The food sat untouched on the floor. Third time this week.
Soy crouched down, slid it closer, and looked at him.
Soy: "What do you think — we owe your father a dead man? Eat something. Or you'll die from starvation before we even get the chance to use you."
Rayne didn't answer. He was somewhere else. His legs wouldn't stop moving. Small, restless tremors he couldn't control. His eyes were red at the edges — not from crying. From not sleeping. From not having what his body kept screaming for. His hands were shaking. His breathing was wrong. Panic climbing his chest like something with claws.
Days of isolation. Days without the drugs. His mind had turned into a room with no doors — just walls that kept closing in.
Rayne (voice cracking, desperate):
"Please. Just listen to me. My father — he'll give you whatever you want. Money, connections, anything. If not him, then me — I'll pay. Just please... I need them. Look at me. Look at my condition. They're not just drugs. They're my medicine. I need them or I—"
Soy looked at him for a long moment. Took in the trembling legs. The hollow eyes. The cold sweat.
He understood what he was looking at.
Soy (quiet, but no softness in it):
"Medicine. So that's what we're calling it."
Rayne (snapping): "You don't know. You don't know what it's like — the nightmares without them. The hallucinations. I'm seeing things... that don't exist 'anymore'. Things that aren't there. This isn't a choice anymore—"
Soy: "Is it worth it?"
Rayne went quiet.
Soy (leaning forward): "Running from the thing you fear. Wrapping it in something that makes you feel nothing for a few hours. Is it worth it?"
Soy: "I don't know the things you rich kids go through that force you to use these things... but it's worse for you. It's like killing yourself from the inside."
[He gets aggressive.]
Rayne (voice rising, breaking):
"You pussy. You don't know what I've been through. Not every rich kid is happy. You think money fixes everything? Do you know how hard it is to try to get your own parents to look at you? To spend time with you? To matter to them? We don't all have purpose handed to us. We don't all have people who—"
[A bitter laughter appears on Soy's face. Not cruelly. But it cut.]
Soy:
"What about the children who watched their entire families die in front of them? What about the kids whose friends got bombed while playing in the street? What about the old mother who lost her only son in a war — the son who was the only reason she was still breathing?"
His face shifted. The laughter left it completely.
Soy (low, sharp): "Stop throwing these tantrums. You had pain. Fine. Everyone in this world has pain. The question is what you did with yours."
Rayne tried to fight back. His mouth opened. Nothing came.
Then Soy's foot connected with the side of his head — clean, controlled — and the world went black.
———
[The Past — Rayne's Memory]
Rayne:
"Where am I... Wait. 'Who is this girl?' And... her face is blurred? No. Hold on a s...sec. I know this voice. I know this long hair... I know who it belongs to. But her face is fading from my memories."
In the memory, he is talking to her.
He sees himself — standing there, talking to her, laughing with her. Like watching a memory through glass. He reaches out. Tries to hold her. His hand moves toward her face — toward that long hair he knows so well.
But his fingers pass straight through.
Like she was never really there. Like she was already gone long before he was ready to let her go.
Rayne (soft, certain, and with tears in his eyes):
"I'm only a fool for you,
Cause I have hella feelings for you,
And maybe you're too good for me,
But I don't fucking care."
Blurred-Face Girl (gentle, careful):
"You're telling me everything about you,
While here I am, thinking about how to keep you by my side.
Life will give you time to forget,
The tears have made your eyes tired, boy."
Rayne (warm, unwavering): "Oh, how much I love your response.
I will always be with you,
Even if everyone is against you,
I'll keep loving you."
Blurred-Face Girl (quiet, tired, real):
"Even whatever happens, I just want us.
My hand on your hand — this is our life."
Rayne (voice breaking, confessing):
"Even if my father is against us, even if our families hate each other — yes, I love you. I confess this to you. I love you, even if it meant nothing to you, even if it was a lie from your side."
Blurred-Face Girl (voice barely above a whisper):
"Maybe I was wrong and you were right,
But I don't really wanna have this fight.
I just wanna feel like I belong — I belong to you.
I've lost everything, everyone I've once loved.
I couldn't say 'I need you' on that night when you left and I lost all track of time.
I just want you close so I can feel you."
Both Rayne and the girl close their eyes and she kisses him. Rayne returns to consciousness.
———
[The Base — Conn Terminal]
Kruu hadn't slept in twenty-seven hours.
Neither had Nia.
They stood over the finished terminal — assembled, wired, humming faintly with something that felt almost alive. Kruu ran the test sequence with steady hands and a jaw that hadn't unclenched in two days.
The terminal lit up.
Connection established. Black House — main cell. All control systems visible.
Then — overload. The terminal cut out. Dead screen. Silence.
Kruu stared at it for a long moment.
Kruu (flat, measured): "Thirty to forty percent chance of failure on entry. A few components we couldn't get — not critical, but not nothing either. I've calculated every variable I can reach. The rest is probability."
Seer'ah stood at the far end of the room, arms crossed, looking at the dead screen.
Seer'ah: "This is further than I expected us to get."
She didn't say it like a compliment. She said it like someone trying to prepare themselves for what came next.
Seer'ah:
"Everyone rest. We have the support. We have the supplies. Don't let your guard down — but rest. Because next we go for the White House."
Kruu turned back to the terminal without a word. Started working again.
Nia walked out to tell the others.
Rav found an empty corridor and started moving — shadowboxing, footwork, letting his body remember what it knew. James cleaned his rifle for the fourth time. Tichala caught Nia in the doorway and said something about her height that made her roll her eyes so hard it could've been an injury.
Soy told James to check on Rayne. Then he felt a hand on his arm.
———
[The Base — Soy & Seer'ah]
Seer'ah: "Walk with me."
They found a quiet corner of the base. Just the two of them and the hum of recycled air.
Seer'ah (quietly, not looking at him):
"Do you think we can come back from this?"
Soy looked at her.
Soy: "You said come back. Not succeed. You're not even considering that we might actually win."
Seer'ah didn't answer.
Soy: "If their leader breaks under the weight of it — what does the team lean on when they need something solid?"
Seer'ah (exhaling): "I pretend, Soy. Every day I pretend. But I'm exhausted. I can't sleep. I lie there thinking — will we see tomorrow? Will any of us see tomorrow?"
Soy was quiet for a moment.
Soy: "Everyone who has to go — will go. Every one of us has an end. That's not the tragedy. The tragedy is reaching that end having never fought for anything real. That's why we're here. To make that end mean something."
Seer'ah (small, tired): "Maybe you deserve to lead this team more than I do."
Soy (firm, no hesitation): "Don't do that. Don't compare yourself to me. We've walked completely different roads to get to this same place. You have no idea how much violence a person has to survive just to find this kind of peace. How many devastating mistakes it takes to become this certain about anything."
He looked at her directly.
Soy: "You are at your best when you are simply yourself. It doesn't matter how we look through someone else's eyes. In the end, all we truly have are our own."
Seer'ah said nothing. But something in her shoulders settled.
Outside, somewhere in the base, the Conn Terminal hummed back to life as Kruu found another solution.
And in his cell, Rayne lay on the cold floor — tears drying on his face, the ghost of a girl he couldn't remember anymore fading back into the dark.
[The End of Chapter 16]
Soy has said things that are not just for him — but for all of us. We see others in our lives and compare ourselves. I just want you to know — you are worthy. You are enough.