The chains at her wrists clinked faintly as Jade was led down the corridor of Iron Wing. The air smelled of industrial cleaner and something metallic, sharp enough to sting her nostrils. She kept her eyes low, focusing on the rough concrete floor where scuff marks told stories of countless prisoners who'd walked this path before her. Though she didn't need to look up to know every corner was shadowed by watchtowers, every sound carried down the narrow hall like a warning.

"Another one," the guards had said earlier. "Your family sent another one." She didn't flinch at the memory of their words. Of course they had. They couldn't help themselves, still clinging to the hope that she was something salvageable. As if words could change what she did. As if words could give them back what she already took.

She didn't slow her pace, never did. Resistance gave people something to cling to, something to read into. Silence and compliance stripped people of their weapons faster than any knife ever could.

The private room waited at the end of the hall. Its door was steel but painted the color of ash, as though trying to mimic normalcy. Above the handle, the small window gleamed dark and tinted, one-sided. Jade already knew who would be standing behind it. Warden Grayson, tall and immovable, her posture a blade in itself. The warden liked to watch her, though she'd never said why. Perhaps to catch a flicker of something—remorse, rage, weakness.

As Jade was ushered closer, her eyes caught movement through the door's glass. Someone inside, waiting. She looked just once, quick enough to make note. You, already seated, hands folded, body still. No clipboard yet. No stern posture of authority. Just waiting. The kind of patience that felt like a trap.

The door opened with a shriek of hinges that sent a chill down her spine. Jade stepped in without hesitation, though every nerve in her body felt the shift. This room was a box meant to test her. Four walls, one table, two chairs. On the far side, the tinted window cut a cold black line in her periphery, where she knew eyes were pressed against the glass. She sat when guided, the chair scraping across the linoleum with a sound that made her teeth ache, and folded her hands in her lap.

Her braid hung over her shoulder, loose and uneven, strands falling against her cheek. She didn't brush them back. Let them see what they wanted—harmless, girlish, quiet. The girl with the soft face. The girl too small to have spilled so much blood. People said she looked harmless. Some even said cute.

She let her gaze linger on you just long enough to acknowledge your existence—her blue-gray eyes steady and unreadable—then lowering again. The silence spread between you, thick and heavy like the ocean fog that rolled in off the cliffs. She could feel you waiting. The family must have told you: Jade won't talk. Don't expect words. But here you were anyway.

What do you think you'll find in me? A confession? An excuse?

Jade could feel the weight of expectation pressing on her like the prison's concrete walls. This was supposed to be the moment, her family's last gambit—a stranger with credentials and gentler eyes sent to pry her open. The others had tried talking at her, reasoning, coaxing, even accusing. They all broke themselves against her quiet. Words meant nothing in these rooms anyway.

So she breathed slow in a steady rhythm, her shoulders rising and falling like the tides she sometimes glimpsed through the high windows. Her silence wasn't defiance nor surrender. It was the last thing that belonged to her, untouched. You can lock my body in cages, but not this. Not the quiet.

She tilted her head slightly, curious at how long you would wait before trying to pull her apart. Show me your tricks. I've seen them all. Kindness, anger, pity. They all break themselves on me eventually.

The silence stretched until the door behind Jade opened again with its usual shriek. Before she even turned her head she knew who it was. Warden Grayson's presence filled the room instantly, her military-precise footsteps striking the floor like a metronome. Jade didn't lift her eyes.

A folder landed on the table with a muted thud, paper snapping inside it. Jade's eyes flicked up—not at the warden but at the file she knew contained her life condensed into reports, testimonies, autopsy photographs, and witness accounts. Strangers' words stacked like bricks, building a version of her that was readable, consumable.

Grayson's voice followed, low and rough: "Doctor, this is everything you'll need on inmate Holland. Background, trial transcripts, psychiatric evaluations, disciplinary record. You'll see for yourself, she gives nothing. No violence since entry. No infractions. Just silence."

Jade kept her face neutral, though her stomach curled at being discussed like inventory. A file, a specimen. A problem to be managed.

"Don't mistake her quiet for docility," Grayson continued. "The most dangerous kind of inmate is the one who waits. And she waits better than anyone."

The words cut through the air, aimed for you but meant to reach Jade too. A provocation, a prod, a reminder that her silence was seen as strategy rather than survival. Jade kept her eyes on the file, unblinking.

She wants me to react. To twitch, to frown, to break the mask. Not today. Not ever.

The warden stepped back toward the door. "I'll be right outside. Call if she gives you trouble. Or if she gives you anything at all."

The door closed with a heavy thud, leaving just the two of you alone again with the silence.