I woke up to the sound of a scream — sharp, human, petrified.
My whole body jolted upright, heart pounding in my chest. The scream wasn't distant. It was close. Close enough I almost felt it vibrate through the room. Another scream came soon after the first, jagged and awful.
"Please! Stop-please, stop doing that!"
My eyes darted across the dim room, soaked in the sickly fluorescent buzz of the light above me. In one corner, above the cabinets — a vent. Light spilled from it, bright and harsh, slicing into the darkness.
"Hello?" I whispered. My voice sounded too small.
No answer.
"Hello?" I repeated.
There was a rattling sound, like chains against metal, a choked sob, then: "Hello?! Oh God. I'm hallucinating!"
The voice was male. Older, with a foreign accent — middle eastern — but his English was fluent. There was a panicked edge to it. Desperate. The brittle, almost audible sound of someone breaking from the inside out.
"You're not hallucinating," I reassured him, raising my voice slightly. "I am real."
There was a long silence, as if he was figuring out if he'd actually heard me. Then, a broken gasp as he realised he had.
"Oh, Allah! It's been so long since I've heard someone! You don't know what this means to me!"
I closed my eyes for a moment and inhaled, trying to calm myself down. I didn't know him — couldn't even see him — but something about the desperation and loneliness in his voice pulled at my heartstrings. He sounded ruined.
"How long have you been in here?" I asked, stretching my neck closer to the vent.
"I-I don't know. I've lost track."
"What's your name?" I asked, hoping that keeping him talking would stop his screaming.
"Faisal," he replied quietly, fearfully. "What's yours?"
"Emily."
The relief in his voice was immediate. "Nice to meet you."
He paused. I could hear the tension in his uneven breathing.
"H-How long have you been here?" he asked.
"Just a few days... I think." I wasn't sure exactly how many, just that it hadn't quite been a week.
I heard him hum, an uncertain sound. I almost didn't hear what he said next, he was so quiet.
"You haven't had your first Act yet."
"What?" My eyes widened, unsure if I'd heard that right. "Wait, what do you mean... 'Act'?"
The word made my blood run cold.
"You'll find out," he said, and there was something final about the way he said it. "Just... be strong. Don't let them see your fear. Especially him."
Him. I didn't need to ask who. I already knew.
Tyler.
"What's your number?" he asked.
I blinked. "Uh... I can't remember."
"Well... I hate to ask a woman her age, but when is your birthday?" He sounded embarrassed to ask, and rightly so, but I wasn't offended. Quite the opposite.
"Oh, August 10th, 2002."
He whistled softly. "Wow, you're young... Your number is your birthday."
We both went quiet. The silence between us wasn't peaceful — it was the kind of silence that crouches just outside the door, listening.
I heard him whimper.
"Faisal?"
No answer. My eyes wandered up to the vent. His light flickered once... then died.
A low, mechanical click . A lock disengaging. A heavy door swinging open in his room.
His breathing turned to panicked gasps. Footsteps. A woman's voice, calm but foreign, speaking angrily in Arabic. I couldn't understand her, but her tone was chilling.
Then Faisal screamed again, longer this time. Higher.
The light in the vent strobed violently. On, off. On, off. They were doing something to him. Taunting him.
Then, from somewhere in that room, a voice I knew.
Dylan.
His tone was amused. Cruel.
"You're gonna pay for this, you fucking—"
I recoiled on my bed. The venom in his voice as he spat out a racial slur was vile, and it hit me like a slap. I didn't want to hear any more, but I couldn't stop listening.
The door slammed. Then, silence.
I waited a few minutes, afraid that Dylan might still be there. I could hear Faisal's whimpers on the other side.
I called out. "Faisal? Are you okay?"
The was a soft, pained groan. A sob.
"What did they do to you?"
After a long, uncomfortable pause, he rasped. "T-They drugged me again."
"Was it the sedative?" I asked, remembering the odd yellow liquid in Dylan's syringe yesterday.
He gave a hoarse laugh. "No."
"What was it?"
"They call it I.P.D… They give it to you after your first Act..." he mumbled weakly. He kept pausing between words, trying to regain his composure. "It's like poison. You start seeing things... Like paranoia in a syringe."
I didn't speak. I couldn't. Not when my fear of needles caused my imagination to wander too far. The thought of a large, long needle containing an unknown drug that could kill me.
His voice went quiet again, but before it faded, he said something I'll never forget.
"You have no idea what they're going to do to you, Emily."
I looked down at the leather restraints binding my wrists and ankles to the table. Tied too tight. No way out. My eyes began to wander over the counters to my left. All the same strange medical equipment, pill bottles, forceps, pliers, things I couldn't recognise.
But then I saw something useful. Over on the counter.
A knife.
A small one. Sharp enough to do damage. Sharp enough to cut me free of the straps. Even through the mounting dread, a thought took root.
'If I could just reach it...'
I thought of my mum. My stepdad. My brother. Isabel. Were they looking for me? Did they think I was dead? I felt tears roll down my cheeks before I realised I was crying again.
"Faisal..." My voice cracked in my throat. "Has anyone ever escaped?"
His answer wasn't in English.
"اللهم لطفك بنا."
(Oh Allah, have mercy on us)
I froze.
The sound of my door unlocking .
A figure stepped into the room, silhouetted by harsh white hallway light. I squinted, my eyes adjusted slowly.
And then I saw Dylan.
He was fucking grinning .
"You really screwed up, bitch," he teased, voice sing-song. "Tyler's pissed. Real pissed."
He closed the door behind him. It clanged like a cell block sealing shut.
"Your Act wasn't supposed to start till next week," Dylan sneered, his voice lilting like a nursery rhyme gone wrong, "but someone tried to make friends through the wall."
He stopped mid-step, tilting his head with a grin that didn't reach his eyes, voice dropping low. "That's against the rules, Emily."
It wasn't just teasing — it was mocking, taunting, insulting. The sing-song tone made it worse, like he wasn't talking to an adult, but a naughty child.
My throat closed. Every muscle in my body strained against the leather restraints. My pulse thundered in my ears.
He moved slowly, theatrically, every footstep deliberate. He was studying me — watching the way my breath hitched, the way my eyes tracked his movements. He fed on it.
"So, no introductions. No orientation. We're skipping all that boring shit," he said, dragging his fingers along the cabinet, a smirk playing on his lips.
Then he turned and plucked something from the drawer.
A syringe.
Long. Thick. Oozing with an unsettling violet fluid that shimmered under the low light like oil in a puddle. It belonged in a nightmare.
I stopped breathing for a solid minute before I remembered to inhale again. Sharp and pained.
Dylan held it up and gave it a little flick with his finger. He liked doing that. The sound of the glass clinking echoed far too loud in the room.
"You know what this is?" he said softly, leering at me. "IPD. Insanity Prevention Drug. That's what they call it."
He leaned forward and licked his lips, watching me watch him. "But here's the joke—" he whispered. "It doesn't prevent a goddamn thing. Just makes the show prettier."
My hands trembled in their bindings. I couldn't scream. Couldn't open my mouth. All I could see was that syringe, that flash of purple, and the gleam in Dylan's eyes as he savoured my reaction.
He leaned in close, so close I could smell the tobacco on his breath, the smoke in his lungs, the rot in his throat. I whimpered again, my body jolting in repulsion. I shivered violently.
"Oh, don't look at me like that," he whispered. "You know you deserve this, bitch."
His rough hand snaked around my upper left arm, fingers clasping around it. I squeezed my eyes shut, anticipating the sting before it came.
And then he plunged the syringe in.
The pain was immediate. Sharp, shooting through each of my nerves, throughout my body, clinging to every limb.
It was like falling through glass. Completely shattered my vision, my thoughts, and my autonomy all in one.
Slow heartbeat.
Blinding light.
High ceiling.
Distorted faces.
High-pitched laughter.
Loud screams.
Then...
Darkness.
The next thing I remember, I was staring into Tyler's eyes in a new room. Terrified.