The darkness wasn't just an absence of light; it was a physical thing. It felt like cold velvet wrapped tight around my throat, squeezing the air out of my lungs until my chest burned.
Am I dead? The thought was a dull throb in my mind. I tried to move my fingers, but my body felt like lead. I was a ghost floating in a sea of ink.
Then, a flicker.
A figure emerged from the blackness, moving with a grace that felt predatory. He was dressed in a suit of blinding, pristine white. Against the darkness, he looked like a god—or a demon.
"Who are you?" I tried to scream, but my voice was a silent vibration.
He didn't speak. He leaned over me, his face hidden in the glare of his own light. He reached out, his fingers pale and long. When he touched my forehead, the cold vanished. In its place was a searing, electric heat that made my soul scream.
"Jessy," he whispered. His voice was deep, smooth, and dangerously calm. "You don't belong to the dark yet. You belong to me."
The world shattered like a glass mirror.
"Jessy! Nurse, she's waking up! Look at her eyes!"
The fluorescent lights hit my retinas like needles. I gasped, my lungs expanding for the first time in what felt like centuries. The smell of bleach and medicine flooded my senses.
"Mom?" I rasped. My throat felt like I had swallowed broken glass.
"Oh, my baby girl..." My mother collapsed toward me, her face a mask of exhaustion and relief. She grabbed my hand, her skin warm and shaking. "You're okay. You're in the hospital. You had a terrible accident."
"The man," I whispered, my heart monitor beginning to beep a fast, panicked rhythm. Beep. Beep. Beep-beep-beep. "The man in white. Where did he go?"
My mother's hand faltered. She looked at the nurse, who was busy checking my IV drip.
"Honey, you were alone in the car," Mom said softly, her voice filled with pity. "The police said it was a hit-and-run. No one else was there."
I closed my eyes, the image of the white suit burned into my eyelids. They thought I was crazy. But I could still feel the heat on my skin. He wasn't a dream. He was a promise.
I didn't wake up all at once. It was a slow, agonizing crawl out of a deep, black ocean. The first thing I noticed wasn't the pain, but the smell—bleach, ozone, and a cloying hint of lilies that made my stomach churn. My eyelashes felt like they were glued together with dried salt. When I finally forced them open, the world was a blur of harsh fluorescent white.
The accident—the collision with the UNI transport—flashed in my mind like a strobe light. Metal screaming against metal. The sudden, violent jerk of the world spinning on its axis. And then, nothing.
"You're awake," a voice said. It wasn't a doctor's voice. It was deep, resonant, and carried the weight of a mountain.
I turned my head slowly, every vertebra in my neck protesting. A man sat in the corner of the room, draped in shadows despite the brightness of the ward. He was dressed in a suit that probably cost more than my entire education—a sharp, midnight-black contrast to the white walls. His eyes were the color of a frozen sea, and they were fixed on me with a terrifying intensity.
"Where am I?" I tried to ask, but it came out as a broken rasp.
"You are safe," he replied, though the way he said it made 'safe' sound like a threat. "My name is Yuri Volkov. And from this moment on, Jessy, your life belongs to the silence."