CHAPTER 6 - THIRD DEGREE

SUMMARY:

Ivy's morning is less than stellar. The sun's too bright, she feels like death, and she's pretty sure she's been transported across the country—back to where her trauma was born. The only thing keeping Ivy from complete mental and emotional collapse is her acute distaste for Ari.

My dreams were riddled with an assortment of terrifying sensations and strange impossibilities—so the part where a phantom knife slid between my ribs and punctured a lung felt like a logical progression.

That dream, unlike the others, however, catapulted me into a wakefulness that was accompanied by a very real stabbing pain in my chest. My whole body quaked as I clutched at my ribcage, but I didn't find the hilt of a buried knife. I didn't find anything out of the ordinary at all. That said, I could feel the panicked thudding of my heartbeat as it reverberated through my ribs. There was nothing I could do about that but try to calm down, ride out the panic, and lie there on my side…

On my side in a comfortable bed, with a soft blanket pulled up to my chin, my head resting heavily on a thin pillow. Weak winter sunlight filtered through a nearby window, warming my cheeks and eyelids. Absolute silence settled around me as I began to reign in my anxiety.

I had woken up in a very peaceful place.

My surroundings may have been peaceful, but I was in pain. My body felt like a crumpled pop can roasting in a wood-fired oven. Everything ached from my feet to my face, which was dripping with sweat. I could feel heat radiating off of my skin, creating a miniature sauna under the blanket, yet somehow, simultaneously, I was freezing. So cold that I wanted to pull that blanket up over my head to trap any warmth. So cold that my joints hurt too much to move, and my muscles felt like they'd rip if I used them. As I started to shake and shiver, I became eerily aware of my skeleton, which I envisioned rattling around inside of me.

Aware of much beyond that? Not particularly. Everything felt foggy, and I was so damn tired that I couldn't bring myself to open my eyes. But I was definitely in a bed—a real one, too, with a proper mattress. That was rare for me. Whose bed was I in? Could it be mine? When did I get a bed? The sunlight felt oddly threatening, and I just wanted to go back to sleep. Maybe sleep would get rid of the pain. Even if my sleep carried nightmares, it would be better than this frozen inferno of discomfort.

But when did I get a bed? Did I buy it or steal it? Must've stolen it—didn't have enough money to buy one. I would need to take another hefty commission or two before…

After a moment's reflection, I thought, Didn't I just take another commission? I did, at the mall. But it ended up being fake. It was really just a…trap.

Shoddy memories started to come back to me in fragments, like pieces of the cracked surface of a frozen lake. I remembered silently picking the locks of a van—from the inside. A pirate ballerina tipped me off. Lipstick and a Southern accent. I flew over the city. Crystal Gardens. Coffee splattered on a floral dress. A man kicked over a kiosk stand. I fell off of the "L," and people watched. Two men spoke, and one said…

"Boston."

As more and more memories came back—clearly out of order and lacking context—and my barely functional brain fought to make sense of it all, my head started to throb. It was like my pounding heart had moved into my skull. Ignoring the excruciating pain of my muscular system, I slowly snaked a tingling hand up from under the covers, hoping to press it against my forehead for comfort. When my fingers finally connected with my face, they were instantly drenched in sweat. My skin felt like it was on fire. I needed to breathe. Just breathe and calm down. Not having a clear memory of the past, in addition to the pain of the present, was making me anxious. Was I actually ill or just having a panic attack? My breaths were coming in short, shallow bursts. I couldn't get enough oxygen. Too hot. Far too hot. I slid my hand back down and pressed it to my chest, forced myself to take a deep, lung-filling breath…

And inhaled the unmistakable, unforgettable sterile scent of my childhood.

My eyes snapped open, and the warming light from the nearby window flooded my vision. It was blinding, and the brightness sent a lance of pain through my already throbbing head. I winced, but my eyes adjusted quickly, and despite the screaming in my skull, I noticed that the sunlight was segmented. It was split apart into strips by a series of horizontal metal bars embedded within the glass.

All-consuming, stomach-twisting dread obliterated coherent thought and missing memories. I forgot my aches and pain, feverish chills, and the drumming in my head. With every increasingly faster beat of my heart, it all evaporated.

I flailed.

Flung back the plush blanket.

Rolled toward the side of the bed at top speed, ready to launch to my feet and—

My bare left foot met the cold ground, but my rapid, panicked motion to escape made my vision blur and my head spin. Nausea made me sway, and I somehow failed to notice that my right ankle was bound to the mattress until it was too late—my left foot slipped out from under me and shot straight under the bed frame. Before comprehension kicked in, my butt, back, wings, and head smacked the ground in succession. A rippling tremor of agony radiated from my spine into every inch of my body, and that pain skyrocketed as my delicate, damaged wings were compressed under my weight. Anguish soaked into every sore muscle and joint. My ears started to ring, and for one short second, the world turned violently white. I gasped, and the sharp intake of breath brought back the sensation of a knife in my lungs—which in turn brought on a fit of painful, shallow coughs. Tears seeped from the corners of my eyes, mixing with sweat, as I fought to breathe through the suffering.

For a fleeting moment that seemed to last for ages, I just lay there, utterly incapacitated and on the verge of vomiting between coughs. My vision was no longer white but instead seemed fogged over like warm breath on cold glass. My brain felt the same way—throbbing still, but so, so hazy. My choking coughs started to slow, my head rolled to the side, and I shakily inhaled.

I could smell the disinfectant on the floor.

Boston. Back in Boston.

A savage, irrational part of my brain hijacked my body before I'd even finished the thought. Panic and terror completely eschewed good sense and the fear of further bodily harm. The smog of my vision started to clear a little, and awareness of the tight band around my right ankle sank in. I began to thrash like a wild animal caught in a snare. Of course, a less muddled fraction of my mind knew that I just needed to sit up slowly and calmly, get back on my feet, and address whatever restraint now kept my ankle pinned to the mattress—but the deafening ringing in my ears, the heat of my body, and the pounding of my head seemed to egg me on, edging me towards a mindless frenzy.

Ostensibly of its own accord, my awkwardly bent and elevated right leg tugged and jerked against its bindings. The searing pain in my chest returned tenfold. I pressed my left foot against the side of the mattress and pushed, scooting a little across the ground before the tensile strength of my various ligaments and tendons dragged me back. The muscle strain was excruciating.

Every inch of my body screamed in torment as I wriggled and flipped onto my stomach, but the thudding of my heart, my rasping coughs, and the ringing in my ears drowned it out. Panic stifled pain. My right leg stuck out straight behind me now, extended up onto the mattress, and I clawed at the sterile linoleum flooring as I tried to pull away. My fingernails didn't even leave scratch marks.

Through a miraculous feat of adrenaline-fueled fortitude, I pulled myself up onto my left knee and attempted to crawl—but my hands slipped in my pooling sweat, my balance failed, and it took all of my meager coordination to keep from face-planting. Either way, my knee skidded out from under me, and I slammed back down onto my stomach and elbows. The impact knocked the wind out of my lungs, briefly interrupting my cough and increasing my chest pain.

From there, I switched to smashing my free foot against the bed frame to push away. I missed half the time. My trapped leg wasn't coming loose. The bed didn't even budge from all the motion. The ringing in my ears continued to drown out the noise of my labored wheezing coughs, and the terror of reality continued to override the wrenching pain I was creating in my bound ankle.

Back in Boston!

Though my thoughts were still chaotic and my memories were still misty, the sane part of me knew it wasn't possible. I'd kept tabs on the rubble for years until a real estate developer had finally snatched up the land and constructed an apartment complex. Regular people had moved into that complex. The lab had never been rebuilt. This room, this building…it couldn't be real. Maybe this was just a dream. Maybe I'd never woken from the nightmare of getting stabbed through the ribs, and this was just a crazy new twist. It had been a long time since my subconscious had played a prank this nasty, but nothing else made sense. If I closed my eyes, would this all go away? If I escaped the bed, would I wake up?

Only one way to find out.

I planted my foot against the side of the bed frame once more and pushed. My right ankle felt close to snapping, but I clawed at the linoleum to pull away further. My heart was beating so hard that it felt on the verge of bursting out of my chest—like a horse crashing free from a starting stall. My lungs were burning, and I could barely breathe through the unending, chest-rattling coughs. My body felt like it was on fire.

Escape the bed! Wake up!
I flexed my foot against the metal frame, pushing up onto the ball and adding a few extra inches of distance. A tearing sound breached the ringing in my ears. Was I ripping flesh or ripping fabric?

Then, a heavy thud sounded from behind me, followed by rushed footsteps. "Stop! Ivy, stop!" The command came from a vaguely familiar voice. It was deep and harmonic, and I thought I might have heard it in a different dream. But any voice heard within the walls of this building was meant to mislead, so I pushed harder against the bed frame. "You're hurting yourself! Stop!" The lovely inflection sounded both worried and exasperated—and the familiarity of it pushed through my frenzied trance, carrying an impression.

Another chunk of my memories locked into place, bearing my previous interactions with the owner of that voice, and I flexed my foot even more aggressively in response, trying to flee. It was time to wake up. This dream was getting worse.

Before I could tear off my own foot, something constricted around my lower right leg and tugged me backward, exacerbating the already unhealthy angle of my shin. My phlegm-rattling coughs immediately gave way for a raspy, weak scream. For just a second, the warm hands that wrapped around my shin and calf muscles loosened their grip. Then they cinched even tighter and tugged again.

He was dragging me back onto the bed—back into the nightmare.

No. No. FUCK no. I thrashed harder and tried to get a solid grip on the floor with my clammy hands, but one more sharp tug jerked me back so far that my hips left the ground, leaving only the upper third of my chest somewhat flat.

"Shit… Stop kicking! I can't get the buckle un—" His exclamation was cut short by a grunt as my free, flailing foot connected with some part of his firm body. Then his hands cinched tighter, lifted. I felt the edge of the mattress shift, presumably as he dropped down onto it to better position himself. One of his hands left my leg, and something caressed my now-numb ankle. "Son of a—," he muttered. Then I heard a tiny clink, like a belt unbuckling, and I was free.

Ari released my leg instantly, and I slithered away, out of his reach, aided in my retreat by the slipperiness of my sweat. But I didn't wake up.

Maybe I had to escape the room, not just the bed, in order to do so?

Trauma-fueled adrenaline gave me the energy and stamina I needed to crawl to my feet and make for the window. Shock, perhaps, enabled me to ignore the horrific pain coursing through my body and the conflagration in my chest as I gasped for air and hacked up a lung. As I hobbled toward the diluted yet blinding sunlight, I cast a glance over my shoulder to check on Ari. He was just an unmoving blur in my already blurry vision—and trying to focus on him made my head reel. Nausea rolled over me once more, and I barely managed not to vomit. I turned forward again in time for my palms to connect with the window.

The window would not be my salvation. The horizontal metal bars were embedded within the glass, and the glass itself seemed different. Reinforced. I was so focused on the window itself that I didn't even observe what lay beyond. I just limply smacked my moist arms and hands against the dense windowpane and felt a pitiful whimper squeak out of my chest between coughs. Even if I had the strength or coordination to try and break the glass, I couldn't squeeze between the bars, and instinct and prior experience convinced me that I certainly couldn't warp them.

The door, then. There had to be a door. Ari probably came in through that door, so I could probably get out.

Frantic, I spun to face the other side of the room and nearly toppled, catching myself in the knick of time. Pausing to regain some balance and eyesight, I surveyed the space before me and spotted the door. It was on the other side of the bed—and Ari was watching my every move from where he'd slumped sideways on the mattress, propped up on one arm. Being upright wasn't helping the spinning and pounding of my head, but having the light source behind me seemed to at least help my eyes. I could see Ari clearly now—he was positively glowing in the slats of sunlight, and the way the rays glittered on his tawny hair felt too detailed to be a dream. Ari was fingering the silver buckle of a sturdy-looking fabric restraint, which appeared to be attached to a very short chain that snaked into the mattress, and his expression was unreadable. He was just waiting and staring, eyes fixed on my sweaty, broken visage. Those amber eyes were so beautiful, and they twinkled brightly in contrast to the dark amaranthine crescents beneath them. They were brightened even further by the massive patch of raw skin on his left cheek. He looked like someone had slapped him repeatedly with the raspy, pokey side of a box grater. I focused on that plot of flesh and the depth of color in it, and the full reality of my situation hit.

This is real. You're back where you started.

Ari finally opened his mouth to speak right as I started moving again. Reality was oppressive, and the pain and exhaustion it bore was starting to take a toll. I needed to get out of that room while I still had adrenaline on my side, while I was still in shock—and denial. Every hobbling step towards the door was taxing, and I coughed the whole way, but thankfully Ari didn't follow. He shifted on the bed, though—I heard it groan behind me.

Everything was spinning, and I was panting for breath, but I made it to the door. I jiggled the dull silver handle. It didn't twist or tremble in the slightest. I whacked the door with a poorly clenched fist, and no sound echoed. Just a thud, accompanied by the unending ringing in my ears. The door was solid.

Though this whole situation was undeniably real and not a dream after all, part of me still believed that if I could escape that room, I might escape reality and the fate that it held. So I took a couple of faltering, unsteady steps back, turned a few degrees to the side to properly angle my shoulder, and steeled myself.

"Don't bother," Ari crooned in a sing-song voice. I could feel his eyes on me, marking my every move from his seat on the bed. "That door is—"

I flung my body at it, ignoring him completely. My shoulder met the grey material with a solid thump, and the only thing that rattled on impact was my brain within the confines of my skull. Fresh pain blossomed from my shoulder, and I slumped against the door in frustrated anguish. But I pushed myself back up again, stubbornly ignoring every scream from my pain receptors along with Ari's further warnings. I positioned myself about three feet from the door and sucked in a shallow breath.

"You should really quit while you—" Ari started again, tone sharper and more derisive than amused now, right as I launched forward once more. This time, however, I hit the door with the ball of my foot in the sloppiest rear leg thrust kick to ever grace the Earth.

My bare left foot connected with the door and all of my weight settled on my injured right ankle…which twisted, gave out, and pitched me sideways.

I swear I fell in slow motion, and as I dropped, the last of my adrenaline faded. I was drained. I was done for. My head would hit the ground, and I'd pass out. I might not even wake up again at this rate.

Ari caught me before I'd fallen forty-five degrees. One of his hands slid expertly between my wings and shoulder blades, and the other snaked around my waist, arresting my motion entirely. He lifted me upright and set me back on my feet, but his hands moved to my shoulders and lingered. When my head stopped lolling from side to side and my vision cleared enough that I could focus on his face, his expression shifted from something like resentful concern to haughty amusement. His mouth twisted up into a half-smirk. "You can't break that door down, Ivy," he asserted, tone infuriatingly pragmatic. "But if you keep trying, you're definitely going to break your ankle."

To my surprise, the combination of Ari's grounding touch and matter-of-fact timbre steadied me in more ways than one. He was right about my ankle, of course, but he was also just so irksome that I started to feel strangely lucid. My exhaustion was replaced by annoyance, my agony displaced by mild loathing. The fog in my head began to clear as I contemplated my completely justified distaste for this man, who held me upright so delicately. I wanted to smack that smirk off of his face.

And so my neurons formed a united front of anger and animosity and started collaborating again. I was so focused on my irritation that I actually felt mildly functional. Or at least less deranged. "Get the hell away from me," I snarled, managing to shrug Ari off and shuffle a few inches away—although my assertive response was broken up by a fresh wheeze. His smirk didn't shift, but Ari's eyes sparkled with greater mirth.

"Looks like your ankle's already sprained, unfortunately," he continued, disregarding my snarl. "That'll make it much harder to run away." He shot me a maddening wink before backing away and returning to the small bed. Eyes still locked on me, he collapsed onto the mattress. It was a considerable drop from his standing height, but he somehow made the motion look smooth. Once settled, he leaned back on both palms, and I couldn't help but note that his posture made his chest and mock neck-covered throat quite vulnerable to an attack. The fact that I was registering weak points in his defenses was a good sign—I was on the road to mental recovery. I probably couldn't fight my way out of this, but paying attention to Ari's vulnerabilities could prove useful. Maybe I could hit him, distract him, and…

And what, Ivy? You're still trapped in this goddamn room!

Ari wiggled his shoulders a bit to loosen his wings, and my thoughts derailed.

It still felt impossible. Someone else with wings. Someone else like me!

God, I wished those wings were attached to anybody else.

But seeing those awe-inspiring appendages on a different person and not just on my own reflection was truly staggering, and watching them settle gently on the surface of that nightmare-laden bed even more so. The majority of his feathers were such a rich brown, and they contrast beautifully with the bedsheets.

Ari's booted feet slid out across the linoleum towards me, and his legs, clad in fitted black jeans, spread apart. "Enjoying the view?"

Shit. I hadn't realized I was staring, lost in irrelevant thought. My hazy eyes met his, and Ari grinned impishly, baring his bright white teeth. Fuck. Ivy, pull yourself together!

"You can sit next to me if you want," he continued, lifting a hand to pat the mattress beside him. The motion made the buckle on the nearest restraint jingle, and goosebumps spread across my body. The chill returned. "I promise not to bite…unless you beg me to."

Ah, right. The memory of my first conversation with Ari snapped back into its slot. Outside the jewelry store, he'd gone from charming to sleazy in the bat of a golden eye. He'd expressed a desire to "put a diamond choker around my lovely throat." As I realized that he'd basically managed to do that—and had spent the better part of a day terrorizing me through the use of a diamond necklace—I felt the temperature of my body tip back towards "fire and brimstone."

I cast Ari a carefully crafted look of disdain. Then, to further make my point, I shuffled farther away from him and the offered seat. As I scooted, I warily observed the rest of the room. It was a tiny amount of space, and it absolutely screamed "college dorm meets insane asylum." The room itself was square and had only the one barred window and just the one solid door. No closet. No connecting washroom. No furniture, save for the bed centered against the far wall. The bed, which had been so comfortable—such an upgrade from the cots and sleeping bags and nests of dirty fabrics or cardboard that I'd grown used to—had not one but four restraint straps built into it. Two for wrists, two for ankles. I stared at those straps and felt a fresh sting of guttural panic and disgust, accompanied by another round of goosebump-inducing shivers. It was a wonder the room wasn't padded.

"Where are we?" I inquired, trying to sound calm, trying to breathe evenly. Keeping my composure felt vital, especially in front of Ari. Every time I inhaled, though, I caught a fresh whiff of disinfectant and had to fight the urge to scream and thrash.

Ari followed my frozen gaze to the restraints and frowned. His brows furrowed, and his smirk slid off his face entirely. "What do you remember?"

Not enough, I mused, eyes darting around the room again, searching for triggers—but I felt so disoriented, and the motion of my vision made my head spin. Instead, I looked down at my own body, which was clothed in something akin to shapeless surgical scrubs: cesious pants with an elastic waistband and a shirt to match. The thin, papery fabric clung to my sweaty skin. My feet were bare, numb, and tingling. It took a moment of focused sensation for me to recognize my lack of undergarments, and to realize that the back of the shirt was mostly open along my spine from the base of my neck to my lumbar region. My aching wings were out, folded over the fabric. So exposed.

Wiping sweat off my brow with the back of my hand and fuming internally—since all signs suggested that someone had stripped me—I looked back to Ari. He was still kind of frowning, but his expression was intent. Curious. I wanted to gouge out his pretty eyes. Why did I hate him so much?

Oh, right. "I remember you tricking me, abducting me, and tackling me into the fucking lake," I growled, trying to sound tenacious, but the vibration of my speech tickled my throat, and I couldn't fight back another rattling cough. The corners of Ari's mouth twitched, and his golden eyes glittered, but only for a moment. He dipped his head, encouraging me to continue. "And… I almost drowned…" My lungs burned as the memories swelled. Everything before Navy Pier was clear enough, but everything after I escaped from Ari's van still felt kind of patchy. It was all coming back, but slowly. "But you pulled me out and carried me back to the van and…"

That was it. That was where the memories stopped flowing, and my recollection ended. Clearly, a great deal had happened since I'd passed out in the back of Ari's kidnapping van—clearly, I was missing a lot. Could we have traveled from Chicago to Boston in the time I'd been unconscious?

"Where the hell are we?" I repeated caustically.

"We're in a medical facility just outside of Chicago," Ari quickly supplied, waving a hand to indicate the irrelevance of my question, although his answer was incredibly relevant to me. Chicago—not Boston. My burst of relief was short-lived as I realized the implications of this facility. It meant that— "Do you remember anything else?"

Ari's tone was…persistent, and the distracting restatement of his question put a helpful pause on my incoming emotional spiral. "Is there something you want me to remember? Or something that you hope I don't?"

My response was so pointed and accusatory that it surprised even me, but apparently not as much as it startled Ari. For the first time since he'd started staring at me, he looked away. His lips pressed into a thin white line. He inhaled deliberately through his nose. His cheeks even flushed a nearly imperceptible shade of pink. The blush might've been endearing on anyone else, but Ari's combination response was suspicious, and his following attempt to hide the initial reaction even more so: he palmed his face with one hand and heaved a sigh. It came off as an expression of exasperation, but it felt like a fake out. He was hiding something, and he seemed to be almost embarrassed about it. "Look, do you re—"

"No. I don't remember anything else," I rasped, cutting him off before he could question me further. Ari's apparent chagrin was revealing. Something had happened while I was unconscious that was affecting him, but he didn't want me to know about it…unless I already did? That was indeed quite suspicious, and I would likely have to readdress it, but I had more pressing questions. "Is this an Itex lab?"

After a moment, Ari lifted his eyes back up to meet mine. His gaze was disquieting, and he inclined his head like he was having an internal debate on whether or not to answer honestly. Then, all signs of his brief foray into discomfort seemed to fade. "This is a miscellaneous building on the main campus of a multinational healthcare company." Ari's half-smirk returned. "Itex is our holding company though, so technically, yes."

Ari was watching me for a reaction, and I tried so hard not to give him one. Normally I was a champion of hiding my thoughts and emotions, but at that moment, I undoubtedly failed. Even though I'd long suspected (and had perhaps subconsciously known) that Itex existed outside of good old Beantown, confirmation of the company's extended reach still felt about as great as a kick in the kidney—and that's not a feeling you can keep off your face.

The existence of a second Itex facility implied the possible existence of many more. Itex, acting as a holding company, implied far worse—it indicated a potential global involvement. And I'd spent years—a decade, literally—choosing to believe the lies I'd told myself as a teen. Choosing to swear by the finality of sheer destruction. Choosing to embrace denial at every twist and turn, rather than face the truth. Every time I'd had a chance to research or confront the full extent of my past and acknowledge its significance, I'd instead picked the path of avoidance.

It was safer. So much safer, emotionally, to live my life with a foolhardy certainty that I'd done my part. I'd convinced myself that destroying the Itex lab—my home for thirteen years—meant that I'd protected countless future children from a childhood as horrendous as mine. But here I was, in a different Itex lab. I was never a hero after all. I was just a stupid, selfish, well-intentioned vigilante. My arson had been a minor inconvenience to Itex, not a watershed moment. That meant that many children had likely been tortured and tested and taken apart the way I had. It meant that there were more people out there like me…

Like Ari—whose amber eyes unraveled my defense mechanisms and forced me to confront a decade's worth of self-deception on the spot.

Only then did I remember my previous thoughts, from when Ari had chased me through the sky over the city. I'd already realized what his existence meant. Now all of my feelings of grief, anger, guilt, anxiety, and fear were just further substantiated.

Sweat was dripping into my eyes, and the tension in my body and the aches in my muscles returned and intensified. Staggering exhaustion and a tempest of emotion made me sway, but I managed to hobble a bit further from Ari until I found the stability of a nearby wall. I tried not to collapse—I really did. But I was trembling, and my heart was racing, and I couldn't help but slump sideways against the cold surface. No doubt Ari was watching with delight as I drowned in survivor's guilt and the deep, dark pool of my youthful hubris.

Keep it together, Ivy. Focus on the present. Don't let him see you fall apart. It was so hard. I was dying to just curl up in a ball, and cry, and pull a Rip Van Winkle. Maybe I could hibernate for a few more decades and everything would be better when I woke. Obviously, that was a bad and impossible choice, so I sucked in a deep breath and tried to quell the anxious palpitations of my heart. It kind of helped, but it also just made my lungs burn yet again. I pressed a shaky hand to my ribs, reaching for that phantom knife, and pretended to believe in the grounding power of pain. Then I took another deep breath. Learn what you can now, and deal with your feelings on your own time.

Trying my best not to sound as emotionally and physically brittle as I felt, I asked, "How long have I been unconscious?"

Ari hummed contemplatively, so I shot him a sideways glance in time to see him bite his lip and peer upwards, as though performing mental math. "It's been…three months and…six days."

Sweet sarsaparilla, I thought stupidly as my ears started ringing again and the nervous breakdown I had so narrowly dodged just seconds ago started to bubble back up. "Three—?" I choked. The room began to spin. My deliberate, deep breaths were replaced by increasingly shorter, shallow ones. A fresh wave of nausea sucker-punched me, and now my mind was racing along with my heart. Three months!? What did they do to me!?

Then Ari chuckled—a breathy little sound that came mostly through his nose. "Wow. You just turned so many different colors, so fast. You know I'm joking, right?" I was on the verge of hyperventilating when Ari spoke, but my rollercoaster of panic hit a wall with his words. Blinking cold sweat out of my eyes and trying to stand straight, I half turned to face him. He held up a wrist to check his watch. "You've been out for almost fourteen hours."

As a stream of expletives flooded my brain and my heart started to slow down, I strongly considered attempting to strangle Ari. I knew the odds of success, and every single thing that came out of him made me feel weaker and more lethargic, but maybe I could get behind him quickly enough to garrote him. I could use the soft blanket that lay crumpled beside his hip. Even if I wasn't fast enough, maybe my actions would be so unexpected that Ari wouldn't think to fight back. Was it worth the risk to attempt?

My hazy eyes drifted back to his face. He was grinning, immaculate teeth glistening. Totally entertained by my anxiety and fear.

It was worth the goddamn risk.

I pushed off the wall and took one tiny, jerky step in Ari's direction before I felt a hot poker of pain stab through my lungs. The agony pitched me into another uncontrollable fit of body-wracking hacks. I doubled, fell back against the wall. Mucus rattled around in my throat, and my head throbbed with every failed attempt I made at breathing. Fear of asphyxiation intensified panic and sidelined loathing. The coughs kept coming. My eyes were filling with tears as I hyperventilated, but I was somewhat aware of Ari shifting on the bed. He leaned forward, resting his palms on his thighs attentively.

"What's—wr-wrong—with me?" I choked out, wrapping an arm around my ribcage and gasping in meager amounts of air between each interjection. Sudden motions—not good!

Ari shifted a little in my peripheral vision. "You've got pneumonia," he supplied, tone weirdly flat. "Because of the cold lake water. You're also concussed. And your wing is broken—but it's set and healing."

Breathless though I was, I turned my head to shoot Ari a tear-soaked scowl that I hoped made my point: this is your fault. I'm dying and you are to blame. The scowl probably wasn't noteworthy though, because I couldn't stop wheezing between rattling coughs. But I could see his expression well enough—he was frowning, and his brows were knit.

Then, suddenly, Ari was on his feet, and his dark figure loomed closer. I twisted to try and retreat, but he bared his palms in a familiar attempt at placation and said, "Put one hand on your chest and one on your stomach above your belly button. Then…" He followed his own advice and waited for me to do the same, but I didn't take his direction. Instead, I gave him the evil eye and continued to suffocate. Ari huffed. "Look, I'm more than happy to put my hands on your chest and stomach if you won't do it yourself." My palms leapt into position and Ari rolled his eyes, shaking his head and smiling slyly. "Now, breathe in through your nose and focus on keeping your chest still. I know it's hard right now, but only the hand on your stomach should rise when you inhale… Okay, now breathe out through your mouth, but purse your lips like you're whistling…"

It was impossible at first because I couldn't stop suffocating, but Ari continued to talk me through the breathing technique, encouraging me to take progressively slower and deeper breaths each time. At first, I just felt like a movie-gag of a woman going into labor, but after a few dozen repetitions the process began to flow smoothly. It was hard to disregard the lecherous way Ari ogled my mouth each time I pursed my lips, but somehow, without me fully realizing it, the combination of Ari's soothing, dulcet voice and the focus required to follow his instructions seemed to distract my mind enough that the coughing slowed incrementally and passed. The tears stopped rolling. When my breathing returned to nearly normal, save for a raspy inhale and the unmistakable rattle of mucus buried deep within, Ari backed away warily and ran a hand through his hair. "Great. Try not to die on my watch, okay? I'm already in deep enough shit for bringing you in damaged."

For half a second, I'd nearly felt gratitude towards this irksome man. His efforts to help me avoid asphyxiation were surprisingly kind, and the irony of my intent and desire to strangle him just beforehand was not lost on me. And yet, all gratitude immediately washed away with his words. He hadn't been caring or compassionate—he was just covering his ass.

Deep shit, eh? Well-deserved, if you ask me, I decided, obnoxiously aware of every ache in my body that Ari was responsible for. I couldn't help but ponder the greater depth of his jab, though—and my mind circled around to another important question: "Why am I here?"

"To be recruited, obviously," Ari waved another dismissive hand in my direction before dropping back down onto the bed once more. This time, however, I noticed something obvious in his slouchy posture and movements that I'd previously overlooked—he was exhausted. He had next to no energy to expend on staying vertical. The dark circles under his eyes provided further supporting evidence.

Ari's fatigue might've given me a tiny advantage if I wasn't dead tired too.

"Isn't recruitment supposed to be voluntary?" I grumbled through clenched teeth as I eyed Ari, willing him to pass out.

He shrugged, then spoke with a sneer. "Consider this the draft, then."

"Itex doesn't want me dead?" It was a stupid question, considering the evident signs of my rehabilitation and Ari's statement about my "recruitment." I'd just always assumed that the company would want me killed for the things I'd done and the trouble I'd caused—the possibility of being recaptured or reclaimed was not one I'd anticipated.

"You're valuable property. Why would anyone here want you dead?" Ari lilted, and his tired eyes gleamed with interest.

Oh, you haven't heard about Back Bay? I really "blazed a trail" on my way out of town.

"Because of…Boston." It was the most vague but technically accurate answer I could offer.

"Because you ran away?" he guessed, and his head cocked in a strangely inhuman manner. But his tone confirmed my growing suspicions well-enough—he didn't know. Or, at least, he didn't know everything. Did anyone? Was it possible that no one was aware of my involvement in the destruction of the Boston lab? It sounded too good to be possible. Either way, I lied, nodded slowly, and watched Ari's smirk shift into something more subdued. "Hmm. Guess they've just decided that you're more valuable alive." With that, his gaze disconnected from mine and his amber eyes slid down my body, tracing every shape with a cruel and disconcerting hunger. The golden glow of his irises darkened. Suddenly, I realized that from his point of view, I must've been standing directly between his spread legs. "Can't really blame them."

It took a great deal of self-control not to try to kick Ari in the balls. Instead, I calmed myself with soothing thoughts of garroting him successfully and shuffled to the side to disrupt his view.

"So, what's next?" I inquired, tone surprisingly steady despite my agony, stress, and hatred.

Ari seemed to pull himself out of a different mental dimension and dragged his eyes back up to focus on my face. "Next is your intake meeting. I'm here to escort you. Or, rather, I was on my way to collect you when I heard you screaming and kicking the bed." I didn't really remember screaming—only coughing—but it tracked.

"Intake meeting?"

"Mmhmm."

"What's involved in that?" Any information I could get out of Ari now would help me prepare for whatever came next. It could give me an advantage. Although Ari was clearly an untrustworthy and unreliable source, the slightest bit of miscellaneous knowledge might help me survive even a few minutes longer.

Unfortunately, it seemed Ari was done being forthcoming since his response was simply: "Guess you'll just have to come along and find out." He winked knowingly and ran a dexterous hand through his hair once more. It was messier today and backlit by the slats of sunlight—flecks of gold sparkled in the caramel brown—and he seemed to be at the center of an upsettingly lovely corona. I wanted to thread my fingers through that gorgeous hair and slam his face against the metal bed frame.

"What if I don't want to go to this…meeting? What if I refuse?" I murmured, shifting a bit more to face him fully. Obviously, I already knew the answer. I just needed to gauge how dedicated Ari was to delivering me to the meeting in one piece—it could make a significant difference in my inevitable escape scheming.

He snorted and shrugged. "It's your funeral, sweetheart."

Not reassuring at all. Ari would try to cover his ass, but he didn't give a genuine shit about my well-being. So what was his purpose here? He'd captured me—twice—and had absolutely lit me up in the process. That all made some semblance of psychotic sense when I'd believed it was his intent to end my life, but it didn't follow with his current involvement or claims of recruitment. Was Ari also meant to be the charismatic face that would convince me to abandon years of fear and rancor and allow myself to be "drafted" by an abomination of a company? If so, he really needed to dial up the "charisma" bits of his approach. Or was he just here to act as an enforcer—to make sure I complied?

"Why you?" It hadn't been my intention, but my tone was dripping with antipathy. I guess all of my emotions just channeled into my vocalization. Ari's expression seemed to rapidly phase through resentment, confusion, amusement, and offense before it finally settled into something schooled and blank. He raised an eyebrow and cocked his head, waiting with clearly strained patience for me to clarify. "Why do they keep sending you to deal with me?" Though I didn't really mean to imply that Ari was unimportant, per se, he appeared to be just a pawn in a huge, horrifying game. If he was anything more than that, I needed to know.

After another long moment of apparent consideration, Ari's blank expression finally cracked and settled into an extremely exaggerated and vexing smirk—a smirk that I quickly realized was just a facade. Just a distraction from whatever else his face revealed. It was different from his sly half-smirks. "Because you're my case. I've been tracking you for weeks."

From his sinister tone—which did not particularly match his smug expression—I could tell that Ari wasn't joking this time.

Weeks. Not days, but weeks. Any insightful thoughts I'd had regarding Ari's facial tics were instantly sidelined by his clipped words. I felt my face heat, but I wasn't sure how much of that came from my actual fever or a sudden embarrassed flush. Either way, I pressed my clammy fingertips to my sweaty temples and tried not to rake myself over the coals. I had a glowing resume filled with unlawful career experience. I was a goddamn professional thief. In the past, I'd done far more invasive, illegal things. And yet, somehow, I'd managed to overlook a tail for weeks.

When Ari and I had spoken in the alleyway behind the mall, he'd said something like "blurry security camera footage doesn't do you justice" and had suggested that I was cuter in person. Did that imply that he'd never gotten physically close to me before? Or just that he'd first spotted me on a security camera? And how long ago was "weeks"? As I thought about the sheer quantity of information that could've been gathered in that nonspecific timespan, I spiraled. So much about me might've been revealed—even in the span of one week—and my mind started desperately sifting through the last month's activities to identify details Ari could have noticed. What did he… What did Itex have on me? What would be used against me in this intake meeting? Maybe not Boston—my little "Claim to Flame"—but I had surely exposed some secrets or vulnerabilities that could be skillfully used to manipulate me.

God, you're an idiot.

"But," Ari continued—completely ignoring my mortification—as he licked his lips and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "You're only stuck with me for a bit longer. After the intake meeting, I'll sign off on your file and go back to less fragile projects." I didn't realize it was possible for a person to sound so possessive and yet so bitter all at once. Before I could respond, he leered, "Now, are you done with the third degree?" and his tone instantly returned to one of infuriating amusement as he ran another hand through his hair and ruffled his striking wings.

Third degree!? All violent reveries aside, I'd been incredibly polite. My questions, though relevant, had been fairly reserved. I could've pushed Ari to elaborate on just about every snippet that he'd shared, but I didn't. I could've been harsher in my questioning, but I wasn't. Third fucking degree!? Fighting back the urge to go berserk, I pressed a palm to my belly and took another relaxing, deliberate breath with my diaphragm, as Ari had guided me. However, Ari's word choice and everything about his obnoxious presence pushed me past the point of total silence. It was time for a conversational risk. If I couldn't learn more about what I would encounter next, I would at least try to gain some further insight into Ari.

"What happened to your face?"

That raw red patch on his cheek was the just about only thing that detracted from his wanton allure. Part of me appreciated it for that. But it hadn't been there fourteen hours ago, and that seemed suspicious.

Whether Ari was getting progressively sloppier about hiding how he felt, or I was getting better at reading him, I did not know. Either way, the fluctuations in his expression in response to my newest question seemed particularly telling. It seemed to start as a flinch and end as a grimace, and I got the distinct impression that he didn't want to think about whatever had happened, let alone discuss it. Before I could overanalyze, his smirk snapped back into place like a rubber band.

"Which part of it, babe?" he replied, cocking his head for emphasis before reaching up and dragging the tip of his extended middle finger along the thin white scar that sliced across his face. He moved his hand slowly, tracing the whole scratch from forehead to cheekbone and apparently savoring the opportunity to both blow and flip me off. "Any more silly questions?"

Exasperation burned my throat, and I choked back a cough—but I still tried to be observant and process Ari's behavior. He didn't sound mad at me for asking about his face, but his one-finger salute suggested otherwise. Was his combined use of faux-confusion and an obscene gesture just to get a rise out of me? Although I was bristling internally, I had managed to resist glaring. I thought I'd kept my face pretty neutral, but perhaps Ari was analyzing me the same way I was him—he was trying to get me to show all of my emotional cards. He was looking for chinks in my armor. I genuinely felt like I was learning from Ari's responses to my questions, but was I really just giving away more about my personality in the pursuit to better understand his?

But his expression this time around had revealed discomfort—perhaps even distress. Ari didn't want to share whatever had happened to his face. Was his rude motion meant to take his mind off the topic too? Whether the response was meant for me or for him, I knew that Ari wouldn't give me a straight answer even if I specified "which part" of his face I was obviously referring to. So, mentally meandering a little, I silently shook my head.

"Fantastic. Now, would you like a gift?"

Every sentence is like whiplash with this guy, I thought, frowning. A gift? Every "questionable altruism" alarm was going off in my head, and Ari's eyes were gleaming with levity in a way that made me extra uneasy, but he just smirked and stared pointedly until I finally sighed.

"Is the gift a key to this door?" I gestured sourly at the grey, undented behemoth.

Ignoring me completely, but evidently interpreting my reply as a "yes," Ari grinned, twisted, and pulled a small bundle of fabric out from under a fold of the rumpled fleece blanket.

"No, no keys for you, cutie—but I brought you real clothing. Those little pajama sets get scratchy when you wear them too long…Even though the thin fabric flatters your figure." His oblique remark was accompanied by a very direct eye-undressing that made me shiver and once again contemplate ball-kicking. But something in his phrasing had me circling back—how did Ari know what the pajamas felt like after extended wear, unless he had spent too much time in a similar outfit? Was he speaking from experience? Were these pajama sets common or reserved for recruits?

Ari extended his hand and the bundle, seemed to realize that I would not willingly take a step closer to him to collect it, and tossed the wad of fabric at me with an eye roll.

Still a little lost in thought, I sloppily caught and unrolled the bundle to find a long-sleeved white shirt and grey sweatpants. They were softer than the set I had on, and they didn't smell quite as sterile—so the duds were a definite upgrade.

"What happened to my clothes?"

"Incinerated, probably." Ari shrugged like that was standard procedure. I sighed. Anyone who's ever gone bra shopping has likely experienced mild torture. Finding something that fits just right can take one hours of dedicated effort. But if you have the weird extra anatomy of proportionate wings sticking out of your upper back—like yours truly—you've got even more challenges to contend with. A well-fitting bra was a rare delight for me. The one I'd been wearing a day ago was cute and comfortable. I felt good in it. I'd even paidthe full price for it—which I pretty much never did for anything. And now it was gone.

Ivy, are you serious? You're really in the belly of the beast, and you're upset about a bra? I knew how ridiculous it was to care about possessions of any kind—now especially—but still. Suck it up. He's watching you.

Ari was staring attentively, perhaps trying to guess why I was so despondent over some incinerated clothes. Of course, I didn't want to tell him that I was bummed about my bra, but I had to say something. Maybe this was another good opportunity to glimpse his personality. All of his obvious prior reveals had been in response to something that could be perceived as negative, and targeted against him. It was time for some positivity—it would be wise to test Ari's response to appreciation instead of animosity, wouldn't it?

So, forcing my voice to convey reluctant gratitude, I mumbled, "Great. Well, thanks for these," and vaguely shook the shirt and sweatpants.

Ari's smirk was replaced by a tranquil, likable smile that completely transformed his face and lightened his eyes—but it vanished instantly. The reaction was so fleeting that I thought I might have imagined it. I blinked, startled and perplexed, and Ari was back to sneering—but the sneer had an edge of discomfort to it. Then he huffed an amused laugh, apparently directed at my attempt to build rapport, and leaned back onto the bed again. "Just get dressed, and let's go."

Hmm. So much for that, I mused, looking back down at the garments in my hands so Ari wouldn't see the bewilderment that touched my face. His smile, if it had been real, was so tender.

Then I peered up again and found Ari eyeing me like a chicken dinner. Waiting. Waiting for—?

"I'm not changing in front of you," I growled, instantly moving past the memory of his poignant mien. Up until that moment, I'd forgotten how sweaty, ill, and angry I felt.

Ari fake-pouted. "Why not?" he queried, cocking his head to the side and casually spreading his legs a little wider. His curious, mocking tone would have paired well with a child's voice.

"'Why not?' Are you serious?"

The pout was replaced by an animalistic grin as he snorted. "You're going to hate it here." Yeah, no shit. Ari chuckled at his obvious conclusion and raked his eyes over me once more. Then he shook his head, still sneering, and dragged himself to his feet. "Fine. I'll be right outside. Knock on the door when you're done, princess, but don't try to break it down again."

"Jagoff," I seethed under my breath as Ari loped towards the door. When he reached it, he swiped his wrist over a little black box on the wall—had that been there the whole time? Something beeped, and Ari slipped out. It seemed he heard my curse despite my quietness, though. He was snickering when he pulled the door shut behind him.

It latched and locked with a resolute click.

Silence settled in.

The annoyance and aggravation that had kept me focused and functional began to evaporate. My body started trembling as every ache and pain returned in force. It took all of my remaining energy to schlep myself to the nightmare bed and plop down on my ass. I let my throbbing head droop towards my lap, felt my frame caving in like a melting wax figure, and barely restrained the onslaught of tears.

The life I had grown so foolishly comfortable in was over. And I'd been sofucking oblivious to the downhill slope. Weeks! He'd tracked me for weeks! It felt like my mind was performing a series of pirouettes but had forgone any proper spotting. I was twirling without stability, mind replaying every detail of the last month over and over before spinning off on tangents. Again, I started to wonder how Itex had caught wind of me in the first place. How did they spot me, especially on blurry security camera footage? And how had Ari tracked me? How close did he get without me noticing—without me questioning? Under the right circumstances, Ari could've come within a few feet of me without my knowledge. I thought about his appearance for a moment—particularly the stunning features, toned physique, and distinctive facial scar. He was noticeable and memorable. But someone had slipped a letter into my backpack.

If I was stupid, naive, and arrogant enough to be tracked down and snatched while living off the grid and under a pseudonym, maybe I was stupid enough to have overlooked Ari. And if that was true… Well, maybe I deserved to be captured.

Was it possible that I didn't remember meeting Ari in the past because I was concussed in the present? That didn't seem likely. But he was keeping at least one secret from me—there was something he didn't want me to remember. What could it be? What else did I remember?

I went through it all again, striving for clarity. First, the (fake) commission in the mall. I met Ari in the hallway, then used him as a distraction for the security guard. I stole a necklace and skedaddled out the back door. Ari was in the alley, waiting for me, and revealed his involvement in the commission. We fought, I fled. We flew, I barely survived. Ari broke my wing. He caught me in front of tons of bystanders—and probably gave me a concussion by kicking me in the head. I woke up handcuffed in a van and eavesdropped. A cop pulled Ari over, and I managed to pick the locks and escape. Navy Pier hide-and-seek. I should've flushed that damn necklace right away, but Ari found me eventually by… scent tracking. I hotfooted it out of there, but Ari knocked me into the lake. I almost drowned and/ or froze to death. Ari pulled me to safety and then kidnapped me again.

And here I was.

Whatever Ari didn't want me to remember, I most likely did not. None of what I did recall felt particularly relevant or weird either—beyond the obvious weirdness of "winged-humans" and casual kidnappings. The scent tracking, though. That was strange. Maybe Ari didn't want me to dwell upon the hilarious way his nose had twitched? Or did his secret have to do with whatever had happened to his face? That raw patch of skin on his cheek did look painful. Could I have inflicted it somehow? I'd only stolen glimpses of the wound—his eyes and that frustrating smirk were damn distracting—but it resembled a friction burn, with jagged edges and a bit of weeping fluid toward the center. Was he just embarrassed about eating pavement? Or had something more sinister occurred?

Probably the latter. This was Itex, after all.

Interacting with Ari had felt like pulling teeth—or having teeth pulled—but at least his obnoxious presence had taken my mind off of…well, the harrowing burden of reality and all of my physical discomfort. Now, alone with my thoughts, I felt worse. Feverish yet freezing once more. Head spinning, ears ringing, heart racing, body aching. And so, so tired. But just sitting there, ruminating, was making me feel mentally worse too. I knew that I was fixated on Ari's behaviorisms and omitted information because it was something straightforward and possible to decipher—something concrete and small. If I couldn't go back to the warm comfort of self-deception and a false sense of optimism, at least I could overthink something right in front of me. But the looming presence of Itex was unavoidable. It was here, in Chicago. My city—where I'd made myself a home. Well, maybe not a home, but a community. A life. If Itex was here, fucking with my life so effectively yet again, it could be everywhere.

And that meant that it was inescapable.

Of course, I'd always known that to be true, but denial was a phenomenal and addictive drug. It was just so easy to lie to myself and avoid facing the feelings that saturated my childhood. It was safer to deny the possibility of Itex outside of Boston because it meant I didn't have to reflect on my own emotions, my own actions, my own existence, my own failings. Suppressing my trauma enabled self-preservation. Avoiding investigation meant retaining my sanity. Even now, as anxious tears wormed their way out of the corners of my eyes, mingled with the sweat on my face, and dripped on the sterile linoleum of an Itex laboratory, I couldn't face the music. I wasn't ready. I couldn't handle it.

All I could do was focus wholeheartedly on something else, and today that something else was staying alive for as long as possible. Right now, that meant willingly participating in a "recruitment meeting," inevitable psychological manipulation be damned.

So, sniffling and trying to ignore the uneasy palpitations of my heart, I sat up a little and squirmed out of the thin blue-ish hospital pants. I didn't fully stand for fear that I'd trip. If Ari found me pantless and passed out on the floor, the timetable for his necessary death would've moved up to "ASAP."

Removing my hospital pajama pants tweaked and exacerbated the pain in my ankle, so once I'd wriggled into the grey sweatpants, I turned the scratchy wad of cesious fabric into a makeshift compression bandage. All of it was hard to do while sitting and in great anguish, but I bent my right ankle at a ninety-degree angle and circled the ball of my foot, then the arch, then the ankle itself in a repeating figure-eight. I knotted the pant legs at the base of my calf muscle and pulled the elasticized cuff at the hem of the sweatpants over the bandage wrap to keep it in place. It would help.

Changing shirts seemed like it would be easy, but fate loved to play pranks. Lifting my arms above my head to pull on the new shirt strained some specific, taut tendons along my spine, which in turn tugged at the muscles of my wings. The broken one felt like it'd ripped apart. Fresh tears sprang back into my eyes and I bit my lip to kill a whimper. Thankfully, though, the shirt was quite large and slid into place pretty easily from there, but I had overlooked the two massive wing slits cut into the back of it and shivered as my achy extra appendages slipped through. The cuts were for wings much broader than mine, so they ended up exposing a stretch of bare skin from just above my shoulder blades to my lower back.

Exposing so much skin didn't feel nearly as strange as brandishing my wings. It'd been ages since I'd been in a safe environment to have them out without a prompt plan to fly, and it took conscious effort to relax the undamaged one and let it unfold to a more comfortable position. Keeping it latched in tight to hide beneath clothing had become the norm. Releasing it felt like revealing a weakness, and my current environment could hardly be considered safe.

As it turned out, the damaged wing did at least appear to be set. It was bandaged closed, and I squelched my instinct to panic. Although I knew it needed to heal, having a bound wing while trapped in a nefarious medical facility felt comparable to having a bound arm while competing in an MMA match. Thinking of Ari's fancy little aerial loop-de-loop before he punched me in the wing, I scowled. I hated him for breaking that bone, but I hated myself almost as much for spraining my own ankle. It was a true double-whammy of debilitation.

Stewing, I took a slow, painfully deep breath and stood. The room seemed to oscillate. The sweatpants sagged, and the shirt reached past my hip bones. I awkwardly cuffed the sleeves so I could use my hands, then hazily tied a knot in the front of the shirt to keep it from dragging down the pants. Even still, I had to roll the waistband of the pants twice, just to keep them from sliding off on their own. It was ridiculous, and I wondered why Ari hadn't just snatched me some smaller clothes, but ill-fit aside, the garments were a ginormous upgrade when it came to physical comfort. On top of that, they were emotionally comforting because they gave me a connection to my humanity. They made me feel like a legitimate person and not just an experiment in paper pajamas.

And the fact that I was already thinking that way again, after years of coaching myself out of it, made me want to vomit. Instead, I started weeping once more.

This is your life, Ivy. Just one big circle to get back where you started.

I didn't have the energy to fend off my feelings now, but I still had the strength to wipe my eyes. I pressed my cuffed shirt sleeve-covered palms over my face and just tried to focus on breathing evenly. Unfortunately, however, I was distracted by the smells that clung to the fabric. They were faint but familiar: burned coffee dregs from the bottom of a drip pot, a dash of cold winter air… A very neutral laundry detergent, maybe a bit of sweat. Something else, too—something pleasantly musty, like a pine forest.

The scent instantly transported me back to the snow-soaked alley behind the mall, and I shook my head in renewed irritation as it clicked. It was like a light switched on, casting out the gloom of my fear. But the light was just indignation, and I was suddenly too peeved to take greater advantage of my moment of solitude. I limped to the door, pant-wrapped ankle unbending, and smacked the grey, unyielding material twice with the palm of my hand. A second passed before Ari pushed the door open, but he was already grinning as he did.

"Are these your clothes?" I rasped, plucking the shirt fabric to make my point.

His grin widened, and he leaned against the doorframe, barring any escape. "Maybe. They look better on you, though." He winked, and I bit my tongue to keep from spewing any kind of rude retort. It was very hard to admit it to myself, but Ari's irksome presence instantly started to distract me from the horror of the present and imminent future. My pain became almost negligible, and my trauma was easy to relegate.

"You didn't have anything smaller? Or cleaner?"

Ari snorted and gave me another once over. "Hey, you should be glad I brought you anything at all. It was very kind and generous of me."

Wow, humble. "You're a humanitarian's goddamn dream," I grumbled under my breath. Ari tilted his head and chuckled, again catching my muttered aside. His hearing was eerily good.

"Oh, you have no idea. Now, are you ready to go?" Staving off a formidable sense of forthcoming doom, I granted Ari a terse nod. "Great. Finally." He continued to smirk, stepped to the side, and dramatically swept an arm out in front of us. "Ivy, welcome to Sincerity Diagnostics and Pharmaceuticals."