The announcement did not leave the room when it vanished.
For three seconds, Jonas Pike existed only as white letters on the wall.
PARTICIPANT 08: JONAS PIKE
REMOVED FROM THE PROCESS.
Then the words faded, and somehow the absence they left behind was bigger than the message itself.
No one moved.
The hallway of personal quarters stayed painfully still, every assigned door pale and smooth, every name glowing softly beside its frame. Everyone else remained exactly where they had been written into the facility. Wisteria Vale across from Juniper Quinn. Dahlia Pierce several doors down. Marcus Hale near the end of the hall, his name shining like a challenge.
But Jonas’s door was blank.
Not locked.
Not dimmed.
Blank.
As if the wall had never learned him.
Juniper’s hand was still in Wisteria’s. Her fingers had gone cold. She stared at the empty doorway with her lips parted, like she had started to say something and then lost the shape of language entirely.
“He was real,” Juniper whispered again.
The words barely made it past her mouth.
Wisteria nodded, though the motion felt useless. “I know.”
“No, I mean—” Juniper swallowed hard. Her eyes flicked toward Wisteria, bright and frightened. “I mean he was real. He was right there. He talked to us. He was scared. He—he had a room. He had a name.”
Her voice broke slightly on the last word.
Wisteria looked back at the door.
Inside, the room waited with perfect emptiness.
The bed was made. The shelf was bare. No folded clothes, no discarded blanket, no imprint on the pillow, no single human trace. It didn’t look cleaned. Cleaned would have suggested there had once been something to remove.
This looked untouched.
That was worse.
Behind them, the others had begun to gather. Wisteria could hear their footsteps before she saw them, hesitant and uneven, drawn by the announcement the way bodies gather around an accident before the mind knows whether it wants to look.
Theo came first, his face pale, hair still mussed from whatever restless version of sleep the facility had allowed him. Nina was beside him, one hand covering her mouth. Dahlia appeared after them wrapped in one of the pale sweaters from her room, arms crossed so tightly over her chest that her knuckles pressed white against her sleeves.
Marcus pushed through last.
One look at the blank door, and something in him snapped.
“No.”
The word came out low.
Then louder.
“No.”
He strode forward, shoving past Theo hard enough that Theo stumbled against the wall. Marcus didn’t apologize. He went straight to the empty room, grabbed the edge of the doorframe, and leaned inside.
For one second, he simply stared.
Then he slammed his fist into the wall.
The sound cracked through the hall so violently that Nina flinched back with a strangled gasp. Juniper’s hand tightened around Wisteria’s, and Wisteria felt the shock of it up her arm.
“Open it!” Marcus shouted.
The room did not answer.
Marcus hit the wall again.
“Where is he?”
His voice tore through the corridor, raw and useless and human.
“Where did you take him?”
Nothing.
The facility gave them only light.
Only silence.
Marcus turned out of the room and looked up toward the ceiling as if the voice might be hiding there in the glow.
“You said removed,” he yelled. “What does that mean?”
No response.
“What does that mean?”
Still nothing.
Riven stood at the back of the gathering crowd.
Wisteria hadn’t heard him arrive. He was simply there, leaning with one shoulder near his own door, watching the scene with an expression that gave away almost nothing. His copper-pale hair was rumpled, his face drawn slightly in the soft morning light—or whatever passed for morning here.
He wasn’t smiling.
That should have made him seem less frightening.
It didn’t.
Dahlia’s voice cut in, brittle with forced control. “Maybe he left.”
Everyone turned.
She lifted her chin immediately, as if daring them to laugh at her.
“What?” she snapped. “He saw a door. He went through it. Maybe it was an exit.”
Marcus stared at her like she had said something obscene.
“His room is empty.”
“Exactly,” Dahlia said too quickly. “Maybe that’s what happens when someone leaves. They clear the room.”
Juniper let out a small, disbelieving breath.
Dahlia rounded on her. “What?”
“You don’t believe that,” Juniper said quietly.
Dahlia’s eyes flashed. “You don’t know what I believe.”
“No,” Juniper said, her voice shaking now. “I know what you need to believe.”
For a second, Dahlia looked less angry than wounded.
Then the anger came back harder.
“Sorry I’m not eager to decide he’s dead.”
“No one wants him dead,” Theo said softly.
Dahlia looked toward him, but her expression faltered when she saw his face.
Theo had moved to the wall opposite Jonas’s blank room. He wasn’t staring at the emptiness anymore. He was looking at the other doors. One by one. Reading the names as if making sure each person still existed.
NINA EVERLY.
His eyes shifted.
THEO GRANT.
Then:
DAHLIA PIERCE.
Then:
MARCUS HALE.
He kept going.
Quietly.
Methodically.
Counting them.
The smallness of the gesture made Wisteria’s throat ache.
Nina noticed too. Her eyes filled again, and this time she didn’t try to hide it. Tears slipped down her cheeks silently, without drama, without sound. She stared at Jonas’s empty room like she was grieving someone she had barely known, and maybe that was the worst part. They had barely known him. He had been a stranger yesterday.
Yesterday.
Had it only been yesterday?
Time felt unreliable here. No windows. No real morning. No night except the facility dimming its lights and telling them to rest. Jonas had been alive in one version of the world, and now the room insisted he had never been more than a temporary label.
Wisteria’s stomach turned.
If the room can forget him, can it forget me?
The thought arrived so clearly she almost looked at her own door to make sure her name was still there.
She did look.
WISTERIA VALE glowed across the hall.
Still there.
For now.
Juniper followed her gaze, and Wisteria hated that she understood.
A new voice entered the corridor.
“Everyone should take a step back.”
Lucien.
He stood near the end of the hall, not far from where the main corridor opened. His hair was slightly disordered, his expression calm in the way Wisteria was beginning to recognize as chosen rather than effortless. His eyes moved over the blank door, Jonas’s room, Marcus’s bleeding knuckles, Nina’s tears, Juniper’s grip on Wisteria’s hand.
He absorbed the whole scene in a breath.
Then he came closer.
Marcus turned on him immediately.
“Don’t.”
Lucien stopped.
“I’m not going to tell you to calm down.”
“Good.”
“But if you break your hand, it won’t bring him back.”
The words were quiet.
For one dangerous second, Wisteria thought Marcus might hit him.
Instead, Marcus looked down.
Blood had smeared across his knuckles where the wall had split the skin. He flexed his fingers like he hadn’t noticed the pain until someone named it.
Then he laughed once, a harsh, broken sound.
“Bring him back,” Marcus repeated. “Listen to you. Like he’s just misplaced.”
Lucien didn’t look away. “We don’t know what happened.”
“We know enough.”
“No,” Lucien said. “We know what the facility told us. That isn’t the same thing.”
That stopped more than Marcus.
Wisteria felt the words ripple through the hall. Theo looked up from his silent counting. Dahlia’s arms loosened slightly. Even Juniper turned her head just enough to look at Lucien properly.
He stepped closer to Jonas’s door, careful not to enter the room. Careful, Wisteria noticed, not to touch anything.
“His name is gone,” Lucien said. “His room reset. The announcement used administrative language. Not punishment language. Not death language.”
Riven’s voice came from the back.
“That’s supposed to comfort us?”
Lucien turned his head slightly.
“No,” he said. “It’s supposed to keep us accurate.”
Riven’s mouth curved faintly, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“Accuracy. Lovely. That’ll keep us warm.”
Lucien ignored the jab, or seemed to.
“We need to remember exactly what happened,” he continued. “Not fill the gaps too quickly.”
Marcus breathed hard through his nose. “Fine. He saw a door. We followed him. It disappeared. His band turned amber. He went back at rest period. We saw the door appear. He walked through. Now he’s gone.”
Wisteria felt a chill at the clean summary.
Spoken aloud, it sounded both impossible and undeniable.
Juniper’s voice was smaller when she added, “And now his room doesn’t remember him.”
No one corrected her.
Because that was exactly what it felt like.
Lucien’s gaze softened briefly. “Then we remember him.”
Juniper looked down at their joined hands.
“For how long?” she asked.
The corridor went quiet.
Lucien didn’t answer immediately.
Maybe because there was no good answer.
Maybe because the question had struck too close to something everyone had been trying not to think.
Finally, he said, “As long as we can.”
Juniper gave a tiny, humorless laugh. “That is not nearly as reassuring as you probably meant it to be.”
“No,” Lucien said softly. “It isn’t.”
Wisteria looked at him then.
Really looked.
For once, he hadn’t made it better. He hadn’t polished the fear into something manageable. He had let the ugly part sit there, uncovered.
And somehow that made him feel more trustworthy.
That was dangerous, she thought.
Then she hated herself for thinking it.
The facility chime rang again.
Every body in the hall flinched.
The wall beside Jonas’s blank room brightened. A clean line of text appeared where his name should have been.
PARTICIPANT COUNT UPDATED.
That was all.
No explanation.
No apology.
No acknowledgment that a living, breathing person had screamed, panicked, believed, vanished.
Just math.
Juniper made a sound like she might be sick.
Nina started crying harder.
Marcus lunged toward the wall again, but Theo caught his arm this time, surprising everyone—including himself.
“Don’t,” Theo said.
Marcus stared at him.
Theo’s face was pale, but his grip held.
“Don’t give it more blood.”
For a second, Marcus seemed too stunned to fight him.
Then he pulled his arm free, not violently this time, and stepped back.
His breathing was still rough, his eyes bright with fury, but he didn’t hit the wall again.
Riven watched Theo now.
Not smiling.
Not mocking.
Watching him the way he had watched Jonas.
Wisteria noticed that too.
The updated message faded.
The blank door remained.
The gathered crowd stayed where it was, trapped between wanting to leave and being unable to abandon the only evidence of what had happened. Evidence, Wisteria thought, was the wrong word. There was no evidence. That was the horror of it. There was only the lack of Jonas. Only the clean, careful space where his life had been erased from the building.
Juniper stepped forward suddenly.
Wisteria tightened her grip on her hand. “June?”
The nickname slipped out before she thought about it.
Juniper looked back at her.
Something softened in her face for half a second, fragile and aching.
Then she turned back toward the empty room.
“I’m not letting it have all of him,” she said.
Her voice shook, but she went on.
“His name was Jonas Pike. He was Participant 08. He saw a door in the Garden. He was scared, but he went back anyway because he wanted proof.”
Wisteria’s throat closed.
Juniper’s eyes shone, but she didn’t cry.
“He was real,” she said again.
This time, it sounded less like disbelief.
More like a vow.
Theo nodded slowly.
“Jonas Pike,” he repeated.
Nina wiped at her face with both hands. “Participant 08.”
Marcus looked away, jaw clenched.
Dahlia said nothing.
Riven said nothing.
Lucien’s gaze rested on Juniper with something like approval, though he was careful not to interrupt the moment by naming it.
Wisteria looked into Jonas’s empty room.
At the untouched bed.
The bare shelf.
The air where a person had been.
Then she said, quietly, “He was real.”
Juniper squeezed her hand twice.
This time, the gesture hurt.
Not because it was different.
Because it was the same.
Because comfort still existed, even here, and Wisteria was suddenly terrified of what the facility would do to anything that helped them survive it.
The hallway lights warmed by one degree.
A soft guidance line appeared along the floor, leading back toward the Dining Hall.
A suggestion.
Breakfast, maybe.
A routine.
As if the facility had finished making space and now expected them to keep moving.
For a long moment, nobody followed it.
Then one by one, they began to turn away from Jonas’s blank door.
Not because they were ready.
Because the hall had no answers left to give.
Wisteria was the last to look back.
The room was still empty.
The name was still gone.
But inside her mind, she repeated it once more.
Jonas Pike.
A person.
A voice.
A shaking hand against a wall.
A boy who saw a door and walked through it because he needed the world to admit he wasn’t wrong.
Wisteria stepped away with Juniper beside her.
And behind them, the blank door slid shut.
Just a quiet seal, like Jonas Pike had been filed away.
Wisteria felt Juniper’s hand tense in hers, but neither of them turned back again. The glowing line along the floor guided them forward, pale and patient, leading them away from the empty room and toward the Dining Hall as if nothing had happened. As if grief had a schedule. As if disappearance was something that could be followed by breakfast.
The others moved in pieces.
Theo walked near Nina, not touching her, but close enough that she wouldn’t feel alone unless she wanted to. Marcus stalked ahead with his bloodied hand curled into a fist, his shoulders rigid, every step carrying the promise of a fight he had not yet found. Dahlia kept her arms folded, chin lifted, eyes shining with a fear she clearly refused to let become tears.
Riven walked last.
Or maybe he only seemed to.
Every time Wisteria glanced back, he was there—far enough away to look uninvolved, close enough that she knew he was listening.
Lucien stayed near the center of them.
Not leading.
Not following.
Exactly where people could find him if they needed to.
Juniper noticed too. Wisteria felt it in the way her fingers shifted.
“Of course we’re going to breakfast,” Juniper whispered, her voice thin and bitter. “Because nothing says mourning like facility toast.”
Wisteria swallowed hard.
“I don’t think it cares that we’re mourning.”
“No,” Juniper said. “I think it cares that we keep moving.”
The Dining Hall doors opened before they reached them.
Warm light spilled into the corridor, gold and gentle, cruel in how welcoming it looked. The smell of fresh bread drifted out first, followed by coffee, fruit, something buttery and sweet. Wisteria’s stomach clenched with hunger, and shame followed immediately after.
Jonas was gone.
Her body still wanted food.
That felt terrible.
The Dining Hall had changed.
At first, Wisteria couldn’t tell how. The tables were still there. The plates were still arranged neatly. The pitchers of water caught the warm light. Everything looked almost exactly as it had before.
Then she saw it.
One less place setting.
Not an empty chair pushed back from a table. Not a plate left untouched in Jonas’s absence.
Just one fewer.
The room had corrected itself.
Juniper stopped beside her.
Her eyes moved over the tables once, twice, then fixed on the space where there should have been too much room.
“No,” she whispered.
Theo saw it next. His face tightened.
Nina covered her mouth again.
Marcus looked like he might tear the table apart.
Dahlia spoke first, too quickly. “Maybe there were always this many.”
Juniper turned to her slowly.
Dahlia’s mouth pressed shut, but she didn’t take it back.
Wisteria looked at the food.
There were baskets of rolls, bowls of fruit, small dishes of eggs, cups set beside each plate. Enough for everyone standing in the room.
Exactly enough.
Not more.
Not less.
Jonas’s absence had been measured and served around.
A chime rang overhead.
Everyone flinched.
The facility voice spoke again with the same calm it always had.
“Participant count updated.”
That was all.
No name this time.
No explanation.
Just the correction.
Marcus laughed once, low and furious. “It’s counting us.”
Riven stepped past the doorway, gaze sweeping over the tables. “Of course it is.”
Marcus turned on him. “You got something to add?”
Riven looked at him for a long moment.
Then, quietly, he said, “Not if you’re only hearing things you can punch.”
For once, Marcus didn’t answer.
Lucien moved toward the nearest table, but he didn’t sit. He looked at the food, then at the people, then at the room itself.
“We should still eat,” he said.
Dahlia let out a disbelieving sound. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“Someone disappeared.”
“I know.”
“And your solution is eggs?”
Lucien’s expression didn’t change, but his voice softened. “My solution is not letting panic make us weaker.”
Juniper leaned close to her. “I hate when reasonable people are reasonable during trauma.”
Wisteria’s mouth twitched, but the feeling vanished almost immediately.
They sat together near the edge again, not because the seat felt safe, but because it was familiar. Juniper sat close enough that their elbows touched. Across from them, Theo helped Nina into a chair before sitting beside her. Dahlia chose a seat near Lucien, though her movements lacked the earlier performance. Marcus remained standing for a long time, then finally dropped into a chair like sitting was another kind of defeat.
No one took Jonas’s seat.
Because there wasn’t one.
That was the horror.
There was nothing to avoid.
Nothing to honor.
The facility had removed even the shape of absence.
Wisteria picked up a piece of bread and stared at it until it blurred slightly.
Juniper nudged her gently. “You don’t have to eat.”
“Neither do you.”
“I know.” Juniper looked down at her own untouched plate. “But if I faint in the creepy soulmate prison, I need you to promise you’ll drag me somewhere dignified.”
Wisteria looked at her.
Juniper’s smile trembled.
“Or, like, mostly dignified. I’m flexible.”
Wisteria broke off a small piece of bread and placed it in her mouth.
It tasted warm.
Soft.
Good.
Her throat tightened around it.
Juniper watched her for a second, then did the same.
Across the table, Theo was staring at the wall.
Not at the announcements.
At the places where no announcements were.
“What?” Wisteria asked quietly.
Theo blinked, then looked at her.
“I’m trying to remember where everyone sat yesterday,” he said.
Nina’s lip trembled.
Theo looked embarrassed immediately. “Sorry. I just—if it changes things, I want to notice.”
Juniper swallowed. “That’s not stupid.”
“No,” Wisteria said. “It’s not.”
Theo nodded once, but his face remained strained.
At the far table, Marcus leaned forward, voice low but intense.
“We need to get into the Restricted Wing.”
Dahlia closed her eyes briefly. “Here we go.”
“No, listen to me,” Marcus said. “Jonas found a door. It appeared during rest period. Then he vanished. That means these walls can open places we haven’t seen yet. The Restricted Wing has to mean something.”
Riven took a slow drink of water. “Usually the restricted part is a clue.”
Marcus ignored him. “We wait for the next opening. Or we make one.”
“With what?” Dahlia snapped. “A butter knife and your unresolved anger?”
Marcus shoved back from the table so hard his cup rattled. “At least I’m not pretending this is manageable.”
Dahlia’s face flushed. “I’m not pretending.”
“You’re calling it escape because you’re scared to call it death.”
The words struck too sharply.
Dahlia went still.
For a second, all her polish fell away.
Then she stood.
“You don’t know what happened to him.”
“No,” Marcus said. “But I know he’s gone.”
Dahlia’s eyes shone.
She looked toward Lucien, almost reflexively, like she expected him to soften the blow.
Lucien did speak, but not to rescue her from the truth.
“We need both possibilities open,” he said. “If he escaped, we need to know how. If he didn’t, we need to know why.”
Juniper muttered, “That is somehow comforting and horrifying. Fun range.”
Wisteria kept looking at the table.
At the exact number of plates.
At the exact number of cups.
At the way the facility had not made them face an empty chair because an empty chair might have let them grieve.
Instead, it had made Jonas disappear cleanly.
It had made him administratively inconvenient, then corrected the math.
Her wristband glowed faintly.
Not a pulse.
Just the usual steady word.
UNBONDED
She wondered if Jonas’s had said that until the end.
She wondered what it said now.
If he still had it.
If he still had a wrist.
The thought came so suddenly, so horribly, that she set the bread down.
Juniper noticed.
“Hey,” she whispered.
Wisteria looked at her.
Juniper didn’t make a joke this time.
She only said, “Still here.”
Wisteria nodded.
“Still here,” she repeated.
The words felt small.
But small was all they had.
A soft chime sounded again.
The wall at the front of the Dining Hall brightened.
For a second, Wisteria thought Jonas’s name would appear again.
It didn’t.
Instead, new words formed in clean, patient lines.
DAILY COMPATIBILITY TRACKING WILL BEGIN AFTER MORNING MEAL.
A second line appeared beneath it.
PARTICIPANTS ARE ADVISED TO PRIORITIZE EMOTIONAL CONNECTION.
Juniper stared at the wall.
Then she laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because it wasn’t.
“Oh,” she said softly. “Good. Glad we’re staying on curriculum.”
Wisteria could barely breathe.
Around the Dining Hall, every wristband lit at once.
One by one, new text appeared beneath the old status.
BONDING INDEX: 0%
The room went silent.
The Dining Hall emptied in uneasy pieces.
No one wanted to be the first to leave after the numbers appeared, but no one wanted to sit beneath them either. So people drifted out in twos and threes, carrying untouched plates, half-finished water, frightened glances. The facility didn’t stop them. It didn’t need to. Its newest command glowed from every wrist.
Juniper kept looking at hers as they walked.
Not constantly. Just in quick, angry flicks, like she expected the number to change when she wasn’t watching.
“It’s rude,” she said finally.
Wisteria glanced over. “The number?”
“The number, the timing, the emotional surveillance, the fact that I apparently have to speedrun human connection before the walls get disappointed in me.” Juniper rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand. “All of it. Very rude.”
Wisteria didn’t answer right away.
They passed the Garden entrance, now sealed smooth into the wall. No label. No seam. No hint of the place where Jonas had walked through and never come back.
Juniper stopped.
Wisteria stopped with her.
For a few seconds, they both stared at the blank wall.
“I hate that it looks normal,” Juniper said.
“Yeah.”
“If it had scorch marks or blood or, I don’t know, spooky warning symbols, that would at least be honest.”
Wisteria’s eyes stayed on the wall. “It doesn’t seem interested in being honest.”
Juniper let out a humorless little laugh. “No. It’s interested in being tidy.”
That word followed them back to the Living Quarters.
Tidy.
Jonas’s room had been tidy. The breakfast table had been tidy. The announcement had been tidy. Everything the facility did had a clean edge to it, which somehow made it feel more violent than if the halls had been stained red.
Wisteria’s door opened when she reached it.
She didn’t touch it.
The panel simply recognized her and slid aside.
Juniper looked at it with flat disgust. “Your room is way too eager.”
“Do you want to go to yours?”
“No,” Juniper said immediately. Then, softer, “Not yet.”
Wisteria stepped inside, and Juniper followed.
The room looked exactly as Wisteria had left it. Bed tucked tight. Clothes folded. Mirror spotless. Nothing personal except her name outside the door, and even that felt borrowed.
Juniper hovered near the center of the room, rubbing her palms over her sleeves.
“I keep thinking about his door,” she said.
Wisteria closed the door halfway, leaving it open enough to see the strip of hallway beyond. “Jonas?”
“Yeah.” Juniper’s gaze moved to the mirror, then quickly away. “Like… what if it does that to all of us eventually? Not just takes us. Makes it look like there was never anyone to take.”
Wisteria leaned back against the desk.
The question sat between them, ugly and practical.
“I don’t think it can erase us from each other.”
Juniper looked at her. “You don’t know that.”
“No,” Wisteria admitted. “I don’t.”
Juniper’s expression changed then. The brittle humor drained out, leaving something younger underneath. Scared in a way jokes couldn’t cover.
“If I disappear,” she said, “don’t let it make me simple.”
Wisteria blinked. “What?”
“I mean it.” Juniper stepped closer, suddenly urgent. “Don’t let it turn me into ‘Participant 12 removed from the process’ and nothing else. Don’t let that be the whole story.”
Wisteria’s throat tightened.
Juniper tried to smile, but it wobbled. “Say I was annoying. Say I talked too much. Say I made one excellent joke about murder bread and several mediocre ones about furniture.”
“June—”
“And say I believed Jonas,” Juniper continued, voice shaking now. “Even when I was scared. Even when everyone wanted him to be wrong because that was easier.”
Wisteria crossed the room and took her hand.
“I’ll say it.”
Juniper’s eyes shone.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Their wristbands warmed at the same time.
Both girls looked down.
A soft white pulse moved under Juniper’s band. Wisteria’s answered a breath later.
Then the text shifted.
BONDING INDEX: 1%
Juniper stared.
For one full second, she looked too stunned to speak.
Then her face hardened.
“Oh, go to hell.”
Wisteria almost laughed, but there was something bitter caught in it.
Juniper pointed at the band like she was scolding an animal. “That was not for you. That was a private emotionally devastating friendship moment, and you were not invited.”
The room remained silent.
“Rude,” Juniper said again, but this time her voice cracked.
Wisteria squeezed her hand. “We know what it meant.”
“Do we?” Juniper looked at the number again. “Because now it has a percentage.”
Wisteria hated that she was right.
The promise had felt human for half a second. Then the facility had reached in and labeled it progress.
A small click came from beneath the desk.
Juniper froze. “Please tell me your furniture did not just respond to our character development.”
Wisteria turned.
A drawer had opened beneath the built-in desk. She was almost sure it hadn’t been there before.
Juniper whispered, “Cursed diary drawer. Calling it now.”
Wisteria crouched and pulled it open.
Inside was a black notebook and a pen.
Nothing else.
No message. No logo. No explanation.
Juniper leaned over her shoulder. “That is either a trap, a gift, or the facility has decided you give off journal girl energy.”
Wisteria picked up the notebook.
The cover was plain and smooth. The pages were blank.
For the first time since Jonas’s disappearance, something in her chest steadied.
Not hope.
Something sharper.
Purpose.
She sat at the desk and opened to the first page.
“What are you writing?” Juniper asked.
Wisteria uncapped the pen.
“His name.”
She wrote slowly, carefully.
Jonas Pike. Participant 08.
Juniper came to stand beside her.
Wisteria continued.
Saw a door in the Garden. His wristband flickered amber. Went back during rest period. Door appeared. He stepped through. Facility announced he was removed from the process. His room reset.
Juniper rested one hand on the back of Wisteria’s chair.
“Add that he was scared,” she said.
Wisteria wrote it.
He was scared.
Juniper swallowed. “And that he went anyway.”
Wisteria added:
He went anyway.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
The words were not enough. They didn’t bring him back. They didn’t explain where he had gone. They didn’t make the facility less powerful.
But they made the blank room a liar.
Wisteria turned the page.
“We should write down everyone,” she said. “Before anything changes.”
Juniper nodded quickly. “Yes. Good. Great. Very normal kidnapping activity. Census against erasure.”
So they wrote.
Names first.
Then details.
Juniper Quinn — Participant 12. Talks when nervous. Believed Jonas.
Wisteria Vale — Participant 17. Started record after Jonas disappeared.
Lucien — calm, people listen to him, spoke to Jonas in Reflection Room.
Riven Cross — watches from edges, jokes when afraid or pretending not to be.
Dahlia Pierce — defensive, flirts with Lucien and Riven, afraid of being dismissed.
Marcus Hale — angry, wants to force the Restricted Wing. Injured hand punching wall.
Theo Grant — kind, counted names after Jonas vanished.
Nina Everly — wants the soulmate system to mean something.
Juniper tapped the line about Lucien.
“Add ‘suspiciously good at comfort.’”
Wisteria hesitated, then wrote:
Lucien is good at comfort. Maybe too good.
“Perfect,” Juniper said. “Balanced. Academic. Slightly accusatory.”
The mirror brightened.
Both of them looked up.
Words appeared across their reflections.
RECORDING MAY SUPPORT EMOTIONAL PROCESSING.
Juniper stared.
Then she lifted her middle finger at the mirror.
Wisteria’s laugh came out before she could stop it.
Small. Startled. Real.
The message faded.
Juniper lowered her hand with dignity. “Emotionally processed.”
Wisteria looked down at the notebook again, still smiling faintly despite the tightness in her chest.
The facility had given her the notebook.
Maybe that meant it wanted her to use it.
Maybe that meant every word was being watched.
But Wisteria didn’t care.
Not enough to stop.
She turned back to the first page and underlined Jonas’s name once.
Then again.
Juniper sat beside her on the edge of the desk, close enough that their shoulders touched.
“There,” Juniper said quietly. “Now he’s harder to erase.”
Wisteria closed the notebook with her palm flat over the cover.
“Good.”
Outside, footsteps passed slowly down the hall.
Both girls went still.
The steps paused outside Wisteria’s half-open door.
Juniper’s hand slipped into hers.
Two squeezes.
Wisteria held her breath.
For a second, no one moved.
Then the footsteps continued, fading toward the main corridor.
Juniper exhaled through her teeth. “I vote we add ‘hallway footsteps: awful’ to the notebook.”
Wisteria opened it again.
And wrote it down.