Page 13 of Heresy
"She is mine to handle."
The possessive word hangs in the air, a brand.Mine. Not an asset or a problem. A personal responsibility claimed outside the normal chain of command. The word transforms a professional discussion into something more intimate, more dangerous. It’s a line crossed, and we all know it.
"Understood?"
The question is a demand, carrying the full weight of my authority. But underneath it runs a tremor of something else—the recognition that this is a threshold I can’t uncross. The word of a king in his castle, claiming a prize he doesn't understand but can't resist.
Zero gives a slow,single nod: obedience, not agreement. A soldier accepting an order that goes against his training. Rook holds my gaze a moment longer, searching for the logic that isn't there, before giving his own curt nod.
They rise and melt back into the shadows, leaving me alone.
The beast is settled. The decree made. Order restored. But the familiar weight of control doesn't return to my shoulders. Instead, a new feeling takes its place. An agitation. An itch under the skin that won't be scratched. This woman—Vera—is a variable the equation can't solve, and the imbalance of it tastes like uncertainty in the back of my throat.
I hate the taste.
My decision to keep her alive wasn't strategy; it was an impulse, a betrayal of the cold clarity that has kept me alive. Leaders can't afford this. I can't afford this.
I drain the glass. The burn of the whiskey is a familiar fire, but it does nothing to quiet the new noise in my head. A noisethat sounds suspiciously like curiosity—an emotion I thought I'd surgically removed years ago, a cancer I thought was in remission.
She pacesthe three steps her cage allows—door to wall, wall to door. It's the contained energy of a wolf, a kinetic fury. Her fists are clenched, jaw set. Even through the grainy feed, I see the fire in her eyes. She is not weeping. She is not waiting. She is plotting. She is at war with the very concrete that confines her.
I stare at the defiant figure on the screen, an unwelcome and dangerous fascination coiling in my gut. This isn't a loose thread to be snipped. This woman carries something inside her—courage, insanity, a genetic defect that rejects submission—that makes her fundamentally different.
She's a fucking splinter. Lodged deep under the skin, refusing to be ignored. A shard of glass introducing infection to a system designed for sterile control.
I watch her pace, and something shifts in my chest. Recognition. Respect. A dangerous curiosity about what happens when an unstoppable force is trapped with an immovable object.
Then she stops. And looks directly at the camera.
For a moment that stretches past time, her eyes find the lens. They findme. It’s impossible, a flicker of light on glass, but the connection is a live wire. A direct challenge. She knows she's being watched. And rather than shrink, she straightens her spine and lifts her chin, transforming from victim to adversary. The message is a blade aimed at my throat:You captured me, but you haven't broken me.
She stopspacing and looks directly at the camera.
For a moment that stretches past time, her eyes find the lens. They findme. It’s impossible, a flicker of light on glass, but the connection is a live wire. A direct challenge. She knows she's being watched. And rather than shrink, she straightens her spine and lifts her chin, transforming from victim to adversary. The message is a blade aimed at my throat:You captured me, but you haven't broken me.
I reach over Glitch's shoulder and kill the feed, severing a connection that felt too real, too intimate. The screen goes black, but the image is burned onto the back of my eyelids: a defiant woman in a concrete cage. The splinter twists deeper, striking nerves I thought I'd cauterized years ago.
I turn my head slightly, my voice a low rumble just for Glitch. "The camera her friends took off her. You gone through it yet?"
Glitch doesn't look away from his main monitor, his fingers still flying across the keyboard. "Yessir. Memory card's pulled. Running decryption and analysis now. Most of it is what you'd expect. Pictures of crumbling buildings, rust... art shit." He pauses. "But she got it, Prez. The last shot on the card. She got the brand."
The confirmation lands like a punch to the gut, even though I expected it. Seeing is different from knowing.
"It's a clean shot," Glitch continues, his voice all business. "High-res. Good lighting. You can see faces."
The confirmation lands like a punch to the gut. This isn't a simple problem I can solve with force or a clever plan. She's made this personal. I've learned that personal problems have ahigher cost—they aren't paid for with blood, but with pieces of your soul.
It's time to find out what she's really made of. This has become a battle of wills, and I need to discover what will break first: her spirit, or the cold, hard control I've built around my own heart.
FIVE
A GAME OF GHOSTS
VERA
Time doesn't exist in this concrete box. There is only the dim gray light filtering through the high, barred window—pale illumination that transforms my skin into a corpse-pale canvas—and the rhythmic sound of my own breathing. I have not cried. Tears are a luxury I can't afford, a waste of salt and hydration that speaks to a surrender I'm not ready to acknowledge.
Instead, I have spent hours learning the geography of my cage. My fingertips trace the rough, cold surface of the unpainted concrete, skin catching on aggregate never meant for human touch. Four paces long. Three paces wide. These measurements are my new reality, the spatial boundaries that define my universe. I test the iron bars on the window again, thick as my wrist and set deep into the concrete. The cold seeps into my palms, a reminder that this place exists outside normal considerations of human comfort. This place was built to hold something dangerous. And now it holds me.
