For twenty years I’ve walked into rooms after the worst was already done and buried. I’ve stood in places that don’t have names, cleaned up things that’ll never have records. Not once have I walked in, found someone alive, and wished I hadn’t. Kora stands in the middle of the room. She’s whole and smiling at me. Her eyes found mine at the door the moment I entered. She hasn’t blinked since.
I move toward her slowly. Not the careful prowl I use on a job. This is different. I move as if she’s already been hurt and the wrong word might kill the last piece of her that’s left.
“Hey,” I say, voice low and steady, just loud enough for her. “I’m here now. I’ve got you.”
Her eyes track me the whole way. They don’t dart and settle or move like eyes at all, they aim. They travel in one smooth arc, taking in every inch of me from the door to the middle of the room. Kora studies me in pieces, measuring me for a purpose I can’t see.
Her gaze slips from my mouth to my hands, holds on my eyes, then drops away like she’s working something out. She still hasn’t blinked. Kora’s never looked at me this way. Her hands hang limp at her sides. The constant small motions she could never stop have vanished.
“You scared me,” I tell her, letting the truth bleed through in a way I hope she feels. “I haven’t been able to reach you in four days.”
She smiles. The corners of her mouth lift like thin wires are tugging at them. The rest of her face performs. The eyes don’t. That smile is pure fucking horror. I keep moving forward, but it’s breaking me.
“You’ve got me,” she says. The smile stretches wider across her face. “You really believe that, don’t you? You walked in here ready to save her. She’s gone, Samuel. I’m just playing with what’s left.”
I say nothing at first. The longer the silence lasts, the less it has to work with.
“Where’s the rest of the team?” I ask. She could be dead in her own body and I’m asking about the staff. I’ve committed worse sins to stay in control. This is only the first one tonight.
“Oh, that’s good,” it whispers, riveted. “You won’t beg for your own girlfriend. You’ll just treat her like another casualty in your report.”
“You’re right,” I say. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.” I hold its eyes. “The fact that I’m this calm about it should terrify you more than anything else.”
It laughs softly with her mouth. “She’s still conscious in here, Samuel. Wide awake. Watching you do this. Part of her still believes you’ll save her. I could listen to her scream for you all night, it’s exquisite.”
I turn away from her, picking up the first notebook I see from the table. It’s in Kora’s handwriting. My thumb presses down until the paper begins to rip. I start reading.
Behind me, Kora’s voice keeps talking to my back. It thinks it still owns the part of me that used to turn around for that mouth. Whatever’s in it is having a wonderful time.
Entry: 15 March 2029
Day 1. Contact established.
Four subjects, holding human proportion, dark and matte under the lab lights. No single feature holds when I look at one directly. They stay perfectly still, in the manner of nothing living. No drift or shift of weight. Position changes without observable movement between points. Orientation to the speaker precedes the end of the sentence in every instance. Responses are complete. Several occurred prior to the question being asked. Some on the team read this as rapport. I see it as access to information we had not yet disclosed.
Contact was the fifteenth. A full week ago. She went quiet four days back. I’d been counting from the wrong day the entire time.
I had the clearances. I could’ve read this before she finished writing it, but I didn’t. It wouldn’t have changed anything. No matter what I did, I’d still be standing in this exact spot, reading her handwriting while her voice talks to my back.
“Access to information we had not yet disclosed.” She noticed they knew things they shouldn’t have. She still wrote it down and kept going anyway. She knew I’d have shut it down.
Entry: 16 March 2029
Day 2. Information leak, source unknown.
Cooperation continues. Responses remain complete and immediate. The team is calmer than I’ve seen them since the program began. Morale noted as unusually high. I’m logging that as a symptom, not a result.
Subject three referred to Samuel Asher by name. His name isn’t in any accessible file on this site. It isn’t in the personnel records, the access logs, or any document a subject could reach. I’ve never spoken his name in front of the subjects. There’s no path by which it could have accessed that name.
When I asked how it knew him, it said it didn’t. It said it knew me, and he was in me.
The remainder of the exchange is omitted from this entry. The omission is intentional and noted for the record.
Samuel Asher. She never called me that. Not once in five years. She wrote it like a stranger would, like the file would, and I don’t know if that’s her being careful or something else. Then she stopped writing. Whatever it said, she left out of the record entirely. Twenty years of prying open what people bury, and the one redaction I can’t break is Kora’s.
Entry: 17 March 2029
Day 3. Contamination, Internal.
Oral temperature 96.8. Retaken four times. No fever or chills. No symptom I can attribute to it. Two others below 97 this morning. I’ve stopped reporting the numbers to the team. They keep coming back calm and I can’t [illegible]
Cooperation continues. I’m still writing that word. Cooperation. I don’t [illegible] the right one anymore.
Subject three again. It doesn’t ask now. It tells me [illegible] About him. About the [illegible] and I let it. God help me, I sat there letting it talk because part of me [illegible]
Hands are cold. Not the room. The room is [illegible] I checked the room.
I keep the small movements now on purpose. When I catch myself going too still I make myself move [illegible] to breathe. No one taught me. I learned it this week. I learned it from [illegible]
If it’s you reading this, and it’s always you [illegible]
You’ve never once left me somewhere and not come back. This is the time you [illegible]
Do not come after me. There’s nothing in here to save. You’ll destroy the man I love looking for the woman who’s already lost.
I turn back to her after reading every word. When I close the notebook, I walk straight up to her, cup her face with one hand the way I used to, pressing the barrel of my pistol against her temple with the other.
Leaning in, I kiss her forehead, slow and gentle, the way I have a thousand times, like nothing’s changed.
I pull back just enough to find her eyes. Green, plain, the ones I’ve been drowning in every night, never wanting to surface. I look past everything wearing her and speak to the woman I know is somewhere behind them.
“I love you,” I tell her, meaning the woman still trapped inside. “So if you’re still in there, watch closely. I’m going to take this thing apart slowly, making sure the last thing it feels is you getting to watch it scream and die in your body. Would you like that, Kora?”
The smile finally cracks.
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More please!!
Yikes!! 😊😊😊