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Since I woke up lucid, I’ve only been allowed two or three people in my room at a time. Liam and Olivia were constant visitors, Tack and Daz visiting every once in a while with some ridiculous story to tell me. Even the new boys came a couple of times, but never for longer than ten minutes. They came with a special glint in their eyes, like they were trying to figure out what made me different, what made me the one to be trapped and tortured for two months.

Two months.

Harry never came, and I expected that bastard to drop off the face of the planet or something like that, but according to everyone else he’d taken my old position.

They fucking replaced me.

I should have fucking seen it back in my cell, the careful way he carried himself, how he was able to lie with every atom in his body. He nearly pulled all the information he needed out of me with a smirk and a wink and a few well-placed sentences; even if I didn’t bend over the second he looked at me, Harry knew the way I worked, he knew the best way to get to me was to make me angry.

I want to throttle him for it, but unfortunately I’m a little incapable of that right now.

My second week in the hospital, I caught a glance of myself in the assisted shower. (Showers are lovely. Fucking wonderful. I never thought I’d miss something so much. It’s like bathing in angel tears.)

The damage was extensive.

Strategically placed burns, resembling the butt of a cigarette I sure as hell did smoke, littered my back in patterns among fading bruises. Some of the bruises were shaped like hands, long slender fingers with round circles beneath the knuckle for rings. Others were just straight lines, reminiscent of the nightstick.

Most of the bruises have faded or turned to a disgusting greenish yellow, retreating from all corners of my body to areas mostly concentrated on my back. My skin looks almost normal now, despite being paled from lack of sun. As of now, I feel as if I ran for two months straight and collapsed in a dead heap at the finish line.

My wrists are still bandaged because the cuffs had ripped them raw, puckered and bleeding skin soaking the fabric every few hours. I’d recently had stitches removed from when I hit my head during a manic episode in the hospital; there was enough blood for Moses to part the Red Sea and the pale bone was visible among the aggravated flesh.

Where I thought there’d been a broken rib was only a bruise, but that didn’t make moving any fucking easier.

My IV fed me nutrients to restore some of the body mass I’d lost, filling in the skin that seemed like it wrapped right around the bone and nothing else.

Today, after several very fucking long weeks in the hospital, the doctor was telling me I could go.

I can’t believe it.

“Are you fucking serious?” I blurt out to the doctor, who chuckles lightly at my word choice.

“Yes, you’ll have to come back in a week or two for more observation but there’s no long lasting damage.”

No long lasting damage. I beg to fucking differ.

If only I could be so blind.

“Free to go?” I ask again, rolling the words around a bit to savor the feel of being able to talk without it feeling like I was swallowing razor blades, and I can feel my entire body lilting toward the door. I’d become a nun if it meant I could breathe air that wasn’t contaminated with a heavy cloud of disinfectant.

The doctor’s smile creases his face in a way that makes him seem sad. I don’t want to wonder why.

I slide off the hospital bed, walking like someone lodged a stick up my ass. It’s really ruining my urge to dance for joy and run through a meadow.

I’m wearing my own clothes, a doubled up tank top and mesh shorts that are almost fitting normally again. I would have worn jeans but I also didn’t feel like going through the seven circles of hell this morning. Give a girl a break.

The doctor notices my hesitation, adjusting his clipboard with a nervous tic. “Do you want me to call one of your friends to escort you back?” He asks kindly. I hate kind.

“No,” I snap initially, and then backtrack. “I mean, um, no, sorry, I can do it by myself.” I laugh half-heartedly. “Think you can spare me an pain killers? The strong stuff, if you don’t mind. Advil isn’t really doing it for me.”

Confliction flickers across his face for half a second, and he tries to hide it by adjusting his abnormally large glasses, frames thick enough to house his entire face.

“We are not… authorized to give you anything that has the potential for self-medication.” He picks his words carefully, grimacing slightly and shutting his mouth before he sticks another foot in. I almost feel sorry for him. But then I don’t.

He doesn’t have to say the missing part of that sentence, because it already hanging in the silent air between us.

I’m a suicide risk. Whoop de fucking do.

To avoid another awkward exchange, I sign a couple of forms and hightail it out of there as fast as possible for a brain dead duck. If I’m being optimistic, I could say a turtle with three legs.

The air outside is fresh and smells like spring, the part where the weather isn’t forty degrees every other week but not sweltering like summer just yet. Flowers go against gravity and bloom in colors that make me not totally hate my existence; butterflies dote and flap around like they have all the time in the world because they do. The last time I was here, the flowers were still dead and buried in the ground.

Two months.

I have to shake myself out of my daydream.

I’ve worked for this division of the CIA since before I could remember, and I knew the layout of the campus like the back of my hand.

In the center of the quad is a tall building, filled with planning rooms on the bottom floors and the field agent dorms toward the top. At the top is a spire with a terrifying staircase that wraps around it. I’ve gone up there a total of two times and was convinced I was going to fall to my death each time.

Fuck heights.

I scan my ID card and shove open the door, whispering curses under my breath because when the hell did this door get so fucking heavy?

Then I meet my arch enemy.

The staircase.

Of the thirty floors (and a thirty-third they think no one knows about) in this building, I live on the twentieth. Usually, I take the stairs. Today, the fates are laughing at me. Just cut my fucking string already, you old crones.

I stand conflicted between the flight of stairs and the elevator when I hear voices drifting from a conference room.

“How much longer should we keep her out of action? Is she even mentally stable enough to go back in?”

Ice is injected into my veins. They can’t retire me at seventeen. They can’t do it. I won’t let them.

Quietly, I ghost over the door, which is slightly ajar. Of all the mistakes to possible make, leaving the door open is not one of them.

Peeking inside, I see the group of them sat around the long mahogany table in high-backed black leather chairs. They can’t see me, but I can see them. It feels strange, to be the one with the advantage again.

“You take her out of this, it’ll destroy her,” Olivia fires at the rest of them.

“It nearly destroyed her while was in it, Liv. We have to think about what’s best for her.” Liam’s calm and collected voice is a knife in my back, digging into the bruised flesh and twisting.

“You don’t get it, Liam! As soon as she gets out of the hospital she’ll be catatonic, having a mission to work on will keep her sane. It’ll keep her alive.” Olivia’s voice cracks on the last word. I push the door open a little more and lean on the frame, but they still don’t notice.

“Olivia, in all honesty, you’re too close to this. So’re you, Liam, mate, and the rest of you. You didn’t see her while she was in there. I held a goddamn gun to her fucking head and she asked me to pull the trigger. She’s a liability right now, whether you all want to agree with me or not.” Fucking Harry Styles.

A pencil is flung in his direction, hurtling end over end before lodging in the chair, in the space beside his head, pinning a curl to the black leather.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he yells, jumping up from his chair. “Second fucking time someone has tried to kill my with a goddamn pencil. The entire lot of you have gone mental.”

Tack stands up gingerly, brushing his sandy blonde hair from his face and a smirk pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Sophia did it, thought I’d give it try. I could’ve taken out one of those eyes you’ve got there, pretty boy, so I’d suggest you shut the fuck up when it comes to our best friend.”

Harry turns and runs a hand through his hair, pausing absolutely when he catches sight of me. About time.

I raise an eyebrow and smirk. “Throwing a party without me? Shame on you, we all know it’s not a party without me.” I walk slowly, trying to appear as if I was exactly the way I was, trying to attain my natural graceful walk, trailing my fingers against the glossy table. A pin could drop in this room and it would register on the Richter scale.

Right about now I realize that they’re afraid of me, afraid of what I’ll do, of how I’ll react. Their eyes follow me, especially the new boys, confusion and admiration mixing with the fear on their faces.

I pluck the pencil up from the chair, twirling it around my fingers. “Work on your aim a little bit, okay?” I say to Tack. “Also, next time you guys decide to discuss my future without me,” I spin and hurtle the pencil across the room and it sticks into the wall, vibrating as it settles. Absolute silence. “Don’t.”

“Phia, you know that’s not what we meant by this—” Liam starts, but I cut him off.

“I know,” I say softly, staring into his eyes. His pain is now doubt reflected in my own. My eyes pass over them, Olivia and Tack and Daz and Alison. “I know you mean well. Just. Don’t treat me like an invalid, okay? I’m not.” I sigh, pulling a gentle hand through my hair. “Things have just been… tough.”

“Understatement of the fucking century,” Harry mutters from behind me, and I stop. I cock my hip to once side, leaning my head in the same direction. I am so fucking done with his crap.

“Something you’d like to say, Styles?” I ask airily, turning slowly to avoid as much pain as possible.

His eyes go wide in faux-innocence. His eyes glint mischievously, and I can still see it, the flicker of what I thought used to be his only sign of humanity. Despite everything, I know that Harry helped get me out and I should be grateful, that to anyone else that would be a sign of him being wholeheartedly human, but that flicker unsettles me. I don’t know what to make of it.

“You’re asking me, Holly?”

I clench my teeth. “How many fucking times do I have to tell you that my name isn’t Holly?”

He grins, flashing perfectly white and even teeth that could stop traffic, blinding a driver and causing them to swerve off a cliff to the water depths below.

I wish I was that driver.

“Love, you only have to tell me twice.” Harry winks. Is it possible for a single person to be this infuriating?

“What the hell is the wrong with you? You’ve already got my position, you stood by and watched me get tortured to fucking hell and back, and now you’re trying to get them to retire me early. What the hell do you want from me?.”

In the time it takes me to finish speaking, I am only feet away from Harry. The amused expression falls from his face, and I can feel everyone’s eyes on us, like we’re the premier act of some kind of show.

“I want you to stop lying to everyone. Do you think you can hide how much pain you’re in?” He drops his voice to a raspy whisper, and my heart races. I hope it’s the adrenaline. “I know you were tortured. I know, I saw it, I watched it. I know you can’t be okay because if it were me, I’d try to hide it all and then I’d crack. Do you understand what I’m trying to say, Holly? Stop trying to bottle it all up, stop trying to hide it from everyone else. Because one day you’re going to fuck something up and it’ll be the last straw and you’ll be dead.” I look for the words to answer him but nothing comes to mind, nothing to counter him. “I can see your bruises, Holly.”

I suck in a breath, finally breaking myself from the hypnotic hold of his gaze, and turn to the others with tears threatening to break over my eyelids.

My voice is choked up and thick, my breathing ragged. “Liam, start me on training tomorrow. Recovery doesn’t happen by itself.”