Chapter 362: Hold On.

I pushed the door in.

Monica was sitting on the metal frame of the bed with her dress pulled up around her waist, one hand pressed hard between her legs and the other braced flat on the mattress beside her hip.

Not moving. Neither hand moving.

Just held there—fingers rigid, the whole arm locked from shoulder to wrist, like she was keeping something down rather than doing anything at all.

She didn’t pull the dress over her legs. She didn’t turn away or make any of the small hurried movements a person makes when a door opens on them.

She looked at me.

And I stood in that doorway with my hand still on the wood and understood I hadn’t walked in on anything.

There was nothing to interrupt. That was a woman holding a lid on with her whole body, and me opening the door hadn’t changed one thing about the fight she was already in the middle of.

The tray sat at the end of the frame with the food barely touched.

"I’m sorry." I didn’t move. The doorframe stayed under my palm. "Bad moment?"

"It’s fine."

Her hand settled on her thigh. White skin underneath, the dress still high. Her knees came together and pressed, one hard against the other, the way a person holds a door shut from the inside when the handle’s already turning—muscle locked, bone against bone, holding everything in place by force alone.

And everything I’d been carrying up and down that corridor arrived at once.

The locked rooms. The untouched food. Two women who hadn’t stepped into the corridor since the seal came down.

They hadn’t come down here to hide from what was out there.

They’d come down here because they needed a room they couldn’t leave.

"Sophia asked me to come and get you."

She sat up straight and pulled the dress down over her legs. Unhurried. The fabric slid over her thighs and settled as if she were simply finishing a task rather than covering anything.

"Thank you."

I went out. The door swung shut behind me.

Melissa was lifting the last tray off the floor by the entrance. The other had already gone.

Bright as anything. The same steady noise coming off her that had been there since the door shut—every complaint, every remark, unchanged, as if the air around her ran on a separate current from the rest of the cell.

It’s only the sources.

She’s a mark. Whatever this is, it doesn’t reach her.

"Hey." She carried the tray into my room, hip brushing the frame.

"Hey."

I followed her in as Monica came out behind me and started down the corridor.

I kept my hearing open.

Her feet on the stone. The soft shift of fabric. And then, before she’d even reached it, the lock on Sophia’s door turning from the inside—metal sliding home with a dull, final sound that carried clearly through the quiet.

Melissa was already on my bed with a tray on her lap and another beside her, legs stretched out, back against the wall.

"You’re not anybody’s servant, Bram." She said it as I sat down. The mattress dipped under my weight. "We’re all prisoners in here. They can carry their own food."

"Yeah."

I picked up the second tray. Rice and greens again. The plastic fork sat on the edge, still clean.

"I don’t mind it."

"You will. It stops being kindness the moment nobody gives you anything back. That’s not a rule about prison, that’s a rule about people."

"You’re right."

"I’m always right. It’s exhausting."

She stretched out along the bed beside me and her thigh came to rest against mine—warm through both layers of fabric, solid, the heat of her skin bleeding through. She carried on talking about something and I stopped hearing any of it.

Because two doors down, Sophia had started.

"I can’t hold it, Moni." Whispering, the words tight and frayed at the edges. "I’ve stopped being able to. I’m not saying it’s hard, I’m telling you I’ve stopped."

"You can."

"Listen to me." A breath, pulled in and let out wrong—too fast, then forced slower. "If I go over, I lose it. Everything. All of it, gone, and we’re this close to the day. This close."

"I know exactly how close we are."

"Then say something useful."

"The plan was isolation." Monica’s voice stayed flat and low, almost under the breath. "That was the whole of it. A room with a lock and no man within reach until it passes."

"And there’s a man in here with us."

Nothing came back from Monica.

"He’s making it worse." Sophia’s voice dropped further, thinner. "You know he is. Don’t sit there and let me say it on my own."

I put my fork down. The plastic clicked softly against the tray.

Say that again.

Because that wasn’t a complaint. I’d been trying to work out since the system told me a cell was where I needed to be.

"And it isn’t only the one." Sophia’s voice came apart in the middle of it—cracked open, the control slipping. "The blood’s come with it. Both at the same time. I have never had both at the same time, Moni, not once, not ever."

"Then use it."

A silence. Heavy. The kind that has weight.

"Say that again."

"The blood." Monica, careful now, each word measured. "It puts the other one down. You feed and the rest of it goes quiet and you hold on until the day."

Beside me, Melissa laughed at something she’d said herself and touched my arm—fingers light, casual—and kept going, the sound of her voice sliding past me without catching.

"There’s a boy sitting in a room at the end of this corridor," Monica said.

The boy.

I sat on a bed with a fork in my hand and a woman’s leg against mine and listened to two of them work out whether there was enough of me to go around.

"No."

"Sophia—"

"No." Fast, and something underneath it—fear or hunger or both. "You’re not hearing me. I can’t take a little. Not now. Not with both of them running at once."

"Then take him and stop."

"I won’t stop." Flat. Final. The words landed like a door closing. "That’s what I’m telling you. I’d finish him and I’d still be standing there, and then it’s you, and then it’s Melissa, and I wouldn’t be able to choose. It would take ten to put this down. More than ten. There aren’t ten people behind this door."

The corridor went quiet. Stone and air and nothing else.

"Then we get you out," Monica said.

"Out where? Max has that door."

"Then we get Max to open it. He’s a boy with an army and no government and no idea what he’s holding. He’ll open a door for the right thing."

"And until you’ve talked him into it?"

"Until then you hold."

"For how long?" It broke—the voice thinning, the edges fraying completely.

"For as long as you’re inside here," Monica said.

Nothing for a while. Only the faint sound of breathing through the wall.

"And if I don’t?"

Monica didn’t answer that.

I picked the fork back up. The plastic was still cool against my fingers.

"Bram."

Melissa’s hand was on my arm.