POV Floris
I was done playing obedient.
He left me there. Shaking. Wanting. Saying I had to earn it like I was some dog scratching at his door. Screw that.
I pulled the tower-issued tablet from beneath my bed, slid the casing off, and bypassed the first firewall in three keystrokes.
If Eric thought denying me would break me, he forgot what I was before I was his. Before I was owned.
I wasn’t just clever. I was dangerous when bored.
The system was a beast—encrypted like a damn military base—but I knew its bones now. I’d seen enough terminals, memorized enough habits.
Brighton Systems loved order, and order made patterns. And patterns could be rewritten.
Two minutes in, I was inside the camera network. Every floor. Every hallway. I sat back, breath caught in my throat, watching the screen fill with quiet corridors, glowing panels, empty offices.
Some floors were off-grid—no live feed, just a blinking error where something should be. Redacted. Flagged. Interesting.
Then I found the blueprint index. A hidden subfolder tucked beneath a maintenance log. I opened it and the entire building layout unfolded like a secret.
Floor by floor. Labeled in grayscale.
Floor 7 — Obedience Wing.
Floor 8 — Restricted Vaults.
And Archive 3A… there it was. Three floors below executive. No staff. No cameras. Just a single locking mechanism.
Perfect.
I mapped the fastest path there and noted the security blind spots. I needed a keycard. Not a problem—I already knew who carried spares.
Twenty minutes later, I’d lifted one off a junior aide’s coat pocket during his smoke break. A little “oops” moment with coffee, a practiced laugh, and he never noticed.
So I waited. Midnight came like muscle memory. I moved through the tower silent, steps in time with the dimming hum of surveillance cycles, nerves buzzing just beneath my skin.
The corridor to 3A felt colder than the rest of the building. Like the walls knew they were keeping something buried.
The portraits lining it stared with soulless eyes, Brighton Systems’ founding fathers, their smug little faces like grave markers. The scanner lit green. The door opened with a hiss.
And the past exhaled.
It wasn’t a room. It was a vault. Sleek. Metallic. Freezing. Cases lined the walls, drawers labeled in flawless script. No titles. Just names. First names. Some just numbers. My fingers hovered over each one like they might burn.
Until I saw it. SIA / ROOM 9.
It was analog. Like it mattered. Like she mattered. I loaded the tape into the deck, heart racing with something I couldn’t name.
Static. Then—Sia.
Kneeling. Younger. Trembling. Naked but for the collar. Blindfolded, lips trembling as if the silence hurt more than the cold.
And him. Eric.
Standing like a god sculpted from steel, watching her like he wasn’t watching a person at all.
“Don’t do this,” Sia whispered, voice splintering. “Please. I can’t breathe without you.”
He said nothing. Did nothing. Just stared. And then the screen went black.
I didn’t move. Couldn’t.
The hum of the vault blurred out, my reflection staring back at me from the darkened monitor like a ghost.
She had loved him. Begged him. And still, he didn’t break. What had he done to her? What had she become to survive?
My fingers trembled against the console. The door slammed open behind me and I shot up. “Shit.”
He walked in like a shadow with a heartbeat, eyes hard but not angry. Surprised. Maybe disappointed.
He said nothing at first, just looked at the screen still flickering black behind me. His jaw tightened once.
“You think I wouldn’t find out you hacked my cameras?”
I turned toward him, steady despite the dread curling in my stomach. “No,” I said. “I knew you would. I just needed time.”
His gaze sharpened, like he was weighing whether to strangle me or laugh. “And what exactly were you planning to do with that time?”
“Look around. Learn.” My chin lifted, defiant. “You treat this tower like it’s your kingdom. I just wanted to see what’s behind the damn throne.”
His eyes dropped to the keycard in my hand, then to the screen again.
“You watched it?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
I swallowed hard. “What did you do to her?”
A long silence. He stepped closer, closing the space between us with the quiet inevitability of a storm. “I didn’t break her,” he said.
“But she begged.”
“She knew the rules.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.” His voice was sharp, but his eyes… his eyes were unreadable. Cold but haunted. Like something had clawed at the walls behind them for too long.
I stepped back, suddenly breathless. “Did you ever love her?”
The silence stretched. His body didn’t move. Not one inch. But something in the air shifted—like the temperature dropped.
“Did you ever love anyone?”
He stared at me. And stared. His voice dropped. Low. Bare. Broken in a way that didn’t sound like him.
“Not in a way that kept them alive.”