Chloe slipped through the side door past midnight. Her left foot dragged, leaving a faint smear on the polished floor. Her body felt like it had been dragged behind a horse and then beaten for good measure. Her mind reeled, not from pain, but from everything she'd just uncovered.
Secrets buried so deep she'd forgotten they were hers. Truths that would cost blood if spoken aloud.
She clenched her fist, nails digging into her palm. The ache grounded her.
She'd done it on purpose. Summoned her old self, the version of her that remembered too much, to dig for answers about Lila. How had she turned a living girl into an experiment? What part of her had allowed it?
But the truth she'd found went deeper than human feeling could hold. It scraped against her ribs and settled in her lungs, heavy and wrong.
"...Larry."
She whispered it into the dark. Her voice barely made it past her lips.
"Are you awake?"
Silence. Only the hum of the wards in the walls answered her.
