As if the smoke itself had come alive, thick and sentient, it coiled around us, devouring the world in a suffocating shroud. And then-nothing. A blink, a void, an absence of space.

  When reality reformed, it spat me out into a dim, grey chamber carved from lifeless stone. The cold seeped into my bones before I could even register the sharp bite of the ground beneath me. The air-stale, heavy-pressed against my lungs like an unseen weight.

  My vision swam, caught between the lingering disorientation and the raw ache clawing its way through my limbs. I had been thrown-discarded like something useless-against the unyielding stone wall. A sharp, biting pain lanced through my ribs as I struggled to rise, every nerve in my body screaming protest. My pulse thundered in my ears, slow and dragging, as if exhaustion itself had sunk its claws into my heart.

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  The sound echoed beyond my chest, vibrating through the walls. The echo of my heartbeat seemed to resonate with the pounding in my head—the throbbing in my veins. It bounced through the very foundation of this place. A place that felt... wrong.

  Have I been here before? What happened to me back then? What happened after I blacked out?

  Albert had already turned his back to me, his tall frame swallowed by the flickering shadows as he moved toward a rusted sink in the corner. The pipes groaned in protest as he twisted the handle, sending a sluggish trickle of water spiraling down the drain. He watched the sludge pour out from the faucet until it cleared up.

  For a while, something stirred deep within me. A flicker of familiarity. Something about this scenario felt like it happened before.

  Is this not my first time being here?

  I swallowed hard, the taste of iron lingering on my tongue. My throat burned as I forced out the question that had been clawing at the edges of my consciousness, my voice rough when I finally spoke.

  "Where are we?"

  Albert didn't turn. His fingers drummed absently against the metal sink, his reflection fractured in the grime-covered mirror above it. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then, finally-

  "Somewhere no one will find us."

  His voice was quiet. Too quiet. Like a thread pulled taut, threatening to snap. He quietly started to fill a bucket of water. In front of him, resting on the wall was a shattered mirror.

  In the fractured mirror, his reflection seemed... off. Twisted at the edges. Like something was standing just behind him, just beyond the reach of the dim light.

  A chill crawled down my spine.

  The weight of something unspoken hung between us, thick as the stale air pressing against my skin. My breath slowed, steadying as I pushed myself fully to my feet.

  He exhaled sharply, his hands gripping the edge of the sink. The dim light caught the tension in his jaw, the flicker of something unreadable in his expression.

  Then, finally, he turned to face me.

  The moment the freezing water hit me, it felt like a thousand knives piercing my skin at once. A violent shudder wracked my body as I gasped, choking on the shock.

  "What the fuck!?"

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Albert only smiled. Not a kind smile, not even a cruel one-just that calm, knowing smirk that made my blood boil.

  "Good," he said, stepping back, watching me with a calculating gaze. "That got your attention."

  I sucked in a shuddering breath, my soaked clothes clinging to my body like a second layer of skin.

  The icy water seeped into every wound, every bruise, amplifying the pain until I felt it in my bones. My fingers twitched involuntarily, my body reacting to the sheer cold.

  He crouched down, tilting his head. "I have to say... I'm impressed. Staying conscious after taking a bullet to the head? That's not just stubbornness-that's exceptional." His voice held an almost admiring lilt, but his eyes were sharp, dissecting me, reading me like a book only he knew how to interpret.

  I blinked, my breath hitching as the numbing chill clawed its way into my limbs. I clenched my jaw, trying to steady my voice.

  "W-w-why.."

  The words tumbled out, broken, fragile. I sucked in another breath, blinking against the water dripping down my face. The dim light overhead flickered, casting jagged shadows across the stone walls. And then, clarity.

  Albert.

  My captor. My tormentor. The man who once trained me, shaped me, molded me into something I barely recognized anymore.

  Every muscle in my body tensed, but all I could manage was a single, fractured question.

  "Albert... why am I here?"

  His smirk faded, the momentary amusement draining from his face as irritation flickered across his features.

  "I'm the one asking the questions," he said coldly. His eyes darkened, his jaw tightening ever so slightly. "Did you really think you could escape?"

  I opened my mouth, but he cut me off before I could find the words.

  "You thought you could outsmart me?" His voice sharpened, a blade wrapped in scorn. "I expected more from you. That was a pathetic attempt." He exhaled sharply, shaking his head.

  "You know better."

  His hand moved in a sweeping gesture, motioning toward me as if I were some failed experiment, something less than what I should have been.

  "Once, you had control over your mutation," he continued, his voice laced with something between frustration and disappointment.

  "Remember the training? The exercises? You were impenetrable. No one could touch you."

  For a moment, something flickered in his gaze-something deeper than anger. A glimmer of loss.

  He was searching my face, scanning me, dissecting me, as if trying to find remnants of the person he believed I was meant to be. But there was only silence.

  The memories he spoke of hovered on the edges of my mind, intangible, distant. Echoes of something I should remember but couldn't grasp. They clung to the air like ghosts-present, but just out of reach.

  I swallowed hard, the weight of his expectations pressing down on me like a vice.

  Was I really able to control my mutation before? If I could, why can’t I now? Why even tell me this?

  And in that moment, I realized something chilling.

  He wasn't just angry.

  He was disappointed.

  He leaned in closer, his breath a whisper of something cold against my skin. His eyes, sharp and predatory, dissected me inch by inch, searching for cracks. Then, as if he'd unearthed some private amusement, a twisted smile curved his lips.

  "I was almost tempted to give you a lecture on my research," he mused, his voice slick with condescension. A soft, mocking laugh slipped through his teeth. "But... you don't remember, do you?" He tilted his head, studying me like a puzzle missing too many pieces. "All of that's gone. Just as well."

  The cruel satisfaction in his tone slithered down my spine, coiling into an unbearable weight in my chest. My fingers twitched at my sides. There was something I should have said, something I should have known, but the words-like the memories-were gone, stripped away and discarded like useless scraps. In their place was an empty, yawning void, a hollow space where a sense of self should have been.

  A flicker of something—anger? Frustration?— rose in my throat, but I forced it down, burying it beneath rigid silence. And that silence, my failure to respond, was exactly what he wanted. I could see it in the gleam of his eyes, the slow satisfaction unfurling in the way he straightened, basking in my confusion like it was a victory he had already won.

  "So tell me," he continued, voice dropping into something quieter, sharper. "How did you manage to do it?"

  I swallowed, resisting the urge to take a step back.

  "I remember," he went on, almost idly, as though recalling an old story. "I told the infirmary to step you down. They assured me you wouldn't be going anywhere. And yet..." He spread his hands, feigning incredulity. "You escaped. Without so much as making a single sound. Without damaging the restraints. Without being seen, you slipped past locked doors, past guards, past every safeguard meant to keep you here."

  His smile faded, replaced by something colder.

  "All of these things you could never have done alone." His gaze darkened, pinning me in place.

  "So who was it? Who helped you?"

  I can’t possibly tell him the truth. Who knows what this egomaniac will do to them if I tell him.

  My only option is to lie.

  When I looked up to answer him, I froze from a feral fear. Like muscle memory, my mind went blank the moment I saw his upset face. As if his face couldn’t get even more demonic, a new haunting image of him was etched in my mind.

  A quiet dread curled around my ribs. I wanted to answer, I wanted to tell him anything to get him to stop staring at me the way he was. So I threw out a random name without much thought.

  “It was James McCain.”