Evs, you can only ever be yourself, the voice said. So, it’s up to you to make sure you become the best version of yourself. And that’s all you’ll ever need to be.
“No,” she mumbled, almost to herself, backing up a step. She gripped her head with one hand, the voices inside fighting more and more for dominance, to take control. “No,” she said louder, now doubling over. “Get away.”
She didn’t know if she was speaking to Richard or to the voices; all she knew was that she had heard her dad’s voice—her dad, whom she’d loved, who had died because of this sick man in front of her—and it was almost like he was there with her, fighting for her to be free.
“No,” she felt herself scream—a sound so sheer and distant from herself, she barely believed it was coming from her own mouth. But she could feel as her vocal cords shredded against each other with the sound, could hear the ringing in her ears as the scream vibrated through her skull, so she knew it must have belonged to her. “No no no no no.”
“SUBMIT,” the voices in her head screamed back. “YOU WILL SUBMIT TO US. YOU WILL BE ONE WITH US.”
“You can’t have me—” she whimpered, but the voices only came back louder than before, intermingling with one another, one layer on top of another.
“YOU WILL DO AS WE SAY AND SUBMIT.”
You can only ever be yourself. The second voice—her father’s voice—slid in beneath the others, smoother than a stream of pure water being poured into her head. It was softer than the other voices, but stronger somehow, and it was those words that she clung to, that she grasped onto with all that remained of herself and used to pull free of all the other voices weighing her down.
“I am myself,” she said, fingers of one hand digging into the side of her head, the other clasped tightly around the lamp. “I won’t hurt them. I won’t be a part of this anymore. I. Am. Not. You.”
And with that, a noise ripped from her throat, somewhere between a growl and a wail. Her eyes flew open, and while all she saw at first was black—black walls, black floor, black ceiling—she could feel as the voices retreated, slithering away until nearly all that was left was her.
Everly.
They weren’t completely gone; she could feel the shadows of the voices still there, still somewhere inside her. But they were behind a wall in her head now, locked away out of sight. They weren’t in control anymore.
And she’d do whatever it took to keep it that way.
“What did you do?”
Everly pivoted, facing the tweed-clad man who still cowered in front of her.
“What did you do?” he repeated.
“I am my own person,” Everly said. As though to prove her point, she set the lamp down on the desk. There was no need for any more blood to be shed today.
“But you can’t be,” Richard cried out. “That’s not how it works, that’s not how it’s ever worked.”
“Well, today, it is.” He should have been relieved to be alive, she thought. But instead he was only concerned for what she’d broken. For the hierarchy in the building she’d defied.
“Fine,” Richard said shakily. “Fine, you’re not the Warden, but that doesn’t matter.” She didn’t know if that was quite true. She thought, on some level, that she was still the Warden. Everly and the Warden. One and the same. But that didn’t seem to be what mattered to Richard right then. “It doesn’t matter, I can still get you out. I can still be redeemed for my mistakes. You can still be saved.”
“No,” she said softly. Richard flinched with the word like he’d been struck. “I won’t let you save me. Not if you won’t save all the others, too.”
“That’s not how it—”
“It is how it works, if you let it be.” She stared at him hard. “And besides, I won’t let you use Michael like that. I won’t let him be just another pawn in your elaborate game, in your desperation to absolve yourself of whatever you think you did to my mother. She died, and we’re alive. You don’t have to make new mistakes to make up for past ones. I know what it’s like now to be used for what I am.” She rubbed at her arms, which had healed completely sometime in the midst of the mess they’d been living through the past few days. “And if that’s truly the only way for any of us to leave—with his blood—I won’t ask him to do that. I won’t ask him to give more than he’s willing to—he’s a ten-year-old boy.”
And he’s my son, she was surprised to find herself thinking. It wasn’t true, in a strictly biological sense, but buried deep in her mind were still the lingering hints of the previous Warden’s thoughts, her identity. That Warden may not have acted like much of a parent to Michael—may not have even known what parental love would look like, growing up with a complete absence of that very thing—but Everly knew what it was like to be a child who was loved, and she knew she could love Michael. And whatever that distant, aching part of her was that now saw herself as bonded to Michael, it screamed that she couldn’t do this. She couldn’t use him like this.
Everly knew that Richard was the only person in that building who would even know what to do with Michael’s blood, the only person who could get her out. He was offering that to her now—freedom, the opportunity to go back to the real world, to her life.
But it would never be worth it if she left, knowing that hundreds of people remained.
And besides: what was out there for her anymore anyway? She’d never found a purpose in the real world—on that count, Everly and the past Wardens could relate. She didn’t have anything to go back to. No family to return to.
But in here . . .
She thought again of Michael. And of Luca, though she grimaced to remember hitting him in the head with the lamp. She hoped—hoped—she’d managed to stay the Warden’s arm enough that he’d be okay.
She thought of all the other people in that building, all the people who’d endured years of torture and captivity and trauma.
It was a never-ending cycle.
But all patterns have to end somewhere.
She looked down again at Richard, who was hunched nearly in half in front of her, almost as if he were bowing to her, waiting for her verdict.
She clapped her hands.
A handful of runners appeared at the office door, all hefty frames and blank stares.
“Take him away,” Everly said, gesturing to the cowering old man. She would deal with him later. For now, it was enough for him to be locked away—to be put somewhere where he couldn’t hurt anyone else.
Once they were gone and she was alone, Everly looked around the black office. Her office now. She spun in a slow circle, eyes glazing over as they stared at the room surrounding her.
Where to go from here? Where was there to go? She had decided not to leave, to remain in the building, and Everly didn’t regret that choice, but now she had all the many, many questions of what that was going to look like.
She wouldn’t be like any of the past Wardens; that much she knew. Oh sure, the voices were still there in her head, pushing back against the walls she’d put in place against them. But they were contained, for now at least. Should they someday manage to break free, well, she would deal with that when the time came.
For right now, however, it was much more pressing to figure out what kind of Warden she was going to be. The testing would have to go, of course. For the briefest of seconds her mind flicked back to that white room, that chair with all its straps. Yes. The testing would have to go.
