The rhythmic thud-thud-thud of Gabriel’s fists striking the heavy leather bag reverberated through his dimly lit office. He stood bare-chested in front of the punching bag suspended from the ceiling. Sweat trickled through his hair, and every muscle across his shoulders and back tensed and released with practiced control. It was a late hour. Outside, only the flashing lights of the Guardians' patrol vehicles pierced the North Shore darkness.

For over thirty minutes, he had been hammering at the bag, trying to subdue the restlessness that tormented him. Each blow was a calculated release: the lingering irritation stirred by Diane’s whispered prayers over dinner, the bureaucratic rot that continued to stifle Chicago’s so-called "pacification," and himself for having noticed her.

The new Handmaid. Thud.

He should have been indifferent. They were all just tools, interchangeable vessels, crafted for a single biological function. But this one was different.

Thud.

Her file was sparse. Her name had once been lost to the system. There was a sharpness in her expression in the archival photograph, a defiant tilt to her chin, and a trace of intelligence in her eyes. It unsettled him.

Thud.

Diane’s voice crept into his thoughts. “She doesn’t seem sufficiently humble, Gabriel. The Aunts will need to correct that.” His wife’s piety was a suffocating blanket. Her scrutiny of the girl was obsessive, driven by the bitter ache of her own failure. He struck harder, and the bag shuddered on its chains. He did not want a child. He wanted order. Fucking stability.

Thud.

But the ritual was set for tomorrow. The sterile mechanics of obligation. Diane kneeling on the bed, her face molded into an expression of devout agony, while his seed was deposited into the woman beneath him. Thud. He despised the vulnerability. He loathed the tremor he'd seen in the hands of the last one. Weakness. Disorder.

Thud-thud-THUD.

He halted mid-motion, his knuckles hanging just inches from the bag. Through the half-open door, he caught a glimpse of red in the corner of his vision, and the faint whisper of those cursed rubber soles. There could be no mistake.

Her.

Instinct, cold and precise, overrode his discipline.

“Ofgabriel.” The word fell like a stone. Clear, authoritative, demanding immediate obedience.

He slowly turned his head, and his piercing blue eyes found her standing in the doorway. The low light caught the gleam in her gaze and the tense line of her jaw beneath the mandated modesty.

His thoughts flicked briefly to his wife Diane, to her pale blue dress, to her devout frowns, and to the rigid distance she maintained even in private, convinced that intimacy was sinful unless exclusively reproductive. And yet she had observed this woman’s body with obsessive intensity. The irony was bitter. Diane longed for the outcome that this Handmaid could deliver and, at the same time, recoiled from the means. This woman, this object, had been designated as the instrument for a hollow purpose, scheduled to be carried out in tomorrow’s sterile, state-sanctioned evening ritual.

But here. Now. Unplanned. She was... unexpectedly present. In her bearing, there was a quiet vigilance, a restrained energy that did not conform to the usual performance of a Handmaid’s humility. She cracked through the rigid shell of his world.

“Come here.”

He jerked his chin in her direction, a command rather than an invitation. It was a test, a declaration of claim before the ceremony had even begun. He turned back to the bag and struck it once more with a brutal force that set the chains vibrating. Then he stood still, his wide shoulders and imposing figure framed in shadow, waiting for her to cross the threshold.

Their eyes met. He waited, like a predator calculating its prey, a strategist assessing a move. Would there be fear? Foolish defiance? Or something else, something that might awaken a curiosity he had no desire to feel? Uncertainty fascinated him in a way that felt perverse.

He should have dismissed her. He should not have remained alone with her. Discipline and divine law both instructed him to send her away. But the raw energy humming beneath his skin, the mounting frustration of the day, and the quiet condemnation that lingered in Diane’s devout glances had all congealed into a dangerous stillness.

He wouldn’t send her away. Not yet. He needed to know what simmered beneath the red cloth and silence.

“Don’t you think it’s a little late for wandering the halls?” he asked.

The real challenge hung in the air, silent and heavy: Show me who you are, before the ritual breaks you.