Page 161 of Somno Slave

By the time the grey slab of the facility rises into view, my stomach is tight enough to ache. My chest feels heavier with every step.

I swipe my badge and move through the first security door. Then the second. My pace quickens without meaning to.

When I reach the observation room, it’s already alive. Voices murmur. Monitors hum. The interrogation feed is active.

My lungs stall.

They’ve started without me.

Peter is already settled across Deogal, posture crisp, hands folded neatly on the table. Mike and Sean flank the walls like statues, weapons at the ready. The room throbs with that familiar, unbearable silence, the kind that presses against my ears until I feel like screaming just to shatter it.

Then Peter speaks. He asks a few simple questions but none of them settle in my thoughts. They slide past me like water over glass.

I glance at the clock.

07:03 am.

My shift starts at 7:30am.

And yet, they didn’t bother waiting.

This thought grips me in a violent embrace. For a moment, I simply stare at the numbers like I’ve misread them. My brain scrambles for logic, but finds none.

We always start together. That’s the routine. Mike, Peter, Sean and me.

It shouldn’t matter. Not really. Peter’s in charge. It’shiscase and I’m just advising, but something sharp twists in my chest. It’s bitter and childish and impossible to ignore.

Did they decide they didn’t need me?

Or maybe Peter finally looked at those photographs properly. Maybe he finally realised leaving me alone with Deogal was a mistake.

My chest tightens. Maybe he saw the way Deogal watches me. Maybe he saw the way I watch back.

Or what if Mike told them about yesterday?

That possibility lands violently.

I lower myself slowly into the chair. The plastic creaks faintly under my weight.

Minutes drag past, swollen and heavy, each one stretching longer than it should.

I check the time again.

07.03am.

My brains churns.

I’m suddenly aware of how cold the room is, how devastating the silence is on my loud brain. I reach across my body to soothe but it doesn’t work.

I look at Deogal. And my breath catches slightly.

The glow of the lights washes over his face, casting deep contours and shadows below his cheekbones. I look at his lips before I can stop myself. Dark and swollen, His eyes are ringed, hollow, gaze locked on the desk in front of him. I try to read him and fail.

For a second, I simply stare at him, my mind trying to reconcile the image in front of me with the one burned into my memory from half an hour ago. The man from my dream.

How can he be three people at once? In three different spaces?

How can he follow me like he’s sown himself into my shadow?