Page 35 of Brox Boar

Lana collects a tote bag and makes sure she has basic items with her. I make a mental note to get her a new cell.

I stop her, placing my palms on her cheeks and search for even the smallest crack in her presence.

“No dizziness?”

“No.”

“No nausea?”

“None.”

“No confusion?”

“Not even a little.”

Her clarity calms me more than I expect.

I let go of her and lift my cell. My thumb flies over the screen as I text Sol: ‘I need someone to drop Lana at Mercy Hospital. Five minutes.’

Lana moves toward the bedroom door, her posture delicate but determined. Just before she steps out, she pauses and glances back at us.

“Who’s giving me a lift?”

“Sol will,” I tell her.

She nods once, turns around, and disappears into the hallway without another word.

The room settles into a sudden, unexpected stillness. Brox and I stand there, not moving, both trying to make sense of how fast she detached, how quickly she flipped from trembling in our arms to walking out the door on her own.

Brox exhales, staring at the doorway. “She’s not mad at us, is she?”

I shrug. “Fuck knows.”

Brox rubs his jaw. “It felt… sudden.”

I look at the empty doorway again, still hearing her steps fading down the hall. “It looks like she is trying to be in control of her life.”

Brox nods once, slow. “Or maybe she’s afraid of being trapped again.”

“That too.”

We both fall silent again, waiting for Sol’s reply, each of us unsettled by the same thing, Lana walking away.

CHAPTER 9

LANA

The road glows under the streetlights, long ribbons of pale orange stretching ahead of the car. I sit in the back seat, my forehead against the cold window, watching Miami slide past in smudged reflections. Traffic is thin at this hour; the city feels emptied out, rinsed clean of rush-hour noise. It’s nearly midnight.

I should feel tired. My body should be dragging, heavy and slow, after what it went through. But it isn’t.

Ants. That’s what I remember. Tiny feet marching along my nerves, under my skin. Not from outside, not from an allergy or a rash, but from inside, where I can’t reach them. Every inch of my body buzzing, too alert, too awake, too ready. Touch felt stretched, taste too intense, sounds too bright. I had peaks, stacked one over another. No valleys. No rest.

The high and the high. No low.

In that basement, my mind tried to reason with itself. Tried to separate reality from the drugs. Tried to sort out what belonged to me and what belonged to Morales’s twisted experiments. It didn’t work then. It barely works now.

I close my eyes and see the metal table. The straps. The light overhead. Her voice. Her smile while she adjusted the dosage. She wanted data. Responsiveness. She wanted to see how far she could push me before I broke.