.”
Riven leaned back in his chair, balancing on the rear legs with the kind of careless precision that made the movement look accidental even though it wasn’t.
“That was almost thoughtful,” he said. “You must be exhausted.”
Marcus rounded on him. “And you’re enjoying it.”
Riven’s mouth curved. “You keep saying that like you want it to become true.”
“You’re sick.”
“Probably.”
The simplicity of the answer quieted the people nearest them. It wasn’t guilt. It wasn’t denial. It was something colder than either, and Wisteria felt Juniper’s knee press lightly against hers under the table, a silent see?
But then Lucien spoke.
“Marcus isn’t wrong.”
The room shifted toward him.
It was almost embarrassing, how fast it happened. How desperately people wanted a calm voice to take the shape of reason. Wisteria felt herself turn too, drawn before she could decide not to be.
Lucien sat with one hand loose around his glass of water, the other resting open on the table. He did not look defensive. He did not look afraid of Marcus’s anger or Riven’s smile or the facility’s glowing instructions. If anything, he looked careful. Thoughtful.
“We shouldn’t mistake response for safety,” he said. “The wristbands reacting doesn’t mean the system is trustworthy. It only means the system is measuring something.”
Marcus’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t interrupt.
Lucien continued, voice even. “That said, refusing to observe the pattern doesn’t make us freer. It just makes us blind.”
The words settled over the room with quiet authority.
Wisteria hated how reasonable they sounded.
Worse, she agreed.
Riven’s chair tipped forward again, all four legs touching the floor with a soft click. He looked at Lucien, amusement flickering across his face like a flame caught behind glass.
“Careful,” he said. “You’re starting to sound useful.”
Lucien’s gaze moved to him.
For half a second, something passed between them again. Not warmth. Not hostility either. A thin, private line of understanding that vanished as soon as Wisteria tried to look directly at it.
Then Dahlia sighed.
Loudly.
“Well, for the record,” she said, leaning back with a practiced tilt of her chin, “I feel least threatened by Lucien.”
Of course she did.
Her wristband pulsed once.
Dahlia smiled immediately, quick and bright, like the facility had complimented her.
A few people looked at Lucien to see his reaction. He offered Dahlia the faintest nod, polite but distant enough that her smile faltered just a little.
Riven noticed.
“Tragic,” he murmured.
Dahlia’s eyes snapped to him. “What?”
“Nothing. Just watching emotional compatibility unfold in real time.”
“You’re unbearable.”
“And yet you keep speaking to me.”
Dahlia opened her mouth, then closed it again, cheeks coloring with irritation. The exchange should have been ridiculous. Under different lights, at a different table, maybe it would have been. But here, with the facility watching and the wristbands glowing and the word unbonded still sitting cold against everyone’s skin, it felt like another kind of performance. Another way people were trying to become something less frightened than they were.
Wisteria looked down at her hands.
She had not answered yet.
She could say Juniper.
She should say Juniper.
Juniper was beside her. Juniper had held her hand. Juniper had made the white walls feel slightly less impossible. Juniper had already chosen her.
But the prompt’s wording curled around Wisteria’s thoughts with cruel precision.
Least threatened.
Not safest.
Not closest.
Least threatened.
And though Juniper felt human and warm and real, she was afraid too. Her fear spilled over in jokes and whispers and fingers wrapped around Wisteria’s wrist. Wisteria did not feel threatened by her. Not at all.
But when she thought of the room going silent, of the lights shifting, of panic rising again—
Her mind went, unwillingly, to Lucien.
Lucien kneeling beside the crying girl.
Lucien telling them to stay together.
Lucien drinking the water first.
Lucien’s voice cutting through chaos without becoming part of it.
Juniper turned toward her slightly, sensing the hesitation.
“You don’t have to answer,” she whispered.
But the facility had already made silence feel like a decision.
Wisteria looked up.
Lucien wasn’t staring at her. That almost made it worse. He was looking toward the wall, expression thoughtful, giving her the space to choose without seeming to ask for it.
It should have helped.
Instead, it pulled at her.
“I think…” Wisteria began, and her voice sounded too quiet to belong in the room. Still, heads turned. Not all of them, but enough.
Juniper went still beside her.
Wisteria swallowed.
“I think Lucien feels least threatening.”
She felt Juniper’s silence more than she heard it.
Her wristband warmed.
Once.
Then again.
A brighter pulse this time, soft white light blooming around her wrist and fading slowly.
Across the room, Lucien’s wristband answered.
One pulse.
Then another.
The room seemed to hold its breath.
Dahlia’s expression changed first. The polished calm slipped, revealing something sharp and unhappy beneath it.
Riven’s smile returned, but it was thinner now.
Juniper looked down at the table.
Not angry. Not exactly.
Just quiet.
That was worse.
Wisteria’s chest tightened.
“I didn’t mean—”
“No, it’s okay,” Juniper said quickly, too quickly. She looked up with a smile that didn’t quite fit. “That’s the question, right? Least threatening. He’s very… calming. Calm people win creepy facility icebreakers. It’s fine.”
It wasn’t fine.
Wisteria knew it wasn’t.
But before she could say anything else, the wall flickered again.
The prompt dissolved.
A new message formed.
INITIAL SOCIAL ASSESSMENT COMPLETE.
A collective exhale moved through the hall, but it was too strained to be relief.
Then another line appeared beneath it.
RESTORATIVE INTERACTION SPACE NOW AVAILABLE.
The far wall opened.
Not beside them. Not near the entrance. At the opposite end of the Dining Hall, where there had been nothing but smooth white surface moments ago, a seam drew itself into existence and widened soundlessly. Warm golden light spilled through first, softer than the Dining Hall, touched with something green.
A scent followed.
Flowers.
Grass.
Something almost like rain, but not quite.
Juniper lifted her head.
“Oh,” she said quietly.
Wisteria stared.
Beyond the opening, leaves moved in the glow.
Or seemed to.
For one impossible second, the room beyond looked like outside.
Not real outside. Not with sky stretching high and open, not with air that belonged to weather and distance and freedom. But something designed to resemble it. Green branches arched beneath an artificial dusk. A stone path curved out of sight. Water glimmered somewhere beyond the doorway, reflecting light that had no sun to come from.
Several people stood.
Nina was the first to move toward it, drawn by hope so fragile Wisteria could almost see it. Theo followed more carefully, staying a step behind her. Others rose too, murmuring, pulled by the promise of space that wasn’t white walls and polished tables.
The facility voice returned, gentle as ever.
“Participants may now access the Garden for restorative interaction. Emotional openness is encouraged.”
Juniper pushed back from the table slowly.
“I know I keep saying this,” she murmured, “but I really do hate that sentence.”
Wisteria stood too, though her legs felt unsteady.
Lucien rose across the room.
Dahlia rose almost at the same time.
Riven did not. He remained seated for a moment longer, watching the doorway with an expression Wisteria couldn’t read. Then his gaze flicked toward Lucien, then toward her.
He smiled faintly.
Not kindly.
Then he stood.
Juniper brushed her shoulder against Wisteria’s, not quite a bump, not quite an accident.
“Come on,” she said softly. “Let’s go look at the fake outside.”
Wisteria nodded, grateful for the invitation. Grateful that Juniper still offered it.
They followed the others toward the newly opened doorway, and as they crossed the threshold, the air changed again.
The scent of grass strengthened.
The light softened.
The Dining Hall noise fell behind them like a door closing, though the entrance remained open.
Wisteria stepped onto the stone path and stopped.
The Garden was beautiful.
That was the first awful thing about it.
Trees rose on either side of the path, their trunks pale and smooth, their leaves a deep glossy green that caught the golden light without casting proper shadows. Flowers bloomed in careful clusters along the walkway—white, violet, pale pink—each one perfect, each petal untouched by wilt or bruise. A shallow stream curved through the space, water slipping silently over smooth stones. Overhead, the ceiling had been made to look like evening sky, a gradient of dusky blue and rose-gold, soft enough to make her heart ache before she remembered none of it was real.
Juniper stepped beside her.
For once, she didn’t make a joke immediately.
She just stared.
Then, very quietly, she said, “It’s pretty.”
Wisteria nodded.
Juniper’s mouth tightened.
“Which somehow makes it worse.”
Wisteria bent slightly, touching the grass beside the path.
It gave beneath her fingertips.
Soft.
Too clean.
When she lifted her hand, there was no dirt.
No dampness.
No green stain.
Juniper watched her, then looked around sharply.
“There aren’t any bugs,” she said.
Wisteria looked up.
The realization spread slowly.
No insects hummed above the flowers. No ants moved along the stones. No flies disturbed the artificial sweetness in the air. There were bird sounds—faint, distant, delicate—but when Wisteria searched the branches, she saw nothing perched among the leaves.
No birds.
No wind either.
That was what made the leaves so wrong. They didn’t tremble. Didn’t stir. Didn’t shift except when someone passed too close and disturbed them by contact. The Garden smelled like outside, looked like outside, even offered the illusion of sky, but it was missing all the small living things that made outside alive.
Behind them, people began spreading out.
Caleb and Mira—Wisteria had caught their names during the Dining Hall chaos—walked together near the stream, shoulders close but not touching. Nina lingered near a cluster of white flowers, her face soft with longing. Theo remained near her, careful not to crowd. Marcus headed straight for the far perimeter, running a hand along the wall where ivy had been trained too perfectly across a smooth surface.
Dahlia drifted toward Lucien.
Wisteria tried not to notice.
Failed.
Lucien stood near the path, his gaze moving over the Garden with the same careful attention he gave people. He didn’t look impressed. He looked like he was cataloging what was absent.
Then he looked at Wisteria.
This time, when he approached, he didn’t come straight to her. He moved slowly, giving Juniper time to see him, giving Wisteria time to look away if she wanted.
She didn’t.
“Not very comforting, is it?” he asked.
Juniper crossed her arms. “That depends. Are you asking as a person, or as the facility-appointed emotional support blond?”
Lucien’s mouth softened. “As a person.”
Juniper narrowed her eyes as if deciding whether to accept that answer.
Wisteria looked back at the motionless trees.
“It’s too perfect,” she said.
Lucien’s gaze rested on her.
“You said rain made you feel safe,” he said. “This place doesn’t seem to understand weather.”
The words were quiet.
Simple.
But Wisteria felt them land deep.
He had remembered.
Of all the things said in that room—Nina’s kitchen, Theo’s mornings, Juniper’s headphones, Dahlia’s performance, Marcus’s anger—he had kept hers.
Rain against windows.
No expectations.
Just existing.
Juniper noticed too. Wisteria knew because Juniper went just a little still beside her.
“That’s… observant,” Juniper said.
Lucien glanced at her. “She notices what’s missing.”
Wisteria looked at him then.
Really looked.
His pale hair caught the garden’s artificial gold, turning warmer at the edges. In softer light, the calmness that had seemed almost unnatural in the atrium looked different. Less like certainty, more like discipline. Like something held together carefully because falling apart would be too costly.
“Do I?” Wisteria asked.
Lucien’s eyes remained on hers.
“No windows. No doors. No staff. No wind.” His voice stayed gentle, but there was something intimate in the precision. “You notice absence before anything else.”
Wisteria didn’t know what to say to that.
It should have felt invasive.
Maybe it did.
But it also felt like being seen through a window she hadn’t realized she was standing behind.
Juniper cleared her throat.
“I notice plenty of absences too,” she said. “Like the absence of informed consent. And the absence of exits. And, frankly, the absence of snacks in this garden.”
Lucien almost smiled. “All important observations.”
“Thank you. I’m a deeply serious person.”
Wisteria looked down before either of them could see the expression tugging at her mouth.
For a moment, the Garden almost did what it was meant to do.
For a moment, surrounded by fake trees and scentless flowers and a sky painted onto a ceiling, Wisteria could pretend they were only three people making strange conversation somewhere beautiful.
Then someone shouted.
Not Marcus this time.
Jonas.
Wisteria turned toward the far side of the Garden, where the path curved behind a cluster of glossy trees. Jonas stumbled into view, his face flushed, eyes too wide, one hand braced against a trunk as if he had been running.
“I saw something,” he said.
Several people looked over.
Marcus abandoned the wall immediately. “What?”
Jonas pointed back the way he had come, his hand trembling.
“There’s a door,” he said, breathless. “Past the trees. It flickered. I saw it.”
The Garden went quiet in layers.
First the conversations.
Then the footsteps.
Then even the artificial birdsong seemed too loud.
Marcus started toward him. “Where?”
“I don’t know—it was there, I swear it was there.” Jonas swallowed hard, looking from face to face, desperate for someone to believe him. “It looked different. Not like these doors. It had a sign. Exit, or something like it. I saw it.”
Juniper’s hand found Wisteria’s sleeve.
Dahlia whispered, “Is he lying?”
Riven had appeared near the bend in the path.
Wisteria had not seen him arrive.
He leaned against one of the too-perfect trees, arms folded loosely, watching Jonas with faint interest. Not surprise. Not concern.
Interest.
Lucien’s expression remained calm.
But Wisteria was close enough now to see that his jaw had tightened by the smallest amount.
Jonas turned toward the path again, frantic.
“I can show you,” he said. “I can—come on, I can show you.”
He started back toward the trees.
A few people followed at once. Marcus first. Then two others. Nina took half a step forward before Theo gently caught her arm.
Wisteria looked past Jonas, into the curve of the Garden where the trees stood motionless in their manufactured dusk.
No wind moved through the leaves.
No insects rose from the grass.
Nothing in the Garden shifted unless the facility allowed it.
Beside her, Juniper whispered, “Wisteria…”
But Wisteria was already staring at the bend in the path.
At Riven watching.
At Lucien’s too-careful stillness.
At Jonas’s shaking hand as he pointed toward something no one else had seen.
And for the first time since waking, Wisteria wondered if escape might be worse than staying exactly where the facility wanted them.