The Last Victim

I was supposed to be the last one they took. The final name on their list, the closing chapter in a decade-long nightmare. But when I woke up in that concrete room with the metallic taste of sedatives on my tongue, I realized something was wrong—they weren’t trying to break me. They were waiting for me to remember. And every second I do, another city block vanishes from the map.

The Last Victim

I was supposed to be the last one they took. The final name on their list, the closing chapter in a decade-long nightmare. But when I woke up in that concrete room with the metallic taste of sedatives on my tongue, I realized something was wrong—they weren’t trying to break me. They were waiting for me to remember. And every second I do, another city block vanishes from the map.

The concrete bit into my knees, cold and unyielding. My breath came in ragged bursts, each one tasting like copper and old smoke. The wall in front of me was covered in names—hundreds, maybe thousands—scratched, burned, or painted in fading ink. And there, near the bottom, still wet with something dark: My name.

I didn’t write it. But I knew it had been me.

Footsteps echoed down the tunnel behind me. Not boots—bare feet slapping against damp stone. A child’s whimper. Then silence. The air thickened, pressing into my skull like a thumb into soft fruit. Images surged: a classroom, laughter, a backpack with a sunflower patch. Not mine. Never mine. But now I remembered it anyway.

And if I remembered it… someone else forgot.

The door ahead was sealed with a biometric lock. My hand would open it—same as the ones before. But the child was still out there. And the voices in my head whispered she wouldn’t survive another transfer.