EMMA

Visitation days always started the same.

A CO calling out names off a clipboard like a roll call in hell. Then, the shuffle of shoes against concrete as women lined up, some smiling, some grim, some pretending not to care.

I was one of them, standing against the wall, hands loose at my sides, waiting for my turn.

"Lawrence," the CO barked.

I stepped forward and fell into the line with the other women who had been called. We did the dance we all knew—palms flat against the wall, feet apart, waiting for the pat-down.

The CO at the end of the corridor snapped on a glove and checked our waistbands, as if we could've conjured contraband out of thin air in the few steps from the unit to the hall. Then we were moving again, sneakers whispering against the waxed floor, hearts beating a little quicker, because, for the next few hours, we could pretend we lived somewhere else.

The visitation room was washed in fluorescent light and filled with bad chairs. On one wall, a mural of a meadow stretched beneath a cartoon-blue sky, once bright, now dulled to chalky pastels. Two COs stood guard against the far wall, arms folded, faces fixed in practiced neutrality. Then the door buzzed, and visitors were allowed in, pockets of color bleeding into the tan sea.

And there he was.

Eric, in a navy sweater and worn jeans, hair a little longer than the last time. His blue eyes were still as bright, as cutting, as they had always been. When he spotted me, the mask he had worn through the security check split down the middle. I saw my older brother under it, the one I used to fall asleep against on train rides, the one who would drape his scarf over my shoulders so I wouldn't wake up cold.

I met him halfway, and we hugged. It was long enough for a CO to clear his throat and give us a look, a not-so-gentle reminder that hugs weren't meant to last forever in this place.

We broke apart, giving him matching guilty half-smiles, and sat at one of the tables.

"Hey, old man," I said, because he hated the word and it always made him roll his eyes.

"Hey, felon," he shot back, and I laughed before I could stop myself. It wasn't mean. It was just us.

He dropped a handful of coins onto the laminate with a clatter that felt too loud for the room.

"You want anything?" he asked, nodding toward the vending machines.

"Coffee that won't dissolve my taste buds." I tried to pass it off as a joke. He smirked, letting me have it.

He came back with two paper cups and a pack of sour Skittles, because some loyalties never needed to be complicated. We sat with our knees pressed together like kids again, conspirators without a plan, and for a fleeting moment it felt like we had managed to beat the math of this place.

"How's the empire?" I asked, meaning the cybersecurity startup he had launched a few months back. "World domination still on schedule?"

The corner of his mouth tugged up. "If by 'empire' you mean me and three sleep-deprived idiots in a borrowed workspace in Brooklyn, then yes. We're conquering in increments." He took a sip and grimaced. "We filed for incorporation last month. Signed our first small client last week. It's not glamorous, but..." He spread his hands, the gesture helpless and proud all at once. "It's a thing."

Something warm loosened in my sternum. "I'm proud of you," I said and meant it so hard it ached.

He ducked his head, pretending to study the table. "Alycia says hi. She wanted to come, but she's in California, covering some fashion event. She'll be here next week."

"How is she?" I stirred the bad coffee with the wooden stick, like that would save it. "Still putting the rest of us to shame with her put-togetherness?"

He gave me a look. "You know as well as I do, Lawrence comes with a badge that reads, a little fucked up."

I huffed a laugh. "Can't argue with that."

His smile flickered into place. "She sends love, though. And about a hundred rules I'm supposed to recite—posture, hydration, and steering clear of unnecessary drama."

"Tell her I'm succeeding at exactly one of those," I said. "I'll let you pick which."

He snorted. "She made me promise to ask if you're eating."

"I'm ingesting calories that meet the legal threshold to be called food." I took a sip and tried not to wince. "And coffee. If you can call it that."

He studied me over the rim of his own cup, pupils dilated just a little, like he was cataloging more than he would say. "You look... better."

"Define better."

"Not a ghost."

"I don't know. They say time heals everything, and I've got plenty of it now." I paused, then added, "Mama G had a lot to do with that, too."

A smile flickered across his face and stayed. "I like her."

For a moment, we just sat there and breathed in the same square of air. The noise around us blurred—chairs scraping, voices murmuring, a toddler somewhere whining because the vending machine ate a dollar. I memorized his face again. I always did, as if there might come a day when memory was the only thing left to carry.

"So," I said, tilting my head. "When are you getting down on one knee?"

He choked on his coffee. "Seriously, Em."

"What? You think they won't let you sneak a ring through security just to show me before you propose? Tape it under your sock. Innovate."

He shook his head, laughing, the sound low and bright enough to make a nearby CO glance over. "You're insufferable."

"You love me."

He looked at me then, really looked, past the uniform, the ruined timeline, the months of fluorescent lights. "Yeah," he said quietly. "I do."

He set his cup down, aligning it carefully with a chip in the table, like the ritual might steady him. Then, in a voice soft as a bruise, he asked, "How are you really?"

"I'm okay," I said, though my smile caved at the edges. "You don't have to worry about me like I'm glass."

He only arched a brow, the silence between us pressing, as if he knew I hadn't given him the part that mattered.

"I talked to my counselor." I cleared my throat. "About the art program idea. He... didn't laugh me out of the room. Said he'd run it up the chain—to programs, maybe the warden. So..." I lifted my hands in a small, helpless gesture. "Maybe."

"Maybe," he echoed, and in his mouth the word sounded like a promise you could hand to daylight. He studied my face for another long moment, all that relentless older-brother calculus flashing and fading behind his eyes. "And if you change your mind," he said, lowering his voice, "I can spring you out."

It was barely more than breath, a joke dressed in a promise. Our eyes flicked to the CO by the clock, then back to each other.

I chuckled, and then the laugh shook on the way out and turned into truth. "I'm done running, Eric. You know that."

He nodded once, like he knew I was going to say that.

I didn't add more, but something inside me tilted toward a memory, to the fortune-teller in Central Park on a day when the world still seemed like it might align for me.

Jake's hand was still warm on my neck as he fastened the necklace, and then came that woman's voice, like gravel and smoke.

You can reinvent yourself, darling, but you can't outrun yourself. The common denominator will always be you.

Back then, I brushed it off, called it carefully chosen poetic nonsense. But now it felt different, like a verdict I had stopped trying to appeal, a different kind of sentence I had finally learned to serve.

Eric pulled me out of my head again. We drifted into the kind of nothing talk that let you forget you were counting seconds. He told me about a bug they had finally squashed, and I pretended to follow the part about the malformed header. I told him about Kayla in the library and her hard-won victory over fractions, like it was front-page news. He said Alycia had gotten hooked on old movies; I said Mama G had declared the instant mashed potatoes "criminal" and refused to serve them one Tuesday until the whole unit staged a polite riot.

When the CO by the clock lifted his hand, time collapsed to its smallest, sharpest point. We stood in the same breath, arms going around each other like a reflex. I felt him inhale against my shoulder, the pause in it weighted, like he was trying to memorize the exact space I filled, to fold it into some hidden pocket they would never be able to search.

"Fight," he said into my hair, so low I almost didn't catch it. "You hear me?"

"I hear you," I murmured back. I didn't tell him I was fighting in the smallest possible ways. In pencils and proposals, quiet breaths in the yard. I didn't tell him that sometimes getting out of bed felt like scaling a wall no one could see. He knew. He always had.

We broke apart before the second throat-clearing. His hands stayed on my arms a heartbeat too long. He pressed his mouth into a flat line so it wouldn't be a tremor.

"I'll be back next week," he said.

"I know," I said, because he would. Because if the world fell, he would dig himself out and walk across its broken crust to get to me.

I watched him go through the door we weren't allowed to touch. A CO gestured, and I sighed and fell into place with the other women, already untying my shoelaces with practiced fingers.

Strip searches followed every visit. It was routine, humiliating, and unavoidable. Some women I knew had stopped putting their names on the visitor list entirely, just to dodge the extra humiliation. They said the pain of not seeing their families hurt less than the indignity of baring themselves under the watchful eyes of the COs every week.

But for me, the search was worth it. Every second with Eric was worth it. Seeing him every week was the closest I came to being alive anymore.

The motions blurred together as the female officer recited the usual commands, flat and practiced. "Open your mouth. Lift your tongue. Run your fingers through your hair. Turn around. Squat. Cough."

I obeyed, ticking off the familiar checklist of degradation dressed up as procedure. I had stopped flinching a long time ago. Stopped feeling it, too. Now I just went through the motions and moved on.

I was pulling my laces back through my sneakers when I heard it.

"Lawrence."

I looked up. Officer Harlan stood at the doorway, his blocky silhouette filling the frame. Thick neck, thinning blond hair buzzed down to his scalp, and a belly that strained against his duty belt.

His reputation preceded him. Every woman in this place knew to keep her head down when Harlan was on shift. He wasn't cruel in the way that left marks; he was cruel in the way that left you questioning whether you had imagined it. A sarcastic comment here, a needless shove there. Nothing big enough to report, everything just enough to remind you he could.

"You're wanted in medical," he said.

I frowned. "Medical? I don't have anything scheduled."

"You got ears, don't you?" His lip curled like it amused him. "Medical wants you. That's all you need to know."

I stood, brushing the dust off my scrubs. "My routine exam isn't due for another three months."

Harlan's eyes narrowed, and he tilted his head, almost smiling. "What's the matter, Lawrence? Afraid of a check-up?"

The women around me went still, pretending not to listen but listening anyway. That was how survival worked in here—everybody tuned in, but nobody acknowledged it.

I clenched my jaw, forcing myself to keep my voice even. "No. Just saying I wasn't notified."

"Notifications are for free people," he said flatly. "You ain't free. Move." He jerked his head toward the hallway, one hand resting near his cuffs like he was daring me to test him.

I muttered a curse under my breath and followed. Just another day in paradise.

But something in the way his eyes lingered on me as the door clanged shut behind us made my stomach knot. I knew that look. He was in on something I wasn't, sharp-edged, almost predatory. And I couldn't shake the thought that whatever was waiting for me in medical, it wasn't a check-up.

But as he said, I wasn't free. I had no choice but to fall in step with him.

The walk to medical was longer than usual, or maybe it only felt that way because my chest wouldn't stop tightening with each step. Harlan walked beside me, boots heavy, the jingle of his keys echoing with every stride.

By the time we reached the medical wing, the hairs on the back of my neck were already prickling.

The door buzzed open, and the scent of antiseptic hit me. Usually, the infirmary was one of the calmer parts of the prison. A small haven, almost.

The nurse here, Ms. Carter, was a woman in her late thirties with warm brown eyes and a voice that carried a softness rare inside these walls. She was the one who checked blood pressure with a smile, who made jokes about the taste of the vitamins she passed out, who once whispered to me that commissary coffee was worse for your heart than the stress in this place.

But the moment I stepped inside, I knew something was wrong.

She wasn't smiling now.

She was standing near one of the treatment bays, gloves already on, her hand trembling as she held a capped syringe. And her eyes... her eyes wouldn't meet mine.

My gut twisted, and every instinct I had screamed trap.

"What is this?" I asked, my voice sharper than I meant it to be.

Ms. Carter's throat bobbed, and when she finally looked at me, her eyes glistened. "I'm so sorry, Emma."

My breath caught in my throat. Sorry? For what?

I took an instinctive step back, but before I could move farther, Harlan's grip clamped down hard on my arm, fingers digging into flesh. "Easy now. Don't make this harder than it has to be."

My pulse spiked. "What the hell is going on?"

Another CO appeared from the side room, Rodriguez. He was younger, broader. He grabbed my other arm, and between the two of them, I was pinned.

"No!" My voice cracked as I twisted against their grip, panic surging. "Whatever this is, you can't—"

"Hold her still," Carter whispered, tears slipping down her cheek. Her voice broke, but her hands kept moving, uncapping the syringe, tapping it like she had done a thousand times before.

I jerked, kicked, struggled against the vice grip on my arms. The gurney loomed, and my heart thundered as they dragged me toward it. The vinyl creaked as they forced me down, strapping my wrists tight against the sides. I thrashed, my throat raw with a sound between a scream and a sob, but the restraints bit into my skin, immovable.

"Stop!" I begged, my voice breaking. "Please. What are you doing?"

But no one answered me.

Carter's hands shook as she swabbed the crook of my arm. Her lips trembled. "I don't have a choice," she whispered, like it was meant for me but also for herself.

The sharp sting of the needle pierced my skin before I could twist away. Cold liquid slid into my vein, icy fire rushing through me.

"No. No." The word came out slurred as my body betrayed me. My arms went heavy first, then my legs, and my vision blurred at the edges. My muscles refused to obey me. The panic in my chest only grew louder, a silent scream trapped inside a body that wouldn't move.

Shapes smeared in front of me, colors bending, the world narrowing to fragments. But through the haze, Harlan leaned over me, his breath sour, his grin cruel. He filled my whole line of sight as if the world had narrowed to his face alone.

"Adam Blake is waiting for you," he said.

The name sliced through me like a blade, yanking me momentarily from the fog.

Adam Blake. The ghost I had tried to bury. The man I had thought I would never see again.

Terror clawed through me, frantic, desperate. My mouth opened to scream, but only a strangled breath escaped. My mind raged, begging my body to fight, to claw, to kick, anything. But the drug was merciless.

My limbs sank like lead, my eyelids fluttered, and the ceiling swam above me. The last thing I saw was Carter turning away, her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs.

And the last thought that cut through the blackness before it swallowed me whole was simple, brutal, and undeniable.

I was doomed.