The world is filth.

  I wake up on the ground, my back stiff, my head throbbing, my face pressed into something damp that better not be sewage. The air is laced with rot, the stench curling in my nose, sinking into my skin. The room is damp, dark—barely any light seeping through the bars.

  I push myself up, feeling the pain like I am some old geezer. My fingers graze my skull—shit—there’s a lump. Swollen. Pulsing. Feels like my skull’s trying to crack open.

  I suck in a sharp breath. Drag my hand lower. Around my ear.

  My View is gone.

  My breath hitches—but I smirk. Good luck hacking something you’ll never understand.

  The View wasn’t some implant. It was me. Wired into my thoughts, carved into my spine. My mind was the vault. And if I lock the door—

  They can die trying to get in.

  Like clockwork, the hairy bastard walks in. Right on cue.

  He crouches in front of me, his eyes shady, a riddle. I want to lunge at him, claw his face off, but my body’s cranky, my mind cloggy.

  “If you don’t talk in ten seconds,” he says, voice flat, “we’ll make you suffer. A lot.”

  I believe him.

  And I don’t give a fuck.

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  I know what they’ll do. I know it’ll hurt. But I’ve been through worse, and I am not that girl anymore. I am not going to be threatened into anything.

  So I spit in his face.

  “Make sure it’s my mom who does it,” I sneer. “She’s been waiting for this.”

  His face twitches.

  A fist slams into my gut. Then again. Pain blossoms. I see white.

  And suddenly—I’m six.

  The orphanage smelt like dust. The ceilings were too high. The walls were too empty.

  And I didn't belong there.

  My parents, gone.

  Dead.

  Buried under the rubble of an earthquake that smashed them under.

  I survived.

  Lucky me.

  Just me. And the swirling chants, keep on going on and on about the truth.

  That no one’ll ever come looking.

  Water crashes into my face. Up my nose. Flooding my mouth.

  I thrash, but hands hold me down, force my head into the basin. My own tears mix into the water, disappearing before they even hit the surface.

  I won’t tell them.

  I won’t.

  I won’t.

  Water rushes out of me in a scream.

  I can’t stop shaking. Can’t stop crying.

  A hand grabs my hair, yanks my head back. My scalp screams.

  The ape leans in, breath thick with sweat and blood. “Just answer,” he murmurs. “And you can go.”

  I choke out a laugh.

  A wild, broken laugh.

  “Go eat shit.”

  He looks at the Navorian.

  The bastard moves forward. Slow. Towering. Appendages slithering out, coiling in the dark, then—

  They wrap around my throat.

  Vortex.

  A teenager, sweat dripping down his face as he pushed himself harder, harder, harder.

  “I’ll be a hero,” he said, brimming with fire, with certainty. Like it’s a fact. Like it’s something no one can take from him.

  I never said it out loud, but I believed him.

  And I hated him for it.

  Because I just sat there. Watching. A spectator to someone who actually tried.

  That was my life. The one I left behind.

  Would I ever go back?

  Not even if they kill me.

  The Navorian squeezes.

  My throat collapses.

  Blood trickles—my nose, my ears, my mouth, my eyes.

  My skull pounds.

  Never.

  Never.

  Never.

  I will never answer them.

  I will never give them what they want.

  Not in this life.

  Not in the next.

  “They say pain makes you honest. But I’ve lied through a broken jaw before. I don’t talk unless I want to. And I don’t want to.”

  – Revilsa

  What would you rather lose forever?