Page 45 of Thorne
The door doesn't justclose. It seals.
The finality of the bolt sliding home vibrates through my knuckles, up my arm, and straight into the center of my chest like a kinetic shockwave. The sound echoes down the narrow, dim corridor and then disappears into the reinforced concrete, leaving a silence so complete it feels engineered. A vacuum where the only thing left is the ghost of her.
I don't move.
Ten seconds pass. Maybe more. I stand there, a sentinel guarding a tomb I built myself. My breath comes in shallow, uneven pulls that taste like the air I just left: steam, cedar, and something sharper beneath it. Something metallic and electric that belongs entirely to her.
Stratton.
I drag a hand down my face, my palm rough against my jaw, and stare at the sealed door like it might open again if I look long enough. Like it's a portal I can't quite close.
I loathe her.
The realization hits hard and immediately, the way it always does when her name surfaces. I loathe the architecture of whatshe built. I loathe the cold precision that allowed ML-273 to move through the world disguised as charity and clinical funding. I loathe the quiet intelligence in her eyes that tells me she understands exactly how much damage she caused and has already calculated the cost down to the final decimal.
But that's not the part eating me alive. That's the part I can handle. The part I can categorize as "mission" and "enemy."
What I loathe most is the way she looked at me through that glass.
Not afraid. Not pleading. Just—watching. Like she anticipated exactly what was happening inside my head. Like she was reading the jagged code of my own self-destruction and didn't step away from it. She stood there in the center of my room, stripped to the bare, bruised truth of what Phoenix left of her, and she didn't blink.
My jaw tightens until the bone aches. Because the truth sitting under all that anger is uglier than any conspiracy she's ever drafted.
My body wants her.
The awareness sits low in my gut like a brand. Heat, pressure, a relentless, rhythmic thrumming of blood that mocks every word of restraint I threw at her ten minutes ago. My muscles feel three sizes too tight for my skin, a visceral, primitive hunger that I can't legislate away.
I push off the door and start walking.
The residential wing stretches ahead of me, the soft carpet swallowing the heavy, frantic rhythm of my boots. Every step feels like an attempt to outrun something that followed me out of that room. A shadow I can't shake.
I bypass the kitchen, ignoring the smell of garlic and slow-simmering chicken. The warmth of the home my parents are trying to maintain drifts through the air, domestic and safe. Itfeels like a physical insult to the war happening under my skin. I am a walking contagion of rage and need.
I hit my bedroom door and slam it. The lock clicks. The sound should feel like containment, a way to quarantine the rot. Instead, it feels like surrender.
The lights stay off. I strip in the dark, my tactical vest hitting the floor with a heavy, metallic clank that reverberates through the room like a dropped weapon. My shirt follows, then the rest of it, until the cool air hits my skin and does absolutely nothing to extinguish the fire in my bloodstream.
Nothing is cold enough.
I step into the shower and crank the handle until the water turns punishingly hot, a scalding deluge meant to scour the memory of her off my skin. Steam fills the enclosure within seconds, white and thick, a humid ghost of her presence.
I brace my hands against the tile, head hung low, and close my eyes.
And that's the mistake.
Because the darkness behind my eyelids isn't empty. It's a theater for the things I swore I wouldn't do.
I'm back in that eight-by-ten room. I'm not the guard anymore. In the steaming dark of my mind, I don't engage the bolt. I don't walk away. I stay. I imagine my hand fisted in her wet hair, pulling her head back until her throat is a long, vulnerable line of surrender. I'm not gentle. There is no room for tenderness in this version of the world.
I crowd her against the cold stone wall, the friction of my palms against her damp skin making her gasp. That broken, needy hitch in her breath that I want to drink like water.
I want the impact. I want the collision.
I imagine taking her hard, viciously, my body a weapon meant to erase every fear in her head until there is only the sensation of me. I want to feel her come apart under my hands,to hear her say my name while she's drowning in the very punishment she thinks she deserves.
My hand moves down, my grip tight and unforgiving, seeking release with a desperate, localized violence. I'm panting now, my forehead pressed against the wet tiles, the steam filling my lungs until the world starts to blur. I see her: the slope of her waist, the bruises I want to kiss and bite all at once. The need becomes a physical ache; an unstoppable wreck I'm rushing toward with everything I have.
I finish with a low, guttural growl that is lost in the roar of the shower.
