Chapter 1: Lucas The trick with these rooms is to make the camera bored. Hands where it can see them. Shoulders soft. Blink at a human rate. Let your eyes move like you’re reading a weather report, not measuring exits. I’m good at it. The meds help; they put cotton around the sharper thoughts so they don’t cut their way out. I don’t mind the dulling. It makes other people louder. Seven chairs. No clock. One radiator ticking like it wants forgiveness. A jug of water sweating onto a coaster as if the room is too alive for its own good. The door buzzes. She walks in like gravity tried and failed to tell her where to put her feet. Evelyn Vale—though I don’t know her name yet. Dark hair back in a knot like it wasn’t meant to be perfect. Chin up. Quick scan of corners. She clocks the camera, the guard, the wall seat, and takes it. Not because she’s scared. Because she likes a clean back. People pretend not to stare. I don’t pretend. I practice neutrality so hard it looks like disinterest. The facilitator today is Hargreaves: clipboard, tidy voice, rules presented like a bowl of fruit no one wants to touch. “Group C,” she says. “Same guidelines. If you need out, say anchor. If you don’t want to talk, listen.” We go around with the ice-breaker—describe one thing from your week without adding meaning. It’s a silly rule that works too well. People spill themselves all the time when you take away adjectives. Callum says the lights in B-Block flickered as he walked under them. A woman with chewed cuticles says the kettle stopped before it boiled. The room edits itself to match their voices. When it reaches the new girl, she looks at the jug first. Then me. Not long. Just enough to let me know she knows I’m watching. “The radio in the laundry held a single note for… a while,” she says. “The air felt tight. Then it moved on.” Hargreaves nods like a stamp has been applied in the right box. Scribbles nothing. Says, “Thank you.” Breathing drill. Palms to thighs. Exhale down, not out. The meds make it easier to do what I’m told. They also make it easier not to laugh when the droplet on the jug swells, swells, refuses to fall like it’s waiting for applause. Hargreaves’s final instruction: change one thing by one degree—posture, gaze, breath—and put it back. People betray themselves in degrees. It’s the only unit that matters here. Chairs scrape. The door bleats. Relief leaves with everyone who thinks they’re finished. I’m not finished. I wait without looking like I’m waiting. She does too. It could be coincidence. It isn’t. In the doorway, I keep my voice low. “You picked the wall.” She doesn’t break stride. “You picked the camera.” We walk the corridor because there’s only one corridor to walk. The building hums like a big animal asleep with one eye open. Somewhere behind the glass, a staff member laughs at a joke that never made it to the rest of us. We pause at the fake window—the one with sky pasted on. She stands where she can see reflections, not the view. Smart. You can learn more from a pane of glass than from a door with a sign. “You’re new,” I say. Not a question. “You’re not,” she says. Her voice has a strange, soft edge, like British cut with something warmer. It makes simple words feel heavier. “What did the radio sound like?” I ask. “Like it couldn’t decide what came next.” She watches me the way people look at tests they’re sure they can pass. There it is—the tiny charge in the air when two magnets realize what they are to each other. I don’t smile. The camera’s here too, and it collects smiles like evidence. Back in my cell, the card they slid under the door asks for sleep times and one-word mood spikes. Today’s word is supposed to be content if I want the nice note on my file. I write anticipation instead and leave the pen uncapped until I remember they’ll count that too. Footsteps stop outside my door. Different weight than Hargreaves. Male, even pace, no hurry. The viewing slot shadows, opens. “Winters,” a voice says—polite like polished chrome. “Office Two.” Office Two is the same as Office One but closer to the hum. Dr. Malik is already there, smile issued with the keycard. “We’re adjusting your program,” he says. “Additional group sessions, minor. And a paired observation exercise. Supervised.” He slides a form across. Two lines for names. Mine filled in. The other blank like it’s being coy. “We’ll assign your partner,” he adds, watching my face. “Ten minutes, twice a week. Observation and regulation.” “Sounds harmless,” I say. “Sounds useful,” he says, and I can’t tell whether he means for me or for them. On my way back, two staff voices leak from a door not fully shut—“…Vale…” “…C group…” “…see how they regulate together…” I walk past like I didn’t hear it. The camera above the corner blinks. The meds keep the world neat around the edges. I let them. When Group meets again, the chairs are still seven. They’ll be eight soon. I’ll still sit like I’m harmless. I pass the alcove where we stood earlier. She’s not there. The corridor feels a fraction wider, which is a lie corridors tell when they’re aligning you for something. I see her in the common room instead, seated where the light falls wrong and makes her eyes brighter. Green that reads as warning on some animals and invitation on others. She’s watching the door like the door might try something. I pick up a glass and pour water slowly enough to hear it. The droplet on the jug finally falls as if I gave it permission. On my way by, I let the space shrink to something that could be called coincidence in a report. “Evelyn,” I say, testing the shape of it in my mouth like it might tell me a secret. She looks up. No flinch. No smile. Just that stillness that says her pulse is not the only thing she controls. “Lucas,” she says, and I hear it: the deciding note in the laundry, the almost-smile in the doorway, the wall seat that wasn’t about fear. “Tell me if the radio holds again,” I say, as if we’ve been talking for hours and this is the middle of a conversation we keep walking in and out of. Her gaze drifts deliberately to the camera and back to me. “You’ll hear it,” she says. I keep walking. I don’t look back because men who look back are either sorry or begging, and I am neither. The meds do their job. The thoughts line up. The edges dull. I lie on the too-white bed and stare at the cracks on the ceiling until they stop trying to look like maps. On the card, under ONE WORD, I write ready and leave the pen capped this time. Tomorrow, if they put her name next to mine on Malik’s form, I won’t smile. Not where anyone can see.