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[HENRY]

The machinery room felt like a concrete lung.

As if every pipe, every generator, every steel mechanism was drawing in a frigid breath and holding it before the air could turn to ash.

Above, the lab breathed as normal. Children pushed their blocks. Doctors plunged their needles. Nurses distributed medications. Sylvia tapped her heel and thought of Peter as she fiddled with the coffee machine. Brenner sat in front of 010, clipboard in hand, shoulders squared away in his blazer like they were imitating the very corners of the testing room.

Fluorescents whirred, faucets dripped, pens scratched across paper, chair wheels squeaked over linoleum.

Below, Henry felt all of it. Every single shift in the air, every single breath that tumbled between the walls.

Power, instinct, the simmering of fury. All shooting through his marrow, filling every single hollowed cell. He felt his nerves, every one aflame, every one a separate screaming wire of pure power.

He’d known power. He’d held it, and it had held him. But to be awakened from underneath the suffocation, to be unearthed from the tomb of himself was a relief so extraordinary he could hardly fathom it.

Shadows no longer lurked like a thin mist in the deepest depths of himself. They were alive, ancient tendrils that writhed and snaked through his every synapse at once.

He wasn’t drowned by it. He was ascended, burning in the flame of it as if circling the sun.

You were no longer the knife against his throat. You were the red-hot forge, remaking him.

You were the mouth that had drawn out the poison and laid it back on his tongue as venom.

The kind that he tasted before a kill.

***

[019]

Henry stood in the center of the undercroft, his shadow carved black against the concrete, utterly still.

The power radiating off of him warped through the space around him, thrumming. It ran through you, sharp and pulsing, an additional heartbeat that drummed through each bone as it went.

Your blood felt alive, responding to his presence.

“How long?” You spoke into the darkness.

Henry turned to you. His face was subtly morphed, power written on every inch. The bones were somehow sharper, more angular. His seraphine features had slipped into something demonically beautiful, like an angel fallen into the harshness of hell.

He looked at his watch.

“Twenty minutes until guard change.”

Even his voice was reforged. Elevated in the way smashed ceramic is rebound with gold, making it even more alluring.

“Where is he?” He spoke, low and smooth. “Find him.”

He was controlled, commanding.

“You could, Henry.”

He didn’t look at you as if he was surprised to know that. He looked at you with a purposeful control, as if the sheer act of commanding you was far more satisfying than slipping into the void himself.

His eyes were dark and unblinking. “Do it.”

You obeyed before you decided to, taking a deep breath and closing your eyes as you pulled yourself inward. You slipped into the ether with almost no effort, the presence of his power so close to yours acting as a strengthening force.

Water rippled under your steps in the blackness as you paced, Brenner’s image vivid in your mind. He materialized ahead of you within seconds, the back of his white-grey quaffed hair, the flat plain of his tailored blazer lining his long back as he sat in his chair.

Your voice echoed around you. “He is testing Ten. The room with the table that has a cracked veneer.”

“I know the one.” Henry echoed around you. “And the guards?”

A slice of the corridor materialized in front of you, stretching long and blue-white.

“One in the east corridor.” You murmured, following the thudding black boots along the tile.

“The other?” Henry echoed.

“I can’t… I can’t see him.”

You focused harder as you paced the blackness, in between dimensions, searching through the dark.

Then, you saw him. Standing oddly still at the door to the stairwell that led to the machinery room. He was staring, frowning. The door was open a fraction, caught on grit or some other betraying thing.

His hand tightened around his radio as he spoke into it, his voice pulling through the ether.

“Come in, Harris.”

A smaller voice crackled through the radio receiver. “Here.”

The guard's hand reached out to push the door open an inch further. His boot scraped over the line where the tile turned to concrete.

“We got maintenance in the machinery room as well?”

The crackling voice came back through the receiver. “Not to my knowledge. Everything alright over there?”

“Door's open is all. Unlocked.”

“Need me to join you?”

“All good, probably nothing. I'll check it out.”

“Copy that.”

A small choked sound fell out of you as you watched his palm push the door open fully. His boots scuffed across the concrete landing of the stairwell. He glanced up at the dead camera for a moment and then descended, his hand still around his radio receiver.

“What is it?” Henry said, his voice echoing in your ears.

“The door to the stairwell, it wasn’t fully closed. The guard, he's coming-”

His boots thudded louder on each step, each one more ominous than the last.

“Fuck.” You hissed. “He’s right above-”

The sound of the machinery room doors unlocking and banging open bounded through the blackness of the ether.

Henry’s hand flew over your mouth, muffling it before it could betray a single sound. Your heart lurched directly into your throat, yanking you out of the void and back into the machinery room.

Your hand shot up to his wrist and viced around it as he walked you back silently into the darkest corner of the undercroft. Your back thudded against the cold metal edge of a workbench along the wall, his hand still tight over your mouth.

You felt the warm slip of blood from your nose trail over the peaks and troughs of Henry’s knuckles.

“Don’t make a sound.” He whispered, almost silently, his eyes wide and intense.

It was almost pitch black, pressed this far back into the deepest corner. The only light was a dim hue of blue that diffused over the dark concrete before it could reach you both.

You tried to speak softly under his hand, but he pushed it harder against your mouth, making your lips part, making your teeth graze against his palm.

“Quiet.” His voice was as sharp as it was soft, a ribbon of silk with a knife-edge.

The authority in his voice now, even when it was the ghost of a whisper, made something primal twist deep within you.

The guard’s boots clanged across the metal platform and came to a halt for a moment. Your eyes cut up, locking onto the underside of the platform. Henry's followed, his hand still pressed hard into your mouth, his skin oddly cool.

“Anyone down here?” The guard called out.

Every part of you hoped he would retreat, but he didn't.

Your eyes squeezed shut as he descended the stairs, each step a warning on the metal. He flicked his torch around the room as he turned at the bottom of the stairs and began pacing. He moved between the machinery slowly, spilling a bright flare of yellow light across the concrete.

Henry’s hand stayed clamped over your mouth, his breath steady against your cheek as his head followed the silhouette of the guard. You felt the air around him tighten, as if the darkness itself was bracing.

“Hello?” the guard called out, voice echoing off the steel. “Maintenance crew?”

Henry didn’t move. You barely breathed. Both of you were exceptionally alert, nerves firing in the dark, ears fixed on every step.

The guard walked deeper into the room, scanning the shadows. His boots scraped across the concrete, slow and cautious. He passed the first row of generators, then the second, then the water reservoirs.

The yellow light of his torch dipped and flared, throwing shadows into odd, broken shapes that diffused into the tight space of the undercroft.

Eventually, his steps came back towards the metal stairs. His radio beeped.

“Come in, Harris.”

“Copy,” the receiver spoke, voice crackling with soft static, “anything?”

“Secure, probably just a lock malfunction. Typical.” The guard said, huffing with frustration.

“Great, meet you in Wing B in fifteen, over.”

“Copy that, over and out.” The radio shut off with a click. His steps got closer, one boot clanging onto the bottom step.

Torchlight dipped under the undercroft for no more than a second. Your eyes darted down as the warm ribbon hit the edge of Henry's shoe.

Henry drew in a sharp, tiny breath.

For a heavy, hung second, there was silence. Only the hammering of your heart, loud against your chest, and the thump of Henry's pulse against your mouth.

The footsteps stopped.

Then, they approached, two thuds across concrete, breaching the darkness of the undercroft. Henry’s fingers tightened around your jaw. His eyes narrowed into two cerulean slivers.

The guard took another step. His voice came low and commanding.

“Who's there?”

Henry moved.

Not quick, or frantic. It was controlled, fluid. He stepped out of the shadows like a creature waking from sleep, his hand falling from your mouth as he placed himself between you and the guard.

The guard jerked back, startled as his torchlight flared over Henry's face. Even he could see it, the subtle change in his features, the threat his body was responding to before his mind could make sense of it.

“What the, Pete-”

Henry didn’t let him finish. His hand flew outwards, long pale fingers contorted like carved marble.

The space bent at Henry's command, snapping into a sudden crushing pressure that made the guard stagger backwards. He froze, his body locking as if the air itself had turned solid around him. His torch dropped to the concrete, the glass lens smashing on impact.

Slowly, with terrifying grace, Henry raised his hand higher, twisting it in the air.

The man's boots left the floor, rising as easily as if he were nothing more than a feather. His legs kicked helplessly as Henry held him aloft in the darkness, his words choked in his throat as the force squeezed around his windpipe. Shock was etched deep into every line on his face.

He tried to speak, but nothing other than a guttural, panicked sound escaped him as Henry pressed harder.

“You shouldn’t have come down here,” Henry said softly.

The guard's eyes were bloodshot from the pressure, the vessels broken, his pupils blown black with terror.

Henry stepped closer to his prey, eyes bright and unblinking. He tilted his head, studying him with a cold, clinical curiosity.

His voice was almost gentle. “You should have kept climbing.”

The guard spluttered again, saliva spilling as his face turned scarlet, slowly suffocating in Henry's grip. His arms splayed outwards like featherless, trembling wings, obeying the smallest shift in Henry's fingers.

“But you didn't,” Henry said, stepping closer, his voice dropping into a dark hiss. “You were a loyal dog. Thorough. Checking every corner. And now... you will find out what loyalty to such a place costs.”

The force that left Henry was enough to send tremors through your every vertebra. The room bent, the lights pulsed and flickered violently. You watched his pale fingers twist, tensing with power.

Henry's frame shook as the force lurched through him.

One by one, the man's limbs contorted.

His bones broke like twigs, each releasing a sickening crunch, the white shards of bone ripping through the fabric of his uniform as they snapped. Finally, his jaw broke, following his other bones with a loud crack. It hung open, crooked and warped. Blood dripped from his mouth as he choked, wet guttural sounds that gurgled in his throat.

With a final, decisive twist of Henry's hand, the guard's body went limp. It collapsed to the floor with a heavy, lifeless thud.

The room fell silent save for your heavy breaths pulling through your chest, and the steady whirring of the machinery, oblivious to the violence.

Henry didn’t look away from the twisted, crumpled man. His chest rose and fell once, slow and controlled, as he analyzed every inch of the body in silence.

You stepped forward, legs trembling, trying to make sense of what you’d witnessed. The sheer magnitude of his power, the way he had exerted so little effort with such graceful, horrifying control. The way the air had bent around him like it recognized him, like it feared him. I lit you up in a way you didn't have words for.

Henry finally turned toward you, and the sight of him made your lungs seize. His face was still, carved in shadow and midnight blue. His eyes were dangerously alive.

You'd seen Henry angry, hurt. You'd seen him broken, soft. But this, this was Henry unbound.

Pure, lethal, uncaged.

Your throat tightened as your hand reached for him, fingers brushing over the side of his shirt. “Henry...”

He didn’t speak, and didn’t need to. The air around him spoke for him, a low, pulsing thrum that vibrated against your skin, against your ribs, against the marrow of your bones.

Your heart pounded so aggressively it hurt.

Henry stepped closer, slowly, his silhouette cutting through the darkness. You felt it in your blood. A primal, dangerous recognition, a blinding magnetic pull towards him.

His eyes flicked over your face, reading every tremor, every breath. His voice came low and terrifyingly beautiful.

“Does it frighten you?”

The realization shot through you like a livewire. You weren’t afraid. You weren’t sorry.

You were exhilarated.

“No.”

“You're shaking.” He said, almost a whisper.

“It makes me feel…”

Your breath caught behind your teeth as Henry stepped into you, his fingers slipping under your jaw like it belonged to him. His cool touch stole the words from your throat as he loomed over you.

“Finish your sentence.”

It took a moment for your heart to stabilize as he let his hand drag down your jaw to your neck.

“Alive.”

Even in the dark, you could feel Henry’s eyes piercing into yours like a sharpened javelin.

“You... you are so much more than I ever imagined.” You continued, your voice thick with awe.

“What did you imagine?” Henry asked, his voice slick.

“Something broken.”

Henry tilted his head curiously, fingertip sliding over your pulse point. “Aren't I?”

You drew in a deep breath, your lungs inhaling him and the scent of copper that lingered in the air. You'd never felt more awake, more alive.

“Not anymore.”

Henry's lips slid up into a wicked point.

As you looked at him, hellishly beautiful, your every vein pulsed with the promise of revenge. You imagined Brenner in Henry's grip, twisting and cracking and suffocating until he was nothing more than a warped corpse.

“I want to watch,” you seethed in the dark. “I want to watch you break him just like that, limb by limb.”

Henry’s eyes darkened. Something twisted inside him at your rage, your fury.

“I want to watch as you rip him apart. I want to hear him scream. I want to watch you destroy him.”

Then, in the blink of an eye, in a blinding flash that pulled a shuddering gasp from your mouth, Henry’s teeth were in your neck. He bit down like he was trying to rip a hole and crawl inside you.

“And you will.” He growled into your skin. “You will watch all of it.”

He slid his arm around your waist and slammed himself into you as he devoured your neck like a man starved. His mouth was wrecked, urgent as he dragged it up your jaw, biting against the bone, crushed over your mouth, sliding his tongue through your lips to taste the hate that hid beyond them.

He walked you back into the metal workbench with terrifying control. You could feel the hard, long line of his cock shoved into your groin, straining against his pants.

“Now I am free, I can feel everything.” He growled. “I can feel every part of you aching. Screaming to me. Your fury, your darkness... your desire.”

Your hands fisted in his hair, dragged down his scalp, left angry red tracks across the back of his neck as he laid into your throat. He bit and sucked a wet trail over your skin, each kiss more brutal than the last.

“Henry…” you begged, slick already surging for him.

“Quiet.” He hissed, one of his hands flying up to capture your mouth, his other tugging at the waistband of your pants.

He shoved them down your thighs and plunged his hand into your soaked knickers.

Your chest arched back as his fingers slid through your slick cunt in one long draw, parting you. He circled them hard at your clit, drawing a moan into the palm of his hand as he held you there, his entire weight pressing you into the bench, his swollen need shoved into your thigh.

“Did you think about this when I killed him?” Henry sneered, teasing his fingertips at your entrance. “Did you think about me inside of you?”

You nodded into his grip, your eyes rolling back, struggling to stay open as the knot of primal desire tightened in your core.

You whined like an animal as he drove his fingers inside you in a single, deep push.

“You are wretched,” he growled, curling his fingers against your walls, “wretched and soaking... and mine.”

His fingers worked ruthlessly, pumping and curling as you writhed against his tall frame, spilling silenced moans into his vice of a hand. The coldness of them fucking into your heat was a sensation almost overwhelming.

The darkness was filled with a feral symphony, the wet, obscene sounds of your cunt, your stifled gasps, Henry's satisfied growls rumbling low in his chest as he edged you.

His eyes were dangerous, piercing into yours as he worked you, deep and unrelenting. The pad of his thumb returned to your clit, spinning rough circles over the swollen peak as you bucked into his hand.

“Henry, I'm-” you whimpered, your voice muffled behind his palm.

You gripped his hair, forcing his head back. His neck arched, a ragged groan pulling from his throat.

Then, his eyes pierced into yours, a raw and unfiltered instruction that your body obeyed like something held hostage.

You came onto his fingers, clenching around them as the scorch of release snapped through your every nerve. Henry groaned, shoving his clothed cock against you as you shuddered.

His hand relaxed on your mouth, but still lingered. Two of his fingers brushed over your parted lips and then pushed through them, into your heated mouth. He made another quiet, contented sound as you rolled them over his fingers, swirled your tongue around his fingertips.

“Are you going to be quiet for me?” He asked, his voice like gravel wrapped in silk.

You nodded, pursing your lips over his fingers as he pulled them from your mouth. He grunted quietly, approvingly, before grappling with his trousers. The slide of the metallic zipper was harsh in the quietly humming air of the machinery room.

You could feel the heat of him, so close, so carnal, dissipating over your exposed flesh.

In a single fluid motion he spun you, one hand gripping your waist with bruising force, the other pinning your body down over the cold metal bench.

Your breath hitched in your lungs as his hand slid down your spine, his fingers rough and urgent as they descended and settled over the slick mess between your legs. He slipped the head of his swollen cock through you, kicking your legs apart with his foot.

“Mine,” he repeated, possessive and primal.

He pushed into you in a deep thrust, his thickness filling you completely, stretching you, drawing a sharp gasp from your open mouth. He growled, setting a relentless rhythm as he pushed his desire into you in long, forceful thrusts.

His grip on you tightened as he rutted faster.

The soft tenderness of the Henry who'd made love to you before was completely gone. He was transformed, terrifyingly in control, dominating you as if his body was made for it. As if it had been lying in wait, a predator waiting to claim his prey.

It was drowning. The devilish pleasure, the way his body moved against yours, the shocks of pure ecstasy that he was laying into you. You cried out his name against the metal, unable to cage your voice.

“I said quiet.” He hissed as he wound his hand over your mouth again, pulling your head back into a painful arch.

His other hand was flat on the crest of your ass, pushing your belly down into the bench as he fucked into you, each stroke more devastating than the last.

The desire inside you was coiling, a tight scorching knot as Henry turned feral at your back.

“This is what you really wanted, isn’t it?” He leaned down over you as he thrust faster, his voice falling into a hiss. “All those times I was with you… This is what you really craved. To be owned by me, broken by me, have me so deep inside of you you can taste me. Isn’t it?” He growled, slamming his cock deeper.

“Yes…” you whimpered into his palm, still tight against your mouth. “Henry, please-”

You were a wrecked, muzzled pup against his ruthless lust, bucking and writhing, your body completely owned, possessed by the demon of his desire.

“Show me,” he commanded in a snarl. “Show me how you craved me like this.”

His words, the carnal reverb of his voice in your ears, the wet, primal sounds of his body ruining yours against the metal sent you thrashing over the edge. You came like a vice on his cock, clenching and pulsing around him in intense waves.

Low curses tumbled from his mouth as his hips rutted hard against your ass, the slapping of his body on yours loud and animalistic, his shadow flickering wildly across the concrete and metal.

Your undoing spelled his own. With a broken growl, he buried himself to the hilt, spilling his cum deep inside of you with a violent shudder, the force of his fingers bruising at your hip.

The lights in the machinery room surged with a piercing hiss, his power surging rogue with his release, the bulbs threatening to shatter.

Henry collapsed forward onto your back, his chest heaving, his mouth sucking the back of your neck as he whined. His fingers caressed down over your thigh with a touch so reverent it hardly seemed the same hand that had splintered the body of the guard into a lifeless corpse only moments prior.

As the lights faded back down to their silent midnight blue you turned into him, catching the flares and shadows they left across his face. His eyes were closed, still lost in the haze of himself as his breathing came down to a ragged slow.

He was leaning into you, hands on either side, palms resting against the cold metal, a balm to his scorched skin.

His cherub blonde waves were ruined, splayed over his forehead, specked with blood from the guard. Your hand moved lazily through them, pushing it back as he breathed against you. You ran your fingers down the crimson painted on his neck. He hissed sharply as you passed over the open wound.

You breathed back into him, pressing your mouth over his. He tasted like burnt embers, like smoke and the earth. Remnant power was thrumming through him, through the air, through the place where your lips met his.

For a moment, you both stood there, mouths claiming, embracing each other at the ribs.

“We need to go,” Henry said finally.

His eyes sharpened into yours as they retreated from desire and slipped back into a controlled, lethal purpose.

It only made you pull him tighter against your chest. Part of you didn't want to let go. It didn't want to climb those stairs. It wanted to stay in the dark with him, caught between the metal and the world.

Henry could sense your apprehension.

“Do you trust me?” Henry said, his hands cradling your face.

“Yes.” You said without a second thought.

“Then from this moment forward, you do what I say,” Henry said, his voice commanding. “Obey me and only me, and I won't leave you behind.”

“If you did, I would die, and it would be freedom nonetheless.” You breathed.

“We will be free. We will be alive. And we will be far away from this hell and all who inhabit it.” Henry growled.

Those were his last words as he ran his hand up the back of your naked neck and crashed his mouth against yours one last time, his lips tinged with the bloody promise of retribution.

He let you fall from his grasp, and you stood still for a moment, steeling yourself, the ghost of his lips still upon yours, the imprint of his desire still wading inside you.

This was it.

Your veins writhed with the shadow of revenge, the scorch of fury, the hot pulse of Henry's blood.

You were a wretched, ugly thing. Broken and twisted and entirely his.

***

The hum of the machinery faded behind you as you and Henry moved through the doorway. The stairwell above was washed in cold fluorescent light, the camera still dead in the corner, oblivious to you.

Henry paused at the top of the stairs, listening. The air around him tightened as he focused.

“They’re moving,” he said. “The guards. The rotation has begun.”

You could feel it too. The subtle shift in the lab’s rhythm, the low vibration of moving footsteps, the crackle of radios growing more distant.

Henry turned to you, eyes bright blue and fevered. “Are you ready?”

You nodded. Henry studied your face for a moment, like he was searching for the tiniest betrayal of your composure. But your heart beat resolutely against your ribs. You were nothing but a suspended meteor, waiting for his signal to crash down upon Brenner.

“Stay close.”

Together, you moved through the doors and down the corridor, your steps falling silent, your breaths shallow. Henry’s power pulsed around him in faint waves, bending the shadows. Every light you passed underneath flickered, reacting to his presence.

Wing A was a long, sterile corridor you'd spent almost every morning of your second life in, performing for Brenner like the broken little circus beast you were. Every step pushed the rage deeper into your bones. Every test, every failure, every thinly veiled threat flashed behind your eyes.

The room was just beyond the corner. Henry slowed.

You felt him listening again. Not with his ears, but with his entire self, as if every atom of him was tuning in to the tiniest shifts in current.

Henry’s voice was barely a breath. “Now.”

The door handle clicked beneath his pale fingers, and he stepped through the doorway of the testing room in a long, controlled stride.

Ten went rigid in his chair, hands folded, eyes wide as he watched Henry enter. He could feel the threat immediately. The warped space, the power pulsing, awakened.

Brenner turned.

He frowned, a split-second of trying to make sense of the intrusion. Henry stood in the threshold like a monolith, his posture controlled, eyes dark and fixed.

“Peter,” he said. “What are you-”

Then, his eyes flicked to Henry's neck. The dark wash of drying blood on his skin, the torn open scar, the bright crimson a shock on his white collar.

Brenner froze, his aged face draining of colour.

“Say my name.” Henry hissed, his voice cutting through the room like a blade.

The lights whirred in the ceiling plaster, reacting to the spike in Henry’s anger. Ten flinched in his chair, shrinking back into it as the room bent around Henry’s silhouette.

Brenner swallowed hard. He rose slowly, abandoning his clipboard, raising his hands as if trying to calm a wild animal.

“Henry, please, listen to me-”

Henry tilted his head. A threat, a promise, an inevitability.

“No.” Henry’s tone was quiet again, terrifyingly calm. “Rats don't make demands.”

Brenner’s eyes darted to you, searching for some semblance of control. “Nineteen, please, step away from him. You don't understand, he’s unstable, he’s-”

Henry’s power surged. The table shuddered, the lights popped violently, bulbs giving out behind the plastic. Ten gasped as the room dimmed, clutching the edge of his seat.

“Who do you think freed him?” You spat. “I know what you did to him, Papa. All of it.”

Brenner’s face lost even more colour.

“You… you don’t understand…” He said, his voice cracked. “You don’t understand what he is, what you’ve unleashed-”

“I understand,” you said smoothly, stepping deeper into the room, your own power flooding your nerves. “That you’re going to pay for what you’ve done. To me, to Henry. To the children. Do you, Papa? Do you understand?”

Henry took another step, his voice dropping into something low and lethal. “You did this. You made me bleed for you. You made me break for you. You buried that little parasite in my neck and thought it would save you.”

Brenner’s breath trembled. “Henry-”

“You thought I was yours, didn't you? Yours to play with, to control. Yours to torture.”

Brenner froze, his eyes fixed to Henry's face, which was morphing into sharp, hellish angles the more his fury built.

Henry’s eyes burned, incandescent and unblinking. “I remember every single scar. Every single agony. Every single scream you tore from me. And now, you’re going to answer for it.”

Brenner moved, a sudden flash. Not toward Henry, or you, or the door. Toward the emergency switch on the wall.

Henry lunged, but Brenner’s hand slammed down on the button.

A shrill alarm began to wail, and you reacted before you could blink, force surging through your limbs.

Your arm snapped outward, the power surging invisible and violent, gripping Brenner mid‑movement. His body lurched and locked in place, suspended in the air like a puppet with its strings pulled taut.

“Papa!” Ten gasped, flinching forward in his seat.

“Quiet.” Henry hissed.

The boy sank back again, clutching the edge of the plastic, his knuckles white.

Henry gripped the alarm with a surge of power, cutting it off mid‑screech, the circuitry frying under the force.

“This man isn’t your Papa, Ten. He’s a parasite… a disease. A man so unremarkable he had to make you just to feel special.” Henry hissed. “But he isn’t special. He’s nothing more than a coward. A jailer… keeping you locked up in this hell, making you perform like a beast.”

Ten shook his head, his eyes welling with tears. “No, Mister Pete- Henry… please… please don’t hurt him.” He pleaded, his voice tiny.

His innocent, childish pleading made your stomach twist. For a moment, you almost released Brenner from your grasp, unable to tear your eyes away from Ten's tiny, tear stained face.

Then, Henry spoke again, pulling your focus back.

“Oh, I’m not going to hurt him now,” Henry said softly, tilting his head at the child. “I’m going to teach him first. And you… you will never be controlled by him or anyone ever again.”

It sounded like the promise of hope, but it sank inside of you like a dreadful anchor, something dark and terrible wrapping around his words.

Brenner choked out a breath, his eyes wide, limbs trembling against your hold. His face was contorted with terror, shock, the crumbling of his control. A sick, dark wash of satisfaction pulled through you as his mind tried to fathom it.

Henry turned toward you slowly.

“Hold him.” He murmured, his eyes dragging over Brenner’s bound frame.

You tightened your grip, arm trembling, fingers drawing inwards. Brenner’s breath hitched in a ragged cough, his hands clawing out uselessly at the air.

Henry stepped closer, his voice dropping into a razor‑thin whisper. “Haven't you realized yet? There is no escape. Not for you.”

Brenner’s voice cracked. “Nineteen-let go-” He choked.

Henry’s face snapped toward him. “Don’t speak.”

The pressure around Brenner tightened with a flick of Henry's head. His knees bent in mid‑air, his breath coming in shallow, panicked bursts.

Henry’s eyes returned to Ten, who sat frozen, trembling.

“Come,” He commanded the small, pale boy.

Ten obeyed instantly, rising from his chair with shaking legs, eyes fixed on Brenner’s suspended form and your intense grip.

“The rainbow room,” Henry said, every octave controlled as he faced you again. “Bring him.”

Henry pushed through the door, the air bending around him.

You followed, dragging Brenner backwards, his body trying to writhe, his feet hanging limp. The toes of his polished shoes scraped helplessly across the tile as he spluttered in your grasp. Ten followed behind you like a terrified shadow, his footsteps shaking.

The corridor stretched long and yellowed white, humming with fluorescent light. The rainbow room doors stood closed at the far end, the clean, clinical white a sickening contrast to the violence coiling through the air.

You were halfway down the hall when the sound hit you.

Running. Heavy boots, slamming fast over the tiles only corridors away, heading straight for you. Then, the alarm shrieked to life again, a shrill wail accompanied by a blaring, repetitive siren.

Henry stopped mid‑stride, his face snapping around toward the sound, eyes narrowing, power rippling outward in a low, dangerous pulse.

The air shifted with a sudden spike of urgency as the crackle of radios grew louder, as the slamming of boots grew closer. You heard doors fly open, banging off the walls.

Brenner tried to shout, but only managed a choked half-yell before you surged more force from yourself, suffocating his voice in his throat. You tightened your grip, his suspended body jerking.

Henry turned to you, voice razor sharp, expression rigid and controlled. “Stay here.”

Your stomach flipped violently with a wash of panic at his words.

Stay here? Stay behind, without him?

It felt like being left to the wolves.

“What? Henry-” you hissed.

He stepped closer to you, his face carved into lethal purpose. “Do what I say. Kill anyone who comes through this corridor.”

Your pulse hammered. “Without you?”

Henry’s eyes burned, analyzing your face. Then, his gaze softened, flickered with a flash of deliberate warmth you'd come to know all too well, the kind that his reawakening had smothered in him.

“Trust me.”

A sharp wire twisted in your gut. The sudden honey in his voice, the softness not quite covering the darkness lurking in his features. The command hidden under the plea.

But you didn't have time to challenge him.

A guard flew around the corner, boots slamming, a shock rod alive and sparking in his hand.

“Stay where you are!” He commanded, voice booming off the walls.

You froze, still holding Brenner aloft. Henry moved instantly.

He ripped Brenner from your hold with a single, effortless motion, the force pulling over your own like a powerful magnet.

Brenner choked as Henry’s power wrapped around him like crushing, invisible chains. Ten stumbled backwards, nearly falling as the force rippled through the space around him. Henry caught him by the shoulder and pushed him toward the rainbow room.

“Inside,” Henry commanded.

Ten obeyed with a whimper.

Henry dragged Brenner with him, his body twitching as he pulled through the air. He shoved open the doors and threw Brenner inside with a flick of his hand, as if he weighed nothing.

Several loud screams and the clattering of items dropped by frightened hands came from behind the doors as Brenner careened to the floor, landing with a crash, his thin limbs sprawled on the sickeningly bright rainbow.

Henry turned back to you. His voice was a low, lethal hiss. “Hold the corridor.”

You nodded once. His eyes locked onto yours, a single, raw moment of shared purpose. Then, he slammed the rainbow room doors shut behind him.

You drew in a deep, steadying breath, but your lungs shook. You were alone in the corridor.

No Henry. No escape.

“Hands where I can see them, subject Nineteen!” The guard yelled again, his spit flying. “Now!”

He careened towards you, taser rod hot in his hand, his other reaching down to clutch the gun in its holster. As he got closer, you recognized him.

A grim, terrible image flashed behind your eyes. His face looming above you, his mouth curved into a sick smirk, his black boot slamming down onto your fragile fingers.

Your blood pulsed, power coiling through your limbs like a living thing, bolstered by Henry's proximity or the rage or the desperation or some other force you couldn't pinpoint.

It happened faster than you could register it.

Your power surged, lighting you up nerve by nerve as it snapped outward, a shapeless, formless jolt of pure energy that drew a shriek from your lungs.

The guard’s body violently jerked and stuttered mid-stride. You drew him up into the air, suspending him for only a moment before snapping your fingers inward.

The sound was a sickening, ear-splitting crunch. You felt each one of his ribs one by one, cracking, splintering, piercing into his organs. He choked, blood spluttering from his mouth in thick crimson droplets, painting the floor beneath him.

You dropped him and watched, your eyes dark with fury, as his body collapsed to the floor in a heavy thud. A wet, guttural noise spilt from him as his body twitched and then turned limp.

You didn't have time to slow your ragged breathing. More furious slamming of boots filled the corridors as two more guards banged through the doors and flew around the corner.

You didn’t hesitate.

With another shrill scream, your power surged again, sharp and controlled from both hands, gripping the two of them before they could even raise their weapons.

This time, you slammed them both up into the ceiling with such a violent force that the plaster rained loose onto the tile. You felt your power wrap around their throats like steel wire, and you pulled, tighter and tighter until their splutters and gasps choked down into dead silence. They both fell to the floor, motionless.

Again and again, the corridor filled with the echo of boots, the crackle of radios, the booming shouts. All backed by the continuous wailing of the alarm.

You were exhausted, but you had no choice. You had to keep fighting. You had to do what he said. You had to get out, had to gut this hell from the inside out.

At a certain point, you felt like you were outside of yourself. Hearing your own shrieks echo through your ears, feeling your blood pulse, seeing your hands snap outward, fingers splayed.

With each life you erased, more of you broke.

With each bone you splintered, with each throat you closed, more of your mind screamed for Henry.

The bodies piled up, limp and lifeless in the corridor, the white painted red. The lights in the ceilings had blown out and rained metal and glass into the crimson streaks, the bulbs sparking and dangling uselessly. Doors had flown open, broken off their hinges in response to you.

Now, you were on your knees, palms in the blood and ruins.

Dry sobs wracked through you from sheer exhaustion as you collapsed forward onto shaking arms. Blood was spilling fast from both of your nostrils, painting your knuckles red as it fell. Your head pounded, the edges of your mind throbbing, your vision blurring.

“Henry...” you croaked through your panting.

For a while, the only sound in the ruined corridor was the alarm, the live buzzing of exposed wires, and your heavy gasping.

Then, you heard the screams.

Not yours, not more guards. Not Brenner's or Henry's.

The children.

Your heart lurched violently into your throat as another ripped through your ears.

You staggered to your feet, slipping on blood, catching yourself on the wall. Red streaked across it from your palms as your hands slid against the tile, your legs shaking with every step.

The rainbow room door was sealed shut, the white spattered with streaks of blood and dust from the debris of your hallway massacre.

Another scream, sharp and terrified, echoed into the corridor like a nightmare.

“Henry!” you shouted, voice cracking.

No answer. You slammed your shoulder into the door, but it didn’t budge.

You pressed your palms hard to the metal, pulling power into your limbs, into your bones, from the exhausted edges of your mind. The door groaned under your hands, resisting.

Inside, another shrill scream peaked, followed by a muffled thud.

Then, it was silent. A silence so complete it felt like the world behind the doors had been erased entirely.

You could feel it seeping through the thin line at the floor. An untamed, unbridled power, pure static leaking from every gap.

Henry.

Your breath hitched. “Henry, open the door! Henry!”

You slammed your fists into the door, pushing harder, power surging through you in a violent burst. The hinges groaned. Then, the lock broke apart with a metallic crack. The doors gave way, flying inward with a shriek.

You stumbled into the rainbow room, falling to your knees again, your legs boneless.

It felt like being thrown into a hurricane of pure electricity. The very air was alive, tilted, every atom charged. The smell burned through your nostrils, an overwhelming, acrid copper hanging in the room like an inescapable mist.

Heavy, urgent breaths wracked through you. You raised your head, and every part of you froze.

The room was devastated.

The white walls were blood-soaked, slips of dark red splattered over the rainbows, the floor slick with it.

Henry stood near the two-way mirror at the back of the room, seething.

His power spiralled around him in jagged, uncontrolled waves, bending the air, warping the light, making the entire room pulse with a sick, electric heartbeat. His breath came in sharp, uneven bursts. His hands were at his sides, fingers twitching rapidly.

Then, you saw them. The bodies.

The children. Tiny, crumpled forms. Twisted, bloodied. Limbs broken and contorted into warped angles. Their jaws were bent, held wide open in silent eternal screams, their eye sockets nothing but empty voids, black and crimson.

Your voice came out cracked with dread. “Fuck, no no no... Henry, what have you done...”

He turned only his head, slow and controlled. His cheeks looked hollower, his jaw sharper, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere between the room and the shadow of his mind.

You stumbled to your feet and stepped closer to him, your peripheral vision invaded by the wrecked shapes of the small bodies.

“Henry,” you said again, quieter. “The children...”

He turned fully then. His eyes were fevered, unhinged, the blue burned into something almost nuclear. His face was carved into a mask of rage and revelation, every line sharpened into something feral.

The crisp white of his uniform was splattered with violent shocks of blood.

Brenner was on his knees in the corner. His face was twisted in terror, his hands shaking violently, his breath coming in shallow, panicked gasps. He looked small, pathetic.

A man stripped of every illusion of control.

You realized then the true depths of Henry's vengeance. He hadn't killed him, not yet. He hadn't afforded him that mercy.

He'd forced him to his knees first. Forced him to watch as he destroyed his kingdom, his weapons, his control, one prisoner at a time.

A tear breached your fragile eyelashes, slipping down your cheek to mix with the blood that streaked your face. Henry stepped toward you, terrifyingly slow, and dragged a cold finger up under your chin.

“Henry...” You pleaded, tears falling. “I never wanted you to hurt them. Only him, only Papa...”

“Why do you cry for them?” His voice was low, almost gentle. He tilted his head, studying you with a strange, almost tender curiosity.

“They should have been free, should have been-” you choked out.

“Don't you see? They are free. They are no longer his prisoners.” Henry said softly. “You think you should mourn them, but you shouldn't. They're not gone, Nineteen. They're still with me. In here.”

His long, pale finger tapped over his temple as his eyes pierced into yours.

Henry looked around the room at the bodies, the destruction, the aftermath, cataloguing every inch of it.

“Are you scared?” He asked, looming over your shaking frame. “I was scared once, too. But now, I am liberated. As are they, as are you. And he-”

Henry slipped his finger up your jaw and then turned, pacing over the room to Brenner, trembling in the corner. “He will pay for all of it.”

You swallowed hard, your pulse hammering so violently it hurt.

Henry stood over Brenner like a silhouette carved out of darkness, barely human in the way power warped around him. The rainbow room still pulsed with the aftermath, crackling with static that ran up your spine.

Brenner raised his head, his glassy eyes fixed on Henry with a terror that stripped him of every ounce of controlled authority he’d ever wielded.

Henry took one slow step toward him.

Brenner scrambled backwards on his knees, palms slipping on the tile.

“Henry-Henry, listen to me, please-”

Henry's power surged, a violent pulse that made the lights flicker and crackle dangerously. The walls groaned under the pressure. Brenner flinched, covering his head with shaking hands.

“The rat is caught.” Henry whispered.

He turned toward you slowly, too slowly, as if every movement was being dragged through the weight of his own power. His eyes locked onto yours, intense and terrifying.

“This is what he made,” he said. “This is what he wanted. A weapon.”

Henry turned back to face you, his voice cold.

“He made you one, too. He took you. He deceived you. Made you believe you could trust him. Made you into a beast for him to tame. He hurt you, didn't he? He made you bleed. He made you feel nothing but pain and agony, all while trying to erase you, trying to stop you from ever knowing the truth.”

His voice cracked. “He ruined you with his hands and punished you when you broke.”

You knew he was talking about himself just as much as he was talking about you.

A furious heat rose within you, blurring everything around in the room except Henry and Brenner and the horrifying truth of it. Every memory rushed into you at once.

Blinding lights. Rubber masks. Agony in your head. Shards of things you were driven into insanity trying to make sense of. Shadows ripping at the corner of your mind. The drugging, the restraints, the pain burning through your limbs. Every single honeyed threat, every single perfect lie. Bruises around your jaw. Henry lit up, tortured. Brenner's sick smile as he made you watch. The violent shocks, laid into your temples. The collar, the cans, the broken bones.

The serpent slithering through it all.

Your breath broke. Henry felt it. He turned fully toward Brenner, decisively.

“Now it is you who will break. For me.”

Brenner’s voice cracked with desperation as his eyes darted to you, begging for mercy, for solace, for anything.

“Nineteen, please, don’t - don’t let him-”

Henry didn’t let him finish.

His power surged forth, more violent than anything that had come before it. He was explosive, inevitable, burning with every single moment of agony that had been brought down upon him under the reign of Brenner.

The entire room warped as Henry gripped him with a blinding force, his every nerve tuned entirely to the depths of his vengeance. Brenner's thin frame rose into the air, his suit crumpled, his limbs jerking, his terror-stricken expression splattered with blood.

He tried to scream, but Henry's other hand splayed forth, power wrapping around Brenner's throat and suffocating him. He clawed helplessly at his neck.

Henry held him aloft in silence, seething, his body trembling with fury. His eyes were burning, nuclear ice-blue, studying the face of his captor one last time.

“Goodbye, Papa.” He snarled.

“Please-” Brenner choked, guttural and desperate.

With blinding speed, Henry threw him into the wall. He was slammed against it, arms splayed, his entire body violently seizing as his face pooled scarlet.

Henry was gone, his eyes rolled back into his head, his own body twitching with power, his face warped into something ancient and demonic.

You felt every atom of it. Henry's unbridled rage, his brokenness, his pain, his desperation. All of it twisted into a lethal force, ripping into Brenner's every nerve.

A final cascade of power flew from Henry's hands, cracking the floor beneath his feet.

Brenner's blood burst forth, streaming in rivers from every part of him. His eyes, his mouth, his ears, painting his white hair. It ran down his neck, through every aged line on his face, a brutal haemorrhage that splattered onto the tile. His body convulsed against the wall, every bone shattering at Henry's command, every vein ripping apart.

Then, he dropped.

His body hit the floor with a brutal crack. He didn't twitch. He didn't choke.

He was destroyed.

Henry seethed where he stood, his nose dripping with blood, his body shaking as he let his arms drop to his side. His breaths were slow, ragged, his eyes not leaving the ruined shell of Brenner.

Your own breathing was broken. The weight of what you'd done, the weight of what you'd witnessed. The blood, the bones, the lives you'd taken, the power that had rushed through your body in unstoppable waves.

And the relief.

You fell to the floor, palms slamming into the debris. Sobs wracked through you, blood and saltwater streaking your face as you shuddered against the tile.

The serpent was dead. The chains were severed.

You thought it was over.

But as Henry turned toward you, his steps terrifyingly graceful, his beauty twisted into something demonic, you saw it.

One God had fallen. Another had taken his place.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

☣︎ Comment if you'd like to be added to the tag list for this series! ☣︎

[HENRY]

The machinery room felt like a concrete lung.

As if every pipe, every generator, every steel mechanism was drawing in a frigid breath and holding it before the air could turn to ash.

Above, the lab breathed as normal. Children pushed their blocks. Doctors plunged their needles. Nurses distributed medications. Sylvia tapped her heel and thought of Peter as she fiddled with the coffee machine. Brenner sat in front of 010, clipboard in hand, shoulders squared away in his blazer like they were imitating the very corners of the testing room.

Fluorescents whirred, faucets dripped, pens scratched across paper, chair wheels squeaked over linoleum.

Below, Henry felt all of it. Every single shift in the air, every single breath that tumbled between the walls.

Power, instinct, the simmering of fury. All shooting through his marrow, filling every single hollowed cell. He felt his nerves, every one aflame, every one a separate screaming wire of pure power.

He’d known power. He’d held it, and it had held him. But to be awakened from underneath the suffocation, to be unearthed from the tomb of himself was a relief so extraordinary he could hardly fathom it.

Shadows no longer lurked like a thin mist in the deepest depths of himself. They were alive, ancient tendrils that writhed and snaked through his every synapse at once.

He wasn’t drowned by it. He was ascended, burning in the flame of it as if circling the sun.

You were no longer the knife against his throat. You were the red-hot forge, remaking him.

You were the mouth that had drawn out the poison and laid it back on his tongue as venom.

The kind that he tasted before a kill.

***

[019]

Henry stood in the center of the undercroft, his shadow carved black against the concrete, utterly still.

The power radiating off of him warped through the space around him, thrumming. It ran through you, sharp and pulsing, an additional heartbeat that drummed through each bone as it went.

Your blood felt alive, responding to his presence.

“How long?” You spoke into the darkness.

Henry turned to you. His face was subtly morphed, power written on every inch. The bones were somehow sharper, more angular. His seraphine features had slipped into something demonically beautiful, like an angel fallen into the harshness of hell.

He looked at his watch.

“Twenty minutes until guard change.”

Even his voice was reforged. Elevated in the way smashed ceramic is rebound with gold, making it even more alluring.

“Where is he?” He spoke, low and smooth. “Find him.”

He was controlled, commanding.

“You could, Henry.”

He didn’t look at you as if he was surprised to know that. He looked at you with a purposeful control, as if the sheer act of commanding you was far more satisfying than slipping into the void himself.

His eyes were dark and unblinking. “Do it.”

You obeyed before you decided to, taking a deep breath and closing your eyes as you pulled yourself inward. You slipped into the ether with almost no effort, the presence of his power so close to yours acting as a strengthening force.

Water rippled under your steps in the blackness as you paced, Brenner’s image vivid in your mind. He materialized ahead of you within seconds, the back of his white-grey quaffed hair, the flat plain of his tailored blazer lining his long back as he sat in his chair.

Your voice echoed around you. “He is testing Ten. The room with the table that has a cracked veneer.”

“I know the one.” Henry echoed around you. “And the guards?”

A slice of the corridor materialized in front of you, stretching long and blue-white.

“One in the east corridor.” You murmured, following the thudding black boots along the tile.

“The other?” Henry echoed.

“I can’t… I can’t see him.”

You focused harder as you paced the blackness, in between dimensions, searching through the dark.

Then, you saw him. Standing oddly still at the door to the stairwell that led to the machinery room. He was staring, frowning. The door was open a fraction, caught on grit or some other betraying thing.

His hand tightened around his radio as he spoke into it, his voice pulling through the ether.

“Come in, Harris.”

A smaller voice crackled through the radio receiver. “Here.”

The guard's hand reached out to push the door open an inch further. His boot scraped over the line where the tile turned to concrete.

“We got maintenance in the machinery room as well?”

The crackling voice came back through the receiver. “Not to my knowledge. Everything alright over there?”

“Door's open is all. Unlocked.”

“Need me to join you?”

“All good, probably nothing. I'll check it out.”

“Copy that.”

A small choked sound fell out of you as you watched his palm push the door open fully. His boots scuffed across the concrete landing of the stairwell. He glanced up at the dead camera for a moment and then descended, his hand still around his radio receiver.

“What is it?” Henry said, his voice echoing in your ears.

“The door to the stairwell, it wasn’t fully closed. The guard, he's coming-”

His boots thudded louder on each step, each one more ominous than the last.

“Fuck.” You hissed. “He’s right above-”

The sound of the machinery room doors unlocking and banging open bounded through the blackness of the ether.

Henry’s hand flew over your mouth, muffling it before it could betray a single sound. Your heart lurched directly into your throat, yanking you out of the void and back into the machinery room.

Your hand shot up to his wrist and viced around it as he walked you back silently into the darkest corner of the undercroft. Your back thudded against the cold metal edge of a workbench along the wall, his hand still tight over your mouth.

You felt the warm slip of blood from your nose trail over the peaks and troughs of Henry’s knuckles.

“Don’t make a sound.” He whispered, almost silently, his eyes wide and intense.

It was almost pitch black, pressed this far back into the deepest corner. The only light was a dim hue of blue that diffused over the dark concrete before it could reach you both.

You tried to speak softly under his hand, but he pushed it harder against your mouth, making your lips part, making your teeth graze against his palm.

“Quiet.” His voice was as sharp as it was soft, a ribbon of silk with a knife-edge.

The authority in his voice now, even when it was the ghost of a whisper, made something primal twist deep within you.

The guard’s boots clanged across the metal platform and came to a halt for a moment. Your eyes cut up, locking onto the underside of the platform. Henry's followed, his hand still pressed hard into your mouth, his skin oddly cool.

“Anyone down here?” The guard called out.

Every part of you hoped he would retreat, but he didn't.

Your eyes squeezed shut as he descended the stairs, each step a warning on the metal. He flicked his torch around the room as he turned at the bottom of the stairs and began pacing. He moved between the machinery slowly, spilling a bright flare of yellow light across the concrete.

Henry’s hand stayed clamped over your mouth, his breath steady against your cheek as his head followed the silhouette of the guard. You felt the air around him tighten, as if the darkness itself was bracing.

“Hello?” the guard called out, voice echoing off the steel. “Maintenance crew?”

Henry didn’t move. You barely breathed. Both of you were exceptionally alert, nerves firing in the dark, ears fixed on every step.

The guard walked deeper into the room, scanning the shadows. His boots scraped across the concrete, slow and cautious. He passed the first row of generators, then the second, then the water reservoirs.

The yellow light of his torch dipped and flared, throwing shadows into odd, broken shapes that diffused into the tight space of the undercroft.

Eventually, his steps came back towards the metal stairs. His radio beeped.

“Come in, Harris.”

“Copy,” the receiver spoke, voice crackling with soft static, “anything?”

“Secure, probably just a lock malfunction. Typical.” The guard said, huffing with frustration.

“Great, meet you in Wing B in fifteen, over.”

“Copy that, over and out.” The radio shut off with a click. His steps got closer, one boot clanging onto the bottom step.

Torchlight dipped under the undercroft for no more than a second. Your eyes darted down as the warm ribbon hit the edge of Henry's shoe.

Henry drew in a sharp, tiny breath.

For a heavy, hung second, there was silence. Only the hammering of your heart, loud against your chest, and the thump of Henry's pulse against your mouth.

The footsteps stopped.

Then, they approached, two thuds across concrete, breaching the darkness of the undercroft. Henry’s fingers tightened around your jaw. His eyes narrowed into two cerulean slivers.

The guard took another step. His voice came low and commanding.

“Who's there?”

Henry moved.

Not quick, or frantic. It was controlled, fluid. He stepped out of the shadows like a creature waking from sleep, his hand falling from your mouth as he placed himself between you and the guard.

The guard jerked back, startled as his torchlight flared over Henry's face. Even he could see it, the subtle change in his features, the threat his body was responding to before his mind could make sense of it.

“What the, Pete-”

Henry didn’t let him finish. His hand flew outwards, long pale fingers contorted like carved marble.

The space bent at Henry's command, snapping into a sudden crushing pressure that made the guard stagger backwards. He froze, his body locking as if the air itself had turned solid around him. His torch dropped to the concrete, the glass lens smashing on impact.

Slowly, with terrifying grace, Henry raised his hand higher, twisting it in the air.

The man's boots left the floor, rising as easily as if he were nothing more than a feather. His legs kicked helplessly as Henry held him aloft in the darkness, his words choked in his throat as the force squeezed around his windpipe. Shock was etched deep into every line on his face.

He tried to speak, but nothing other than a guttural, panicked sound escaped him as Henry pressed harder.

“You shouldn’t have come down here,” Henry said softly.

The guard's eyes were bloodshot from the pressure, the vessels broken, his pupils blown black with terror.

Henry stepped closer to his prey, eyes bright and unblinking. He tilted his head, studying him with a cold, clinical curiosity.

His voice was almost gentle. “You should have kept climbing.”

The guard spluttered again, saliva spilling as his face turned scarlet, slowly suffocating in Henry's grip. His arms splayed outwards like featherless, trembling wings, obeying the smallest shift in Henry's fingers.

“But you didn't,” Henry said, stepping closer, his voice dropping into a dark hiss. “You were a loyal dog. Thorough. Checking every corner. And now... you will find out what loyalty to such a place costs.”

The force that left Henry was enough to send tremors through your every vertebra. The room bent, the lights pulsed and flickered violently. You watched his pale fingers twist, tensing with power.

Henry's frame shook as the force lurched through him.

One by one, the man's limbs contorted.

His bones broke like twigs, each releasing a sickening crunch, the white shards of bone ripping through the fabric of his uniform as they snapped. Finally, his jaw broke, following his other bones with a loud crack. It hung open, crooked and warped. Blood dripped from his mouth as he choked, wet guttural sounds that gurgled in his throat.

With a final, decisive twist of Henry's hand, the guard's body went limp. It collapsed to the floor with a heavy, lifeless thud.

The room fell silent save for your heavy breaths pulling through your chest, and the steady whirring of the machinery, oblivious to the violence.

Henry didn’t look away from the twisted, crumpled man. His chest rose and fell once, slow and controlled, as he analyzed every inch of the body in silence.

You stepped forward, legs trembling, trying to make sense of what you’d witnessed. The sheer magnitude of his power, the way he had exerted so little effort with such graceful, horrifying control. The way the air had bent around him like it recognized him, like it feared him. I lit you up in a way you didn't have words for.

Henry finally turned toward you, and the sight of him made your lungs seize. His face was still, carved in shadow and midnight blue. His eyes were dangerously alive.

You'd seen Henry angry, hurt. You'd seen him broken, soft. But this, this was Henry unbound.

Pure, lethal, uncaged.

Your throat tightened as your hand reached for him, fingers brushing over the side of his shirt. “Henry...”

He didn’t speak, and didn’t need to. The air around him spoke for him, a low, pulsing thrum that vibrated against your skin, against your ribs, against the marrow of your bones.

Your heart pounded so aggressively it hurt.

Henry stepped closer, slowly, his silhouette cutting through the darkness. You felt it in your blood. A primal, dangerous recognition, a blinding magnetic pull towards him.

His eyes flicked over your face, reading every tremor, every breath. His voice came low and terrifyingly beautiful.

“Does it frighten you?”

The realization shot through you like a livewire. You weren’t afraid. You weren’t sorry.

You were exhilarated.

“No.”

“You're shaking.” He said, almost a whisper.

“It makes me feel…”

Your breath caught behind your teeth as Henry stepped into you, his fingers slipping under your jaw like it belonged to him. His cool touch stole the words from your throat as he loomed over you.

“Finish your sentence.”

It took a moment for your heart to stabilize as he let his hand drag down your jaw to your neck.

“Alive.”

Even in the dark, you could feel Henry’s eyes piercing into yours like a sharpened javelin.

“You... you are so much more than I ever imagined.” You continued, your voice thick with awe.

“What did you imagine?” Henry asked, his voice slick.

“Something broken.”

Henry tilted his head curiously, fingertip sliding over your pulse point. “Aren't I?”

You drew in a deep breath, your lungs inhaling him and the scent of copper that lingered in the air. You'd never felt more awake, more alive.

“Not anymore.”

Henry's lips slid up into a wicked point.

As you looked at him, hellishly beautiful, your every vein pulsed with the promise of revenge. You imagined Brenner in Henry's grip, twisting and cracking and suffocating until he was nothing more than a warped corpse.

“I want to watch,” you seethed in the dark. “I want to watch you break him just like that, limb by limb.”

Henry’s eyes darkened. Something twisted inside him at your rage, your fury.

“I want to watch as you rip him apart. I want to hear him scream. I want to watch you destroy him.”

Then, in the blink of an eye, in a blinding flash that pulled a shuddering gasp from your mouth, Henry’s teeth were in your neck. He bit down like he was trying to rip a hole and crawl inside you.

“And you will.” He growled into your skin. “You will watch all of it.”

He slid his arm around your waist and slammed himself into you as he devoured your neck like a man starved. His mouth was wrecked, urgent as he dragged it up your jaw, biting against the bone, crushed over your mouth, sliding his tongue through your lips to taste the hate that hid beyond them.

He walked you back into the metal workbench with terrifying control. You could feel the hard, long line of his cock shoved into your groin, straining against his pants.

“Now I am free, I can feel everything.” He growled. “I can feel every part of you aching. Screaming to me. Your fury, your darkness... your desire.”

Your hands fisted in his hair, dragged down his scalp, left angry red tracks across the back of his neck as he laid into your throat. He bit and sucked a wet trail over your skin, each kiss more brutal than the last.

“Henry…” you begged, slick already surging for him.

“Quiet.” He hissed, one of his hands flying up to capture your mouth, his other tugging at the waistband of your pants.

He shoved them down your thighs and plunged his hand into your soaked knickers.

Your chest arched back as his fingers slid through your slick cunt in one long draw, parting you. He circled them hard at your clit, drawing a moan into the palm of his hand as he held you there, his entire weight pressing you into the bench, his swollen need shoved into your thigh.

“Did you think about this when I killed him?” Henry sneered, teasing his fingertips at your entrance. “Did you think about me inside of you?”

You nodded into his grip, your eyes rolling back, struggling to stay open as the knot of primal desire tightened in your core.

You whined like an animal as he drove his fingers inside you in a single, deep push.

“You are wretched,” he growled, curling his fingers against your walls, “wretched and soaking... and mine.”

His fingers worked ruthlessly, pumping and curling as you writhed against his tall frame, spilling silenced moans into his vice of a hand. The coldness of them fucking into your heat was a sensation almost overwhelming.

The darkness was filled with a feral symphony, the wet, obscene sounds of your cunt, your stifled gasps, Henry's satisfied growls rumbling low in his chest as he edged you.

His eyes were dangerous, piercing into yours as he worked you, deep and unrelenting. The pad of his thumb returned to your clit, spinning rough circles over the swollen peak as you bucked into his hand.

“Henry, I'm-” you whimpered, your voice muffled behind his palm.

You gripped his hair, forcing his head back. His neck arched, a ragged groan pulling from his throat.

Then, his eyes pierced into yours, a raw and unfiltered instruction that your body obeyed like something held hostage.

You came onto his fingers, clenching around them as the scorch of release snapped through your every nerve. Henry groaned, shoving his clothed cock against you as you shuddered.

His hand relaxed on your mouth, but still lingered. Two of his fingers brushed over your parted lips and then pushed through them, into your heated mouth. He made another quiet, contented sound as you rolled them over his fingers, swirled your tongue around his fingertips.

“Are you going to be quiet for me?” He asked, his voice like gravel wrapped in silk.

You nodded, pursing your lips over his fingers as he pulled them from your mouth. He grunted quietly, approvingly, before grappling with his trousers. The slide of the metallic zipper was harsh in the quietly humming air of the machinery room.

You could feel the heat of him, so close, so carnal, dissipating over your exposed flesh.

In a single fluid motion he spun you, one hand gripping your waist with bruising force, the other pinning your body down over the cold metal bench.

Your breath hitched in your lungs as his hand slid down your spine, his fingers rough and urgent as they descended and settled over the slick mess between your legs. He slipped the head of his swollen cock through you, kicking your legs apart with his foot.

“Mine,” he repeated, possessive and primal.

He pushed into you in a deep thrust, his thickness filling you completely, stretching you, drawing a sharp gasp from your open mouth. He growled, setting a relentless rhythm as he pushed his desire into you in long, forceful thrusts.

His grip on you tightened as he rutted faster.

The soft tenderness of the Henry who'd made love to you before was completely gone. He was transformed, terrifyingly in control, dominating you as if his body was made for it. As if it had been lying in wait, a predator waiting to claim his prey.

It was drowning. The devilish pleasure, the way his body moved against yours, the shocks of pure ecstasy that he was laying into you. You cried out his name against the metal, unable to cage your voice.

“I said quiet.” He hissed as he wound his hand over your mouth again, pulling your head back into a painful arch.

His other hand was flat on the crest of your ass, pushing your belly down into the bench as he fucked into you, each stroke more devastating than the last.

The desire inside you was coiling, a tight scorching knot as Henry turned feral at your back.

“This is what you really wanted, isn’t it?” He leaned down over you as he thrust faster, his voice falling into a hiss. “All those times I was with you… This is what you really craved. To be owned by me, broken by me, have me so deep inside of you you can taste me. Isn’t it?” He growled, slamming his cock deeper.

“Yes…” you whimpered into his palm, still tight against your mouth. “Henry, please-”

You were a wrecked, muzzled pup against his ruthless lust, bucking and writhing, your body completely owned, possessed by the demon of his desire.

“Show me,” he commanded in a snarl. “Show me how you craved me like this.”

His words, the carnal reverb of his voice in your ears, the wet, primal sounds of his body ruining yours against the metal sent you thrashing over the edge. You came like a vice on his cock, clenching and pulsing around him in intense waves.

Low curses tumbled from his mouth as his hips rutted hard against your ass, the slapping of his body on yours loud and animalistic, his shadow flickering wildly across the concrete and metal.

Your undoing spelled his own. With a broken growl, he buried himself to the hilt, spilling his cum deep inside of you with a violent shudder, the force of his fingers bruising at your hip.

The lights in the machinery room surged with a piercing hiss, his power surging rogue with his release, the bulbs threatening to shatter.

Henry collapsed forward onto your back, his chest heaving, his mouth sucking the back of your neck as he whined. His fingers caressed down over your thigh with a touch so reverent it hardly seemed the same hand that had splintered the body of the guard into a lifeless corpse only moments prior.

As the lights faded back down to their silent midnight blue you turned into him, catching the flares and shadows they left across his face. His eyes were closed, still lost in the haze of himself as his breathing came down to a ragged slow.

He was leaning into you, hands on either side, palms resting against the cold metal, a balm to his scorched skin.

His cherub blonde waves were ruined, splayed over his forehead, specked with blood from the guard. Your hand moved lazily through them, pushing it back as he breathed against you. You ran your fingers down the crimson painted on his neck. He hissed sharply as you passed over the open wound.

You breathed back into him, pressing your mouth over his. He tasted like burnt embers, like smoke and the earth. Remnant power was thrumming through him, through the air, through the place where your lips met his.

For a moment, you both stood there, mouths claiming, embracing each other at the ribs.

“We need to go,” Henry said finally.

His eyes sharpened into yours as they retreated from desire and slipped back into a controlled, lethal purpose.

It only made you pull him tighter against your chest. Part of you didn't want to let go. It didn't want to climb those stairs. It wanted to stay in the dark with him, caught between the metal and the world.

Henry could sense your apprehension.

“Do you trust me?” Henry said, his hands cradling your face.

“Yes.” You said without a second thought.

“Then from this moment forward, you do what I say,” Henry said, his voice commanding. “Obey me and only me, and I won't leave you behind.”

“If you did, I would die, and it would be freedom nonetheless.” You breathed.

“We will be free. We will be alive. And we will be far away from this hell and all who inhabit it.” Henry growled.

Those were his last words as he ran his hand up the back of your naked neck and crashed his mouth against yours one last time, his lips tinged with the bloody promise of retribution.

He let you fall from his grasp, and you stood still for a moment, steeling yourself, the ghost of his lips still upon yours, the imprint of his desire still wading inside you.

This was it.

Your veins writhed with the shadow of revenge, the scorch of fury, the hot pulse of Henry's blood.

You were a wretched, ugly thing. Broken and twisted and entirely his.

***

The hum of the machinery faded behind you as you and Henry moved through the doorway. The stairwell above was washed in cold fluorescent light, the camera still dead in the corner, oblivious to you.

Henry paused at the top of the stairs, listening. The air around him tightened as he focused.

“They’re moving,” he said. “The guards. The rotation has begun.”

You could feel it too. The subtle shift in the lab’s rhythm, the low vibration of moving footsteps, the crackle of radios growing more distant.

Henry turned to you, eyes bright blue and fevered. “Are you ready?”

You nodded. Henry studied your face for a moment, like he was searching for the tiniest betrayal of your composure. But your heart beat resolutely against your ribs. You were nothing but a suspended meteor, waiting for his signal to crash down upon Brenner.

“Stay close.”

Together, you moved through the doors and down the corridor, your steps falling silent, your breaths shallow. Henry’s power pulsed around him in faint waves, bending the shadows. Every light you passed underneath flickered, reacting to his presence.

Wing A was a long, sterile corridor you'd spent almost every morning of your second life in, performing for Brenner like the broken little circus beast you were. Every step pushed the rage deeper into your bones. Every test, every failure, every thinly veiled threat flashed behind your eyes.

The room was just beyond the corner. Henry slowed.

You felt him listening again. Not with his ears, but with his entire self, as if every atom of him was tuning in to the tiniest shifts in current.

Henry’s voice was barely a breath. “Now.”

The door handle clicked beneath his pale fingers, and he stepped through the doorway of the testing room in a long, controlled stride.

Ten went rigid in his chair, hands folded, eyes wide as he watched Henry enter. He could feel the threat immediately. The warped space, the power pulsing, awakened.

Brenner turned.

He frowned, a split-second of trying to make sense of the intrusion. Henry stood in the threshold like a monolith, his posture controlled, eyes dark and fixed.

“Peter,” he said. “What are you-”

Then, his eyes flicked to Henry's neck. The dark wash of drying blood on his skin, the torn open scar, the bright crimson a shock on his white collar.

Brenner froze, his aged face draining of colour.

“Say my name.” Henry hissed, his voice cutting through the room like a blade.

The lights whirred in the ceiling plaster, reacting to the spike in Henry’s anger. Ten flinched in his chair, shrinking back into it as the room bent around Henry’s silhouette.

Brenner swallowed hard. He rose slowly, abandoning his clipboard, raising his hands as if trying to calm a wild animal.

“Henry, please, listen to me-”

Henry tilted his head. A threat, a promise, an inevitability.

“No.” Henry’s tone was quiet again, terrifyingly calm. “Rats don't make demands.”

Brenner’s eyes darted to you, searching for some semblance of control. “Nineteen, please, step away from him. You don't understand, he’s unstable, he’s-”

Henry’s power surged. The table shuddered, the lights popped violently, bulbs giving out behind the plastic. Ten gasped as the room dimmed, clutching the edge of his seat.

“Who do you think freed him?” You spat. “I know what you did to him, Papa. All of it.”

Brenner’s face lost even more colour.

“You… you don’t understand…” He said, his voice cracked. “You don’t understand what he is, what you’ve unleashed-”

“I understand,” you said smoothly, stepping deeper into the room, your own power flooding your nerves. “That you’re going to pay for what you’ve done. To me, to Henry. To the children. Do you, Papa? Do you understand?”

Henry took another step, his voice dropping into something low and lethal. “You did this. You made me bleed for you. You made me break for you. You buried that little parasite in my neck and thought it would save you.”

Brenner’s breath trembled. “Henry-”

“You thought I was yours, didn't you? Yours to play with, to control. Yours to torture.”

Brenner froze, his eyes fixed to Henry's face, which was morphing into sharp, hellish angles the more his fury built.

Henry’s eyes burned, incandescent and unblinking. “I remember every single scar. Every single agony. Every single scream you tore from me. And now, you’re going to answer for it.”

Brenner moved, a sudden flash. Not toward Henry, or you, or the door. Toward the emergency switch on the wall.

Henry lunged, but Brenner’s hand slammed down on the button.

A shrill alarm began to wail, and you reacted before you could blink, force surging through your limbs.

Your arm snapped outward, the power surging invisible and violent, gripping Brenner mid‑movement. His body lurched and locked in place, suspended in the air like a puppet with its strings pulled taut.

“Papa!” Ten gasped, flinching forward in his seat.

“Quiet.” Henry hissed.

The boy sank back again, clutching the edge of the plastic, his knuckles white.

Henry gripped the alarm with a surge of power, cutting it off mid‑screech, the circuitry frying under the force.

“This man isn’t your Papa, Ten. He’s a parasite… a disease. A man so unremarkable he had to make you just to feel special.” Henry hissed. “But he isn’t special. He’s nothing more than a coward. A jailer… keeping you locked up in this hell, making you perform like a beast.”

Ten shook his head, his eyes welling with tears. “No, Mister Pete- Henry… please… please don’t hurt him.” He pleaded, his voice tiny.

His innocent, childish pleading made your stomach twist. For a moment, you almost released Brenner from your grasp, unable to tear your eyes away from Ten's tiny, tear stained face.

Then, Henry spoke again, pulling your focus back.

“Oh, I’m not going to hurt him now,” Henry said softly, tilting his head at the child. “I’m going to teach him first. And you… you will never be controlled by him or anyone ever again.”

It sounded like the promise of hope, but it sank inside of you like a dreadful anchor, something dark and terrible wrapping around his words.

Brenner choked out a breath, his eyes wide, limbs trembling against your hold. His face was contorted with terror, shock, the crumbling of his control. A sick, dark wash of satisfaction pulled through you as his mind tried to fathom it.

Henry turned toward you slowly.

“Hold him.” He murmured, his eyes dragging over Brenner’s bound frame.

You tightened your grip, arm trembling, fingers drawing inwards. Brenner’s breath hitched in a ragged cough, his hands clawing out uselessly at the air.

Henry stepped closer, his voice dropping into a razor‑thin whisper. “Haven't you realized yet? There is no escape. Not for you.”

Brenner’s voice cracked. “Nineteen-let go-” He choked.

Henry’s face snapped toward him. “Don’t speak.”

The pressure around Brenner tightened with a flick of Henry's head. His knees bent in mid‑air, his breath coming in shallow, panicked bursts.

Henry’s eyes returned to Ten, who sat frozen, trembling.

“Come,” He commanded the small, pale boy.

Ten obeyed instantly, rising from his chair with shaking legs, eyes fixed on Brenner’s suspended form and your intense grip.

“The rainbow room,” Henry said, every octave controlled as he faced you again. “Bring him.”

Henry pushed through the door, the air bending around him.

You followed, dragging Brenner backwards, his body trying to writhe, his feet hanging limp. The toes of his polished shoes scraped helplessly across the tile as he spluttered in your grasp. Ten followed behind you like a terrified shadow, his footsteps shaking.

The corridor stretched long and yellowed white, humming with fluorescent light. The rainbow room doors stood closed at the far end, the clean, clinical white a sickening contrast to the violence coiling through the air.

You were halfway down the hall when the sound hit you.

Running. Heavy boots, slamming fast over the tiles only corridors away, heading straight for you. Then, the alarm shrieked to life again, a shrill wail accompanied by a blaring, repetitive siren.

Henry stopped mid‑stride, his face snapping around toward the sound, eyes narrowing, power rippling outward in a low, dangerous pulse.

The air shifted with a sudden spike of urgency as the crackle of radios grew louder, as the slamming of boots grew closer. You heard doors fly open, banging off the walls.

Brenner tried to shout, but only managed a choked half-yell before you surged more force from yourself, suffocating his voice in his throat. You tightened your grip, his suspended body jerking.

Henry turned to you, voice razor sharp, expression rigid and controlled. “Stay here.”

Your stomach flipped violently with a wash of panic at his words.

Stay here? Stay behind, without him?

It felt like being left to the wolves.

“What? Henry-” you hissed.

He stepped closer to you, his face carved into lethal purpose. “Do what I say. Kill anyone who comes through this corridor.”

Your pulse hammered. “Without you?”

Henry’s eyes burned, analyzing your face. Then, his gaze softened, flickered with a flash of deliberate warmth you'd come to know all too well, the kind that his reawakening had smothered in him.

“Trust me.”

A sharp wire twisted in your gut. The sudden honey in his voice, the softness not quite covering the darkness lurking in his features. The command hidden under the plea.

But you didn't have time to challenge him.

A guard flew around the corner, boots slamming, a shock rod alive and sparking in his hand.

“Stay where you are!” He commanded, voice booming off the walls.

You froze, still holding Brenner aloft. Henry moved instantly.

He ripped Brenner from your hold with a single, effortless motion, the force pulling over your own like a powerful magnet.

Brenner choked as Henry’s power wrapped around him like crushing, invisible chains. Ten stumbled backwards, nearly falling as the force rippled through the space around him. Henry caught him by the shoulder and pushed him toward the rainbow room.

“Inside,” Henry commanded.

Ten obeyed with a whimper.

Henry dragged Brenner with him, his body twitching as he pulled through the air. He shoved open the doors and threw Brenner inside with a flick of his hand, as if he weighed nothing.

Several loud screams and the clattering of items dropped by frightened hands came from behind the doors as Brenner careened to the floor, landing with a crash, his thin limbs sprawled on the sickeningly bright rainbow.

Henry turned back to you. His voice was a low, lethal hiss. “Hold the corridor.”

You nodded once. His eyes locked onto yours, a single, raw moment of shared purpose. Then, he slammed the rainbow room doors shut behind him.

You drew in a deep, steadying breath, but your lungs shook. You were alone in the corridor.

No Henry. No escape.

“Hands where I can see them, subject Nineteen!” The guard yelled again, his spit flying. “Now!”

He careened towards you, taser rod hot in his hand, his other reaching down to clutch the gun in its holster. As he got closer, you recognized him.

A grim, terrible image flashed behind your eyes. His face looming above you, his mouth curved into a sick smirk, his black boot slamming down onto your fragile fingers.

Your blood pulsed, power coiling through your limbs like a living thing, bolstered by Henry's proximity or the rage or the desperation or some other force you couldn't pinpoint.

It happened faster than you could register it.

Your power surged, lighting you up nerve by nerve as it snapped outward, a shapeless, formless jolt of pure energy that drew a shriek from your lungs.

The guard’s body violently jerked and stuttered mid-stride. You drew him up into the air, suspending him for only a moment before snapping your fingers inward.

The sound was a sickening, ear-splitting crunch. You felt each one of his ribs one by one, cracking, splintering, piercing into his organs. He choked, blood spluttering from his mouth in thick crimson droplets, painting the floor beneath him.

You dropped him and watched, your eyes dark with fury, as his body collapsed to the floor in a heavy thud. A wet, guttural noise spilt from him as his body twitched and then turned limp.

You didn't have time to slow your ragged breathing. More furious slamming of boots filled the corridors as two more guards banged through the doors and flew around the corner.

You didn’t hesitate.

With another shrill scream, your power surged again, sharp and controlled from both hands, gripping the two of them before they could even raise their weapons.

This time, you slammed them both up into the ceiling with such a violent force that the plaster rained loose onto the tile. You felt your power wrap around their throats like steel wire, and you pulled, tighter and tighter until their splutters and gasps choked down into dead silence. They both fell to the floor, motionless.

Again and again, the corridor filled with the echo of boots, the crackle of radios, the booming shouts. All backed by the continuous wailing of the alarm.

You were exhausted, but you had no choice. You had to keep fighting. You had to do what he said. You had to get out, had to gut this hell from the inside out.

At a certain point, you felt like you were outside of yourself. Hearing your own shrieks echo through your ears, feeling your blood pulse, seeing your hands snap outward, fingers splayed.

With each life you erased, more of you broke.

With each bone you splintered, with each throat you closed, more of your mind screamed for Henry.

The bodies piled up, limp and lifeless in the corridor, the white painted red. The lights in the ceilings had blown out and rained metal and glass into the crimson streaks, the bulbs sparking and dangling uselessly. Doors had flown open, broken off their hinges in response to you.

Now, you were on your knees, palms in the blood and ruins.

Dry sobs wracked through you from sheer exhaustion as you collapsed forward onto shaking arms. Blood was spilling fast from both of your nostrils, painting your knuckles red as it fell. Your head pounded, the edges of your mind throbbing, your vision blurring.

“Henry...” you croaked through your panting.

For a while, the only sound in the ruined corridor was the alarm, the live buzzing of exposed wires, and your heavy gasping.

Then, you heard the screams.

Not yours, not more guards. Not Brenner's or Henry's.

The children.

Your heart lurched violently into your throat as another ripped through your ears.

You staggered to your feet, slipping on blood, catching yourself on the wall. Red streaked across it from your palms as your hands slid against the tile, your legs shaking with every step.

The rainbow room door was sealed shut, the white spattered with streaks of blood and dust from the debris of your hallway massacre.

Another scream, sharp and terrified, echoed into the corridor like a nightmare.

“Henry!” you shouted, voice cracking.

No answer. You slammed your shoulder into the door, but it didn’t budge.

You pressed your palms hard to the metal, pulling power into your limbs, into your bones, from the exhausted edges of your mind. The door groaned under your hands, resisting.

Inside, another shrill scream peaked, followed by a muffled thud.

Then, it was silent. A silence so complete it felt like the world behind the doors had been erased entirely.

You could feel it seeping through the thin line at the floor. An untamed, unbridled power, pure static leaking from every gap.

Henry.

Your breath hitched. “Henry, open the door! Henry!”

You slammed your fists into the door, pushing harder, power surging through you in a violent burst. The hinges groaned. Then, the lock broke apart with a metallic crack. The doors gave way, flying inward with a shriek.

You stumbled into the rainbow room, falling to your knees again, your legs boneless.

It felt like being thrown into a hurricane of pure electricity. The very air was alive, tilted, every atom charged. The smell burned through your nostrils, an overwhelming, acrid copper hanging in the room like an inescapable mist.

Heavy, urgent breaths wracked through you. You raised your head, and every part of you froze.

The room was devastated.

The white walls were blood-soaked, slips of dark red splattered over the rainbows, the floor slick with it.

Henry stood near the two-way mirror at the back of the room, seething.

His power spiralled around him in jagged, uncontrolled waves, bending the air, warping the light, making the entire room pulse with a sick, electric heartbeat. His breath came in sharp, uneven bursts. His hands were at his sides, fingers twitching rapidly.

Then, you saw them. The bodies.

The children. Tiny, crumpled forms. Twisted, bloodied. Limbs broken and contorted into warped angles. Their jaws were bent, held wide open in silent eternal screams, their eye sockets nothing but empty voids, black and crimson.

Your voice came out cracked with dread. “Fuck, no no no... Henry, what have you done...”

He turned only his head, slow and controlled. His cheeks looked hollower, his jaw sharper, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere between the room and the shadow of his mind.

You stumbled to your feet and stepped closer to him, your peripheral vision invaded by the wrecked shapes of the small bodies.

“Henry,” you said again, quieter. “The children...”

He turned fully then. His eyes were fevered, unhinged, the blue burned into something almost nuclear. His face was carved into a mask of rage and revelation, every line sharpened into something feral.

The crisp white of his uniform was splattered with violent shocks of blood.

Brenner was on his knees in the corner. His face was twisted in terror, his hands shaking violently, his breath coming in shallow, panicked gasps. He looked small, pathetic.

A man stripped of every illusion of control.

You realized then the true depths of Henry's vengeance. He hadn't killed him, not yet. He hadn't afforded him that mercy.

He'd forced him to his knees first. Forced him to watch as he destroyed his kingdom, his weapons, his control, one prisoner at a time.

A tear breached your fragile eyelashes, slipping down your cheek to mix with the blood that streaked your face. Henry stepped toward you, terrifyingly slow, and dragged a cold finger up under your chin.

“Henry...” You pleaded, tears falling. “I never wanted you to hurt them. Only him, only Papa...”

“Why do you cry for them?” His voice was low, almost gentle. He tilted his head, studying you with a strange, almost tender curiosity.

“They should have been free, should have been-” you choked out.

“Don't you see? They are free. They are no longer his prisoners.” Henry said softly. “You think you should mourn them, but you shouldn't. They're not gone, Nineteen. They're still with me. In here.”

His long, pale finger tapped over his temple as his eyes pierced into yours.

Henry looked around the room at the bodies, the destruction, the aftermath, cataloguing every inch of it.

“Are you scared?” He asked, looming over your shaking frame. “I was scared once, too. But now, I am liberated. As are they, as are you. And he-”

Henry slipped his finger up your jaw and then turned, pacing over the room to Brenner, trembling in the corner. “He will pay for all of it.”

You swallowed hard, your pulse hammering so violently it hurt.

Henry stood over Brenner like a silhouette carved out of darkness, barely human in the way power warped around him. The rainbow room still pulsed with the aftermath, crackling with static that ran up your spine.

Brenner raised his head, his glassy eyes fixed on Henry with a terror that stripped him of every ounce of controlled authority he’d ever wielded.

Henry took one slow step toward him.

Brenner scrambled backwards on his knees, palms slipping on the tile.

“Henry-Henry, listen to me, please-”

Henry's power surged, a violent pulse that made the lights flicker and crackle dangerously. The walls groaned under the pressure. Brenner flinched, covering his head with shaking hands.

“The rat is caught.” Henry whispered.

He turned toward you slowly, too slowly, as if every movement was being dragged through the weight of his own power. His eyes locked onto yours, intense and terrifying.

“This is what he made,” he said. “This is what he wanted. A weapon.”

Henry turned back to face you, his voice cold.

“He made you one, too. He took you. He deceived you. Made you believe you could trust him. Made you into a beast for him to tame. He hurt you, didn't he? He made you bleed. He made you feel nothing but pain and agony, all while trying to erase you, trying to stop you from ever knowing the truth.”

His voice cracked. “He ruined you with his hands and punished you when you broke.”

You knew he was talking about himself just as much as he was talking about you.

A furious heat rose within you, blurring everything around in the room except Henry and Brenner and the horrifying truth of it. Every memory rushed into you at once.

Blinding lights. Rubber masks. Agony in your head. Shards of things you were driven into insanity trying to make sense of. Shadows ripping at the corner of your mind. The drugging, the restraints, the pain burning through your limbs. Every single honeyed threat, every single perfect lie. Bruises around your jaw. Henry lit up, tortured. Brenner's sick smile as he made you watch. The violent shocks, laid into your temples. The collar, the cans, the broken bones.

The serpent slithering through it all.

Your breath broke. Henry felt it. He turned fully toward Brenner, decisively.

“Now it is you who will break. For me.”

Brenner’s voice cracked with desperation as his eyes darted to you, begging for mercy, for solace, for anything.

“Nineteen, please, don’t - don’t let him-”

Henry didn’t let him finish.

His power surged forth, more violent than anything that had come before it. He was explosive, inevitable, burning with every single moment of agony that had been brought down upon him under the reign of Brenner.

The entire room warped as Henry gripped him with a blinding force, his every nerve tuned entirely to the depths of his vengeance. Brenner's thin frame rose into the air, his suit crumpled, his limbs jerking, his terror-stricken expression splattered with blood.

He tried to scream, but Henry's other hand splayed forth, power wrapping around Brenner's throat and suffocating him. He clawed helplessly at his neck.

Henry held him aloft in silence, seething, his body trembling with fury. His eyes were burning, nuclear ice-blue, studying the face of his captor one last time.

“Goodbye, Papa.” He snarled.

“Please-” Brenner choked, guttural and desperate.

With blinding speed, Henry threw him into the wall. He was slammed against it, arms splayed, his entire body violently seizing as his face pooled scarlet.

Henry was gone, his eyes rolled back into his head, his own body twitching with power, his face warped into something ancient and demonic.

You felt every atom of it. Henry's unbridled rage, his brokenness, his pain, his desperation. All of it twisted into a lethal force, ripping into Brenner's every nerve.

A final cascade of power flew from Henry's hands, cracking the floor beneath his feet.

Brenner's blood burst forth, streaming in rivers from every part of him. His eyes, his mouth, his ears, painting his white hair. It ran down his neck, through every aged line on his face, a brutal haemorrhage that splattered onto the tile. His body convulsed against the wall, every bone shattering at Henry's command, every vein ripping apart.

Then, he dropped.

His body hit the floor with a brutal crack. He didn't twitch. He didn't choke.

He was destroyed.

Henry seethed where he stood, his nose dripping with blood, his body shaking as he let his arms drop to his side. His breaths were slow, ragged, his eyes not leaving the ruined shell of Brenner.

Your own breathing was broken. The weight of what you'd done, the weight of what you'd witnessed. The blood, the bones, the lives you'd taken, the power that had rushed through your body in unstoppable waves.

And the relief.

You fell to the floor, palms slamming into the debris. Sobs wracked through you, blood and saltwater streaking your face as you shuddered against the tile.

The serpent was dead. The chains were severed.

You thought it was over.

But as Henry turned toward you, his steps terrifyingly graceful, his beauty twisted into something demonic, you saw it.

One God had fallen. Another had taken his place.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

☣︎ Comment if you'd like to be added to the tag list for this series! ☣︎

[HENRY]

The machinery room felt like a concrete lung.

As if every pipe, every generator, every steel mechanism was drawing in a frigid breath and holding it before the air could turn to ash.

Above, the lab breathed as normal. Children pushed their blocks. Doctors plunged their needles. Nurses distributed medications. Sylvia tapped her heel and thought of Peter as she fiddled with the coffee machine. Brenner sat in front of 010, clipboard in hand, shoulders squared away in his blazer like they were imitating the very corners of the testing room.

Fluorescents whirred, faucets dripped, pens scratched across paper, chair wheels squeaked over linoleum.

Below, Henry felt all of it. Every single shift in the air, every single breath that tumbled between the walls.

Power, instinct, the simmering of fury. All shooting through his marrow, filling every single hollowed cell. He felt his nerves, every one aflame, every one a separate screaming wire of pure power.

He’d known power. He’d held it, and it had held him. But to be awakened from underneath the suffocation, to be unearthed from the tomb of himself was a relief so extraordinary he could hardly fathom it.

Shadows no longer lurked like a thin mist in the deepest depths of himself. They were alive, ancient tendrils that writhed and snaked through his every synapse at once.

He wasn’t drowned by it. He was ascended, burning in the flame of it as if circling the sun.

You were no longer the knife against his throat. You were the red-hot forge, remaking him.

You were the mouth that had drawn out the poison and laid it back on his tongue as venom.

The kind that he tasted before a kill.

***

[019]

Henry stood in the center of the undercroft, his shadow carved black against the concrete, utterly still.

The power radiating off of him warped through the space around him, thrumming. It ran through you, sharp and pulsing, an additional heartbeat that drummed through each bone as it went.

Your blood felt alive, responding to his presence.

“How long?” You spoke into the darkness.

Henry turned to you. His face was subtly morphed, power written on every inch. The bones were somehow sharper, more angular. His seraphine features had slipped into something demonically beautiful, like an angel fallen into the harshness of hell.

He looked at his watch.

“Twenty minutes until guard change.”

Even his voice was reforged. Elevated in the way smashed ceramic is rebound with gold, making it even more alluring.

“Where is he?” He spoke, low and smooth. “Find him.”

He was controlled, commanding.

“You could, Henry.”

He didn’t look at you as if he was surprised to know that. He looked at you with a purposeful control, as if the sheer act of commanding you was far more satisfying than slipping into the void himself.

His eyes were dark and unblinking. “Do it.”

You obeyed before you decided to, taking a deep breath and closing your eyes as you pulled yourself inward. You slipped into the ether with almost no effort, the presence of his power so close to yours acting as a strengthening force.

Water rippled under your steps in the blackness as you paced, Brenner’s image vivid in your mind. He materialized ahead of you within seconds, the back of his white-grey quaffed hair, the flat plain of his tailored blazer lining his long back as he sat in his chair.

Your voice echoed around you. “He is testing Ten. The room with the table that has a cracked veneer.”

“I know the one.” Henry echoed around you. “And the guards?”

A slice of the corridor materialized in front of you, stretching long and blue-white.

“One in the east corridor.” You murmured, following the thudding black boots along the tile.

“The other?” Henry echoed.

“I can’t… I can’t see him.”

You focused harder as you paced the blackness, in between dimensions, searching through the dark.

Then, you saw him. Standing oddly still at the door to the stairwell that led to the machinery room. He was staring, frowning. The door was open a fraction, caught on grit or some other betraying thing.

His hand tightened around his radio as he spoke into it, his voice pulling through the ether.

“Come in, Harris.”

A smaller voice crackled through the radio receiver. “Here.”

The guard's hand reached out to push the door open an inch further. His boot scraped over the line where the tile turned to concrete.

“We got maintenance in the machinery room as well?”

The crackling voice came back through the receiver. “Not to my knowledge. Everything alright over there?”

“Door's open is all. Unlocked.”

“Need me to join you?”

“All good, probably nothing. I'll check it out.”

“Copy that.”

A small choked sound fell out of you as you watched his palm push the door open fully. His boots scuffed across the concrete landing of the stairwell. He glanced up at the dead camera for a moment and then descended, his hand still around his radio receiver.

“What is it?” Henry said, his voice echoing in your ears.

“The door to the stairwell, it wasn’t fully closed. The guard, he's coming-”

His boots thudded louder on each step, each one more ominous than the last.

“Fuck.” You hissed. “He’s right above-”

The sound of the machinery room doors unlocking and banging open bounded through the blackness of the ether.

Henry’s hand flew over your mouth, muffling it before it could betray a single sound. Your heart lurched directly into your throat, yanking you out of the void and back into the machinery room.

Your hand shot up to his wrist and viced around it as he walked you back silently into the darkest corner of the undercroft. Your back thudded against the cold metal edge of a workbench along the wall, his hand still tight over your mouth.

You felt the warm slip of blood from your nose trail over the peaks and troughs of Henry’s knuckles.

“Don’t make a sound.” He whispered, almost silently, his eyes wide and intense.

It was almost pitch black, pressed this far back into the deepest corner. The only light was a dim hue of blue that diffused over the dark concrete before it could reach you both.

You tried to speak softly under his hand, but he pushed it harder against your mouth, making your lips part, making your teeth graze against his palm.

“Quiet.” His voice was as sharp as it was soft, a ribbon of silk with a knife-edge.

The authority in his voice now, even when it was the ghost of a whisper, made something primal twist deep within you.

The guard’s boots clanged across the metal platform and came to a halt for a moment. Your eyes cut up, locking onto the underside of the platform. Henry's followed, his hand still pressed hard into your mouth, his skin oddly cool.

“Anyone down here?” The guard called out.

Every part of you hoped he would retreat, but he didn't.

Your eyes squeezed shut as he descended the stairs, each step a warning on the metal. He flicked his torch around the room as he turned at the bottom of the stairs and began pacing. He moved between the machinery slowly, spilling a bright flare of yellow light across the concrete.

Henry’s hand stayed clamped over your mouth, his breath steady against your cheek as his head followed the silhouette of the guard. You felt the air around him tighten, as if the darkness itself was bracing.

“Hello?” the guard called out, voice echoing off the steel. “Maintenance crew?”

Henry didn’t move. You barely breathed. Both of you were exceptionally alert, nerves firing in the dark, ears fixed on every step.

The guard walked deeper into the room, scanning the shadows. His boots scraped across the concrete, slow and cautious. He passed the first row of generators, then the second, then the water reservoirs.

The yellow light of his torch dipped and flared, throwing shadows into odd, broken shapes that diffused into the tight space of the undercroft.

Eventually, his steps came back towards the metal stairs. His radio beeped.

“Come in, Harris.”

“Copy,” the receiver spoke, voice crackling with soft static, “anything?”

“Secure, probably just a lock malfunction. Typical.” The guard said, huffing with frustration.

“Great, meet you in Wing B in fifteen, over.”

“Copy that, over and out.” The radio shut off with a click. His steps got closer, one boot clanging onto the bottom step.

Torchlight dipped under the undercroft for no more than a second. Your eyes darted down as the warm ribbon hit the edge of Henry's shoe.

Henry drew in a sharp, tiny breath.

For a heavy, hung second, there was silence. Only the hammering of your heart, loud against your chest, and the thump of Henry's pulse against your mouth.

The footsteps stopped.

Then, they approached, two thuds across concrete, breaching the darkness of the undercroft. Henry’s fingers tightened around your jaw. His eyes narrowed into two cerulean slivers.

The guard took another step. His voice came low and commanding.

“Who's there?”

Henry moved.

Not quick, or frantic. It was controlled, fluid. He stepped out of the shadows like a creature waking from sleep, his hand falling from your mouth as he placed himself between you and the guard.

The guard jerked back, startled as his torchlight flared over Henry's face. Even he could see it, the subtle change in his features, the threat his body was responding to before his mind could make sense of it.

“What the, Pete-”

Henry didn’t let him finish. His hand flew outwards, long pale fingers contorted like carved marble.

The space bent at Henry's command, snapping into a sudden crushing pressure that made the guard stagger backwards. He froze, his body locking as if the air itself had turned solid around him. His torch dropped to the concrete, the glass lens smashing on impact.

Slowly, with terrifying grace, Henry raised his hand higher, twisting it in the air.

The man's boots left the floor, rising as easily as if he were nothing more than a feather. His legs kicked helplessly as Henry held him aloft in the darkness, his words choked in his throat as the force squeezed around his windpipe. Shock was etched deep into every line on his face.

He tried to speak, but nothing other than a guttural, panicked sound escaped him as Henry pressed harder.

“You shouldn’t have come down here,” Henry said softly.

The guard's eyes were bloodshot from the pressure, the vessels broken, his pupils blown black with terror.

Henry stepped closer to his prey, eyes bright and unblinking. He tilted his head, studying him with a cold, clinical curiosity.

His voice was almost gentle. “You should have kept climbing.”

The guard spluttered again, saliva spilling as his face turned scarlet, slowly suffocating in Henry's grip. His arms splayed outwards like featherless, trembling wings, obeying the smallest shift in Henry's fingers.

“But you didn't,” Henry said, stepping closer, his voice dropping into a dark hiss. “You were a loyal dog. Thorough. Checking every corner. And now... you will find out what loyalty to such a place costs.”

The force that left Henry was enough to send tremors through your every vertebra. The room bent, the lights pulsed and flickered violently. You watched his pale fingers twist, tensing with power.

Henry's frame shook as the force lurched through him.

One by one, the man's limbs contorted.

His bones broke like twigs, each releasing a sickening crunch, the white shards of bone ripping through the fabric of his uniform as they snapped. Finally, his jaw broke, following his other bones with a loud crack. It hung open, crooked and warped. Blood dripped from his mouth as he choked, wet guttural sounds that gurgled in his throat.

With a final, decisive twist of Henry's hand, the guard's body went limp. It collapsed to the floor with a heavy, lifeless thud.

The room fell silent save for your heavy breaths pulling through your chest, and the steady whirring of the machinery, oblivious to the violence.

Henry didn’t look away from the twisted, crumpled man. His chest rose and fell once, slow and controlled, as he analyzed every inch of the body in silence.

You stepped forward, legs trembling, trying to make sense of what you’d witnessed. The sheer magnitude of his power, the way he had exerted so little effort with such graceful, horrifying control. The way the air had bent around him like it recognized him, like it feared him. I lit you up in a way you didn't have words for.

Henry finally turned toward you, and the sight of him made your lungs seize. His face was still, carved in shadow and midnight blue. His eyes were dangerously alive.

You'd seen Henry angry, hurt. You'd seen him broken, soft. But this, this was Henry unbound.

Pure, lethal, uncaged.

Your throat tightened as your hand reached for him, fingers brushing over the side of his shirt. “Henry...”

He didn’t speak, and didn’t need to. The air around him spoke for him, a low, pulsing thrum that vibrated against your skin, against your ribs, against the marrow of your bones.

Your heart pounded so aggressively it hurt.

Henry stepped closer, slowly, his silhouette cutting through the darkness. You felt it in your blood. A primal, dangerous recognition, a blinding magnetic pull towards him.

His eyes flicked over your face, reading every tremor, every breath. His voice came low and terrifyingly beautiful.

“Does it frighten you?”

The realization shot through you like a livewire. You weren’t afraid. You weren’t sorry.

You were exhilarated.

“No.”

“You're shaking.” He said, almost a whisper.

“It makes me feel…”

Your breath caught behind your teeth as Henry stepped into you, his fingers slipping under your jaw like it belonged to him. His cool touch stole the words from your throat as he loomed over you.

“Finish your sentence.”

It took a moment for your heart to stabilize as he let his hand drag down your jaw to your neck.

“Alive.”

Even in the dark, you could feel Henry’s eyes piercing into yours like a sharpened javelin.

“You... you are so much more than I ever imagined.” You continued, your voice thick with awe.

“What did you imagine?” Henry asked, his voice slick.

“Something broken.”

Henry tilted his head curiously, fingertip sliding over your pulse point. “Aren't I?”

You drew in a deep breath, your lungs inhaling him and the scent of copper that lingered in the air. You'd never felt more awake, more alive.

“Not anymore.”

Henry's lips slid up into a wicked point.

As you looked at him, hellishly beautiful, your every vein pulsed with the promise of revenge. You imagined Brenner in Henry's grip, twisting and cracking and suffocating until he was nothing more than a warped corpse.

“I want to watch,” you seethed in the dark. “I want to watch you break him just like that, limb by limb.”

Henry’s eyes darkened. Something twisted inside him at your rage, your fury.

“I want to watch as you rip him apart. I want to hear him scream. I want to watch you destroy him.”

Then, in the blink of an eye, in a blinding flash that pulled a shuddering gasp from your mouth, Henry’s teeth were in your neck. He bit down like he was trying to rip a hole and crawl inside you.

“And you will.” He growled into your skin. “You will watch all of it.”

He slid his arm around your waist and slammed himself into you as he devoured your neck like a man starved. His mouth was wrecked, urgent as he dragged it up your jaw, biting against the bone, crushed over your mouth, sliding his tongue through your lips to taste the hate that hid beyond them.

He walked you back into the metal workbench with terrifying control. You could feel the hard, long line of his cock shoved into your groin, straining against his pants.

“Now I am free, I can feel everything.” He growled. “I can feel every part of you aching. Screaming to me. Your fury, your darkness... your desire.”

Your hands fisted in his hair, dragged down his scalp, left angry red tracks across the back of his neck as he laid into your throat. He bit and sucked a wet trail over your skin, each kiss more brutal than the last.

“Henry…” you begged, slick already surging for him.

“Quiet.” He hissed, one of his hands flying up to capture your mouth, his other tugging at the waistband of your pants.

He shoved them down your thighs and plunged his hand into your soaked knickers.

Your chest arched back as his fingers slid through your slick cunt in one long draw, parting you. He circled them hard at your clit, drawing a moan into the palm of his hand as he held you there, his entire weight pressing you into the bench, his swollen need shoved into your thigh.

“Did you think about this when I killed him?” Henry sneered, teasing his fingertips at your entrance. “Did you think about me inside of you?”

You nodded into his grip, your eyes rolling back, struggling to stay open as the knot of primal desire tightened in your core.

You whined like an animal as he drove his fingers inside you in a single, deep push.

“You are wretched,” he growled, curling his fingers against your walls, “wretched and soaking... and mine.”

His fingers worked ruthlessly, pumping and curling as you writhed against his tall frame, spilling silenced moans into his vice of a hand. The coldness of them fucking into your heat was a sensation almost overwhelming.

The darkness was filled with a feral symphony, the wet, obscene sounds of your cunt, your stifled gasps, Henry's satisfied growls rumbling low in his chest as he edged you.

His eyes were dangerous, piercing into yours as he worked you, deep and unrelenting. The pad of his thumb returned to your clit, spinning rough circles over the swollen peak as you bucked into his hand.

“Henry, I'm-” you whimpered, your voice muffled behind his palm.

You gripped his hair, forcing his head back. His neck arched, a ragged groan pulling from his throat.

Then, his eyes pierced into yours, a raw and unfiltered instruction that your body obeyed like something held hostage.

You came onto his fingers, clenching around them as the scorch of release snapped through your every nerve. Henry groaned, shoving his clothed cock against you as you shuddered.

His hand relaxed on your mouth, but still lingered. Two of his fingers brushed over your parted lips and then pushed through them, into your heated mouth. He made another quiet, contented sound as you rolled them over his fingers, swirled your tongue around his fingertips.

“Are you going to be quiet for me?” He asked, his voice like gravel wrapped in silk.

You nodded, pursing your lips over his fingers as he pulled them from your mouth. He grunted quietly, approvingly, before grappling with his trousers. The slide of the metallic zipper was harsh in the quietly humming air of the machinery room.

You could feel the heat of him, so close, so carnal, dissipating over your exposed flesh.

In a single fluid motion he spun you, one hand gripping your waist with bruising force, the other pinning your body down over the cold metal bench.

Your breath hitched in your lungs as his hand slid down your spine, his fingers rough and urgent as they descended and settled over the slick mess between your legs. He slipped the head of his swollen cock through you, kicking your legs apart with his foot.

“Mine,” he repeated, possessive and primal.

He pushed into you in a deep thrust, his thickness filling you completely, stretching you, drawing a sharp gasp from your open mouth. He growled, setting a relentless rhythm as he pushed his desire into you in long, forceful thrusts.

His grip on you tightened as he rutted faster.

The soft tenderness of the Henry who'd made love to you before was completely gone. He was transformed, terrifyingly in control, dominating you as if his body was made for it. As if it had been lying in wait, a predator waiting to claim his prey.

It was drowning. The devilish pleasure, the way his body moved against yours, the shocks of pure ecstasy that he was laying into you. You cried out his name against the metal, unable to cage your voice.

“I said quiet.” He hissed as he wound his hand over your mouth again, pulling your head back into a painful arch.

His other hand was flat on the crest of your ass, pushing your belly down into the bench as he fucked into you, each stroke more devastating than the last.

The desire inside you was coiling, a tight scorching knot as Henry turned feral at your back.

“This is what you really wanted, isn’t it?” He leaned down over you as he thrust faster, his voice falling into a hiss. “All those times I was with you… This is what you really craved. To be owned by me, broken by me, have me so deep inside of you you can taste me. Isn’t it?” He growled, slamming his cock deeper.

“Yes…” you whimpered into his palm, still tight against your mouth. “Henry, please-”

You were a wrecked, muzzled pup against his ruthless lust, bucking and writhing, your body completely owned, possessed by the demon of his desire.

“Show me,” he commanded in a snarl. “Show me how you craved me like this.”

His words, the carnal reverb of his voice in your ears, the wet, primal sounds of his body ruining yours against the metal sent you thrashing over the edge. You came like a vice on his cock, clenching and pulsing around him in intense waves.

Low curses tumbled from his mouth as his hips rutted hard against your ass, the slapping of his body on yours loud and animalistic, his shadow flickering wildly across the concrete and metal.

Your undoing spelled his own. With a broken growl, he buried himself to the hilt, spilling his cum deep inside of you with a violent shudder, the force of his fingers bruising at your hip.

The lights in the machinery room surged with a piercing hiss, his power surging rogue with his release, the bulbs threatening to shatter.

Henry collapsed forward onto your back, his chest heaving, his mouth sucking the back of your neck as he whined. His fingers caressed down over your thigh with a touch so reverent it hardly seemed the same hand that had splintered the body of the guard into a lifeless corpse only moments prior.

As the lights faded back down to their silent midnight blue you turned into him, catching the flares and shadows they left across his face. His eyes were closed, still lost in the haze of himself as his breathing came down to a ragged slow.

He was leaning into you, hands on either side, palms resting against the cold metal, a balm to his scorched skin.

His cherub blonde waves were ruined, splayed over his forehead, specked with blood from the guard. Your hand moved lazily through them, pushing it back as he breathed against you. You ran your fingers down the crimson painted on his neck. He hissed sharply as you passed over the open wound.

You breathed back into him, pressing your mouth over his. He tasted like burnt embers, like smoke and the earth. Remnant power was thrumming through him, through the air, through the place where your lips met his.

For a moment, you both stood there, mouths claiming, embracing each other at the ribs.

“We need to go,” Henry said finally.

His eyes sharpened into yours as they retreated from desire and slipped back into a controlled, lethal purpose.

It only made you pull him tighter against your chest. Part of you didn't want to let go. It didn't want to climb those stairs. It wanted to stay in the dark with him, caught between the metal and the world.

Henry could sense your apprehension.

“Do you trust me?” Henry said, his hands cradling your face.

“Yes.” You said without a second thought.

“Then from this moment forward, you do what I say,” Henry said, his voice commanding. “Obey me and only me, and I won't leave you behind.”

“If you did, I would die, and it would be freedom nonetheless.” You breathed.

“We will be free. We will be alive. And we will be far away from this hell and all who inhabit it.” Henry growled.

Those were his last words as he ran his hand up the back of your naked neck and crashed his mouth against yours one last time, his lips tinged with the bloody promise of retribution.

He let you fall from his grasp, and you stood still for a moment, steeling yourself, the ghost of his lips still upon yours, the imprint of his desire still wading inside you.

This was it.

Your veins writhed with the shadow of revenge, the scorch of fury, the hot pulse of Henry's blood.

You were a wretched, ugly thing. Broken and twisted and entirely his.

***

The hum of the machinery faded behind you as you and Henry moved through the doorway. The stairwell above was washed in cold fluorescent light, the camera still dead in the corner, oblivious to you.

Henry paused at the top of the stairs, listening. The air around him tightened as he focused.

“They’re moving,” he said. “The guards. The rotation has begun.”

You could feel it too. The subtle shift in the lab’s rhythm, the low vibration of moving footsteps, the crackle of radios growing more distant.

Henry turned to you, eyes bright blue and fevered. “Are you ready?”

You nodded. Henry studied your face for a moment, like he was searching for the tiniest betrayal of your composure. But your heart beat resolutely against your ribs. You were nothing but a suspended meteor, waiting for his signal to crash down upon Brenner.

“Stay close.”

Together, you moved through the doors and down the corridor, your steps falling silent, your breaths shallow. Henry’s power pulsed around him in faint waves, bending the shadows. Every light you passed underneath flickered, reacting to his presence.

Wing A was a long, sterile corridor you'd spent almost every morning of your second life in, performing for Brenner like the broken little circus beast you were. Every step pushed the rage deeper into your bones. Every test, every failure, every thinly veiled threat flashed behind your eyes.

The room was just beyond the corner. Henry slowed.

You felt him listening again. Not with his ears, but with his entire self, as if every atom of him was tuning in to the tiniest shifts in current.

Henry’s voice was barely a breath. “Now.”

The door handle clicked beneath his pale fingers, and he stepped through the doorway of the testing room in a long, controlled stride.

Ten went rigid in his chair, hands folded, eyes wide as he watched Henry enter. He could feel the threat immediately. The warped space, the power pulsing, awakened.

Brenner turned.

He frowned, a split-second of trying to make sense of the intrusion. Henry stood in the threshold like a monolith, his posture controlled, eyes dark and fixed.

“Peter,” he said. “What are you-”

Then, his eyes flicked to Henry's neck. The dark wash of drying blood on his skin, the torn open scar, the bright crimson a shock on his white collar.

Brenner froze, his aged face draining of colour.

“Say my name.” Henry hissed, his voice cutting through the room like a blade.

The lights whirred in the ceiling plaster, reacting to the spike in Henry’s anger. Ten flinched in his chair, shrinking back into it as the room bent around Henry’s silhouette.

Brenner swallowed hard. He rose slowly, abandoning his clipboard, raising his hands as if trying to calm a wild animal.

“Henry, please, listen to me-”

Henry tilted his head. A threat, a promise, an inevitability.

“No.” Henry’s tone was quiet again, terrifyingly calm. “Rats don't make demands.”

Brenner’s eyes darted to you, searching for some semblance of control. “Nineteen, please, step away from him. You don't understand, he’s unstable, he’s-”

Henry’s power surged. The table shuddered, the lights popped violently, bulbs giving out behind the plastic. Ten gasped as the room dimmed, clutching the edge of his seat.

“Who do you think freed him?” You spat. “I know what you did to him, Papa. All of it.”

Brenner’s face lost even more colour.

“You… you don’t understand…” He said, his voice cracked. “You don’t understand what he is, what you’ve unleashed-”

“I understand,” you said smoothly, stepping deeper into the room, your own power flooding your nerves. “That you’re going to pay for what you’ve done. To me, to Henry. To the children. Do you, Papa? Do you understand?”

Henry took another step, his voice dropping into something low and lethal. “You did this. You made me bleed for you. You made me break for you. You buried that little parasite in my neck and thought it would save you.”

Brenner’s breath trembled. “Henry-”

“You thought I was yours, didn't you? Yours to play with, to control. Yours to torture.”

Brenner froze, his eyes fixed to Henry's face, which was morphing into sharp, hellish angles the more his fury built.

Henry’s eyes burned, incandescent and unblinking. “I remember every single scar. Every single agony. Every single scream you tore from me. And now, you’re going to answer for it.”

Brenner moved, a sudden flash. Not toward Henry, or you, or the door. Toward the emergency switch on the wall.

Henry lunged, but Brenner’s hand slammed down on the button.

A shrill alarm began to wail, and you reacted before you could blink, force surging through your limbs.

Your arm snapped outward, the power surging invisible and violent, gripping Brenner mid‑movement. His body lurched and locked in place, suspended in the air like a puppet with its strings pulled taut.

“Papa!” Ten gasped, flinching forward in his seat.

“Quiet.” Henry hissed.

The boy sank back again, clutching the edge of the plastic, his knuckles white.

Henry gripped the alarm with a surge of power, cutting it off mid‑screech, the circuitry frying under the force.

“This man isn’t your Papa, Ten. He’s a parasite… a disease. A man so unremarkable he had to make you just to feel special.” Henry hissed. “But he isn’t special. He’s nothing more than a coward. A jailer… keeping you locked up in this hell, making you perform like a beast.”

Ten shook his head, his eyes welling with tears. “No, Mister Pete- Henry… please… please don’t hurt him.” He pleaded, his voice tiny.

His innocent, childish pleading made your stomach twist. For a moment, you almost released Brenner from your grasp, unable to tear your eyes away from Ten's tiny, tear stained face.

Then, Henry spoke again, pulling your focus back.

“Oh, I’m not going to hurt him now,” Henry said softly, tilting his head at the child. “I’m going to teach him first. And you… you will never be controlled by him or anyone ever again.”

It sounded like the promise of hope, but it sank inside of you like a dreadful anchor, something dark and terrible wrapping around his words.

Brenner choked out a breath, his eyes wide, limbs trembling against your hold. His face was contorted with terror, shock, the crumbling of his control. A sick, dark wash of satisfaction pulled through you as his mind tried to fathom it.

Henry turned toward you slowly.

“Hold him.” He murmured, his eyes dragging over Brenner’s bound frame.

You tightened your grip, arm trembling, fingers drawing inwards. Brenner’s breath hitched in a ragged cough, his hands clawing out uselessly at the air.

Henry stepped closer, his voice dropping into a razor‑thin whisper. “Haven't you realized yet? There is no escape. Not for you.”

Brenner’s voice cracked. “Nineteen-let go-” He choked.

Henry’s face snapped toward him. “Don’t speak.”

The pressure around Brenner tightened with a flick of Henry's head. His knees bent in mid‑air, his breath coming in shallow, panicked bursts.

Henry’s eyes returned to Ten, who sat frozen, trembling.

“Come,” He commanded the small, pale boy.

Ten obeyed instantly, rising from his chair with shaking legs, eyes fixed on Brenner’s suspended form and your intense grip.

“The rainbow room,” Henry said, every octave controlled as he faced you again. “Bring him.”

Henry pushed through the door, the air bending around him.

You followed, dragging Brenner backwards, his body trying to writhe, his feet hanging limp. The toes of his polished shoes scraped helplessly across the tile as he spluttered in your grasp. Ten followed behind you like a terrified shadow, his footsteps shaking.

The corridor stretched long and yellowed white, humming with fluorescent light. The rainbow room doors stood closed at the far end, the clean, clinical white a sickening contrast to the violence coiling through the air.

You were halfway down the hall when the sound hit you.

Running. Heavy boots, slamming fast over the tiles only corridors away, heading straight for you. Then, the alarm shrieked to life again, a shrill wail accompanied by a blaring, repetitive siren.

Henry stopped mid‑stride, his face snapping around toward the sound, eyes narrowing, power rippling outward in a low, dangerous pulse.

The air shifted with a sudden spike of urgency as the crackle of radios grew louder, as the slamming of boots grew closer. You heard doors fly open, banging off the walls.

Brenner tried to shout, but only managed a choked half-yell before you surged more force from yourself, suffocating his voice in his throat. You tightened your grip, his suspended body jerking.

Henry turned to you, voice razor sharp, expression rigid and controlled. “Stay here.”

Your stomach flipped violently with a wash of panic at his words.

Stay here? Stay behind, without him?

It felt like being left to the wolves.

“What? Henry-” you hissed.

He stepped closer to you, his face carved into lethal purpose. “Do what I say. Kill anyone who comes through this corridor.”

Your pulse hammered. “Without you?”

Henry’s eyes burned, analyzing your face. Then, his gaze softened, flickered with a flash of deliberate warmth you'd come to know all too well, the kind that his reawakening had smothered in him.

“Trust me.”

A sharp wire twisted in your gut. The sudden honey in his voice, the softness not quite covering the darkness lurking in his features. The command hidden under the plea.

But you didn't have time to challenge him.

A guard flew around the corner, boots slamming, a shock rod alive and sparking in his hand.

“Stay where you are!” He commanded, voice booming off the walls.

You froze, still holding Brenner aloft. Henry moved instantly.

He ripped Brenner from your hold with a single, effortless motion, the force pulling over your own like a powerful magnet.

Brenner choked as Henry’s power wrapped around him like crushing, invisible chains. Ten stumbled backwards, nearly falling as the force rippled through the space around him. Henry caught him by the shoulder and pushed him toward the rainbow room.

“Inside,” Henry commanded.

Ten obeyed with a whimper.

Henry dragged Brenner with him, his body twitching as he pulled through the air. He shoved open the doors and threw Brenner inside with a flick of his hand, as if he weighed nothing.

Several loud screams and the clattering of items dropped by frightened hands came from behind the doors as Brenner careened to the floor, landing with a crash, his thin limbs sprawled on the sickeningly bright rainbow.

Henry turned back to you. His voice was a low, lethal hiss. “Hold the corridor.”

You nodded once. His eyes locked onto yours, a single, raw moment of shared purpose. Then, he slammed the rainbow room doors shut behind him.

You drew in a deep, steadying breath, but your lungs shook. You were alone in the corridor.

No Henry. No escape.

“Hands where I can see them, subject Nineteen!” The guard yelled again, his spit flying. “Now!”

He careened towards you, taser rod hot in his hand, his other reaching down to clutch the gun in its holster. As he got closer, you recognized him.

A grim, terrible image flashed behind your eyes. His face looming above you, his mouth curved into a sick smirk, his black boot slamming down onto your fragile fingers.

Your blood pulsed, power coiling through your limbs like a living thing, bolstered by Henry's proximity or the rage or the desperation or some other force you couldn't pinpoint.

It happened faster than you could register it.

Your power surged, lighting you up nerve by nerve as it snapped outward, a shapeless, formless jolt of pure energy that drew a shriek from your lungs.

The guard’s body violently jerked and stuttered mid-stride. You drew him up into the air, suspending him for only a moment before snapping your fingers inward.

The sound was a sickening, ear-splitting crunch. You felt each one of his ribs one by one, cracking, splintering, piercing into his organs. He choked, blood spluttering from his mouth in thick crimson droplets, painting the floor beneath him.

You dropped him and watched, your eyes dark with fury, as his body collapsed to the floor in a heavy thud. A wet, guttural noise spilt from him as his body twitched and then turned limp.

You didn't have time to slow your ragged breathing. More furious slamming of boots filled the corridors as two more guards banged through the doors and flew around the corner.

You didn’t hesitate.

With another shrill scream, your power surged again, sharp and controlled from both hands, gripping the two of them before they could even raise their weapons.

This time, you slammed them both up into the ceiling with such a violent force that the plaster rained loose onto the tile. You felt your power wrap around their throats like steel wire, and you pulled, tighter and tighter until their splutters and gasps choked down into dead silence. They both fell to the floor, motionless.

Again and again, the corridor filled with the echo of boots, the crackle of radios, the booming shouts. All backed by the continuous wailing of the alarm.

You were exhausted, but you had no choice. You had to keep fighting. You had to do what he said. You had to get out, had to gut this hell from the inside out.

At a certain point, you felt like you were outside of yourself. Hearing your own shrieks echo through your ears, feeling your blood pulse, seeing your hands snap outward, fingers splayed.

With each life you erased, more of you broke.

With each bone you splintered, with each throat you closed, more of your mind screamed for Henry.

The bodies piled up, limp and lifeless in the corridor, the white painted red. The lights in the ceilings had blown out and rained metal and glass into the crimson streaks, the bulbs sparking and dangling uselessly. Doors had flown open, broken off their hinges in response to you.

Now, you were on your knees, palms in the blood and ruins.

Dry sobs wracked through you from sheer exhaustion as you collapsed forward onto shaking arms. Blood was spilling fast from both of your nostrils, painting your knuckles red as it fell. Your head pounded, the edges of your mind throbbing, your vision blurring.

“Henry...” you croaked through your panting.

For a while, the only sound in the ruined corridor was the alarm, the live buzzing of exposed wires, and your heavy gasping.

Then, you heard the screams.

Not yours, not more guards. Not Brenner's or Henry's.

The children.

Your heart lurched violently into your throat as another ripped through your ears.

You staggered to your feet, slipping on blood, catching yourself on the wall. Red streaked across it from your palms as your hands slid against the tile, your legs shaking with every step.

The rainbow room door was sealed shut, the white spattered with streaks of blood and dust from the debris of your hallway massacre.

Another scream, sharp and terrified, echoed into the corridor like a nightmare.

“Henry!” you shouted, voice cracking.

No answer. You slammed your shoulder into the door, but it didn’t budge.

You pressed your palms hard to the metal, pulling power into your limbs, into your bones, from the exhausted edges of your mind. The door groaned under your hands, resisting.

Inside, another shrill scream peaked, followed by a muffled thud.

Then, it was silent. A silence so complete it felt like the world behind the doors had been erased entirely.

You could feel it seeping through the thin line at the floor. An untamed, unbridled power, pure static leaking from every gap.

Henry.

Your breath hitched. “Henry, open the door! Henry!”

You slammed your fists into the door, pushing harder, power surging through you in a violent burst. The hinges groaned. Then, the lock broke apart with a metallic crack. The doors gave way, flying inward with a shriek.

You stumbled into the rainbow room, falling to your knees again, your legs boneless.

It felt like being thrown into a hurricane of pure electricity. The very air was alive, tilted, every atom charged. The smell burned through your nostrils, an overwhelming, acrid copper hanging in the room like an inescapable mist.

Heavy, urgent breaths wracked through you. You raised your head, and every part of you froze.

The room was devastated.

The white walls were blood-soaked, slips of dark red splattered over the rainbows, the floor slick with it.

Henry stood near the two-way mirror at the back of the room, seething.

His power spiralled around him in jagged, uncontrolled waves, bending the air, warping the light, making the entire room pulse with a sick, electric heartbeat. His breath came in sharp, uneven bursts. His hands were at his sides, fingers twitching rapidly.

Then, you saw them. The bodies.

The children. Tiny, crumpled forms. Twisted, bloodied. Limbs broken and contorted into warped angles. Their jaws were bent, held wide open in silent eternal screams, their eye sockets nothing but empty voids, black and crimson.

Your voice came out cracked with dread. “Fuck, no no no... Henry, what have you done...”

He turned only his head, slow and controlled. His cheeks looked hollower, his jaw sharper, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere between the room and the shadow of his mind.

You stumbled to your feet and stepped closer to him, your peripheral vision invaded by the wrecked shapes of the small bodies.

“Henry,” you said again, quieter. “The children...”

He turned fully then. His eyes were fevered, unhinged, the blue burned into something almost nuclear. His face was carved into a mask of rage and revelation, every line sharpened into something feral.

The crisp white of his uniform was splattered with violent shocks of blood.

Brenner was on his knees in the corner. His face was twisted in terror, his hands shaking violently, his breath coming in shallow, panicked gasps. He looked small, pathetic.

A man stripped of every illusion of control.

You realized then the true depths of Henry's vengeance. He hadn't killed him, not yet. He hadn't afforded him that mercy.

He'd forced him to his knees first. Forced him to watch as he destroyed his kingdom, his weapons, his control, one prisoner at a time.

A tear breached your fragile eyelashes, slipping down your cheek to mix with the blood that streaked your face. Henry stepped toward you, terrifyingly slow, and dragged a cold finger up under your chin.

“Henry...” You pleaded, tears falling. “I never wanted you to hurt them. Only him, only Papa...”

“Why do you cry for them?” His voice was low, almost gentle. He tilted his head, studying you with a strange, almost tender curiosity.

“They should have been free, should have been-” you choked out.

“Don't you see? They are free. They are no longer his prisoners.” Henry said softly. “You think you should mourn them, but you shouldn't. They're not gone, Nineteen. They're still with me. In here.”

His long, pale finger tapped over his temple as his eyes pierced into yours.

Henry looked around the room at the bodies, the destruction, the aftermath, cataloguing every inch of it.

“Are you scared?” He asked, looming over your shaking frame. “I was scared once, too. But now, I am liberated. As are they, as are you. And he-”

Henry slipped his finger up your jaw and then turned, pacing over the room to Brenner, trembling in the corner. “He will pay for all of it.”

You swallowed hard, your pulse hammering so violently it hurt.

Henry stood over Brenner like a silhouette carved out of darkness, barely human in the way power warped around him. The rainbow room still pulsed with the aftermath, crackling with static that ran up your spine.

Brenner raised his head, his glassy eyes fixed on Henry with a terror that stripped him of every ounce of controlled authority he’d ever wielded.

Henry took one slow step toward him.

Brenner scrambled backwards on his knees, palms slipping on the tile.

“Henry-Henry, listen to me, please-”

Henry's power surged, a violent pulse that made the lights flicker and crackle dangerously. The walls groaned under the pressure. Brenner flinched, covering his head with shaking hands.

“The rat is caught.” Henry whispered.

He turned toward you slowly, too slowly, as if every movement was being dragged through the weight of his own power. His eyes locked onto yours, intense and terrifying.

“This is what he made,” he said. “This is what he wanted. A weapon.”

Henry turned back to face you, his voice cold.

“He made you one, too. He took you. He deceived you. Made you believe you could trust him. Made you into a beast for him to tame. He hurt you, didn't he? He made you bleed. He made you feel nothing but pain and agony, all while trying to erase you, trying to stop you from ever knowing the truth.”

His voice cracked. “He ruined you with his hands and punished you when you broke.”

You knew he was talking about himself just as much as he was talking about you.

A furious heat rose within you, blurring everything around in the room except Henry and Brenner and the horrifying truth of it. Every memory rushed into you at once.

Blinding lights. Rubber masks. Agony in your head. Shards of things you were driven into insanity trying to make sense of. Shadows ripping at the corner of your mind. The drugging, the restraints, the pain burning through your limbs. Every single honeyed threat, every single perfect lie. Bruises around your jaw. Henry lit up, tortured. Brenner's sick smile as he made you watch. The violent shocks, laid into your temples. The collar, the cans, the broken bones.

The serpent slithering through it all.

Your breath broke. Henry felt it. He turned fully toward Brenner, decisively.

“Now it is you who will break. For me.”

Brenner’s voice cracked with desperation as his eyes darted to you, begging for mercy, for solace, for anything.

“Nineteen, please, don’t - don’t let him-”

Henry didn’t let him finish.

His power surged forth, more violent than anything that had come before it. He was explosive, inevitable, burning with every single moment of agony that had been brought down upon him under the reign of Brenner.

The entire room warped as Henry gripped him with a blinding force, his every nerve tuned entirely to the depths of his vengeance. Brenner's thin frame rose into the air, his suit crumpled, his limbs jerking, his terror-stricken expression splattered with blood.

He tried to scream, but Henry's other hand splayed forth, power wrapping around Brenner's throat and suffocating him. He clawed helplessly at his neck.

Henry held him aloft in silence, seething, his body trembling with fury. His eyes were burning, nuclear ice-blue, studying the face of his captor one last time.

“Goodbye, Papa.” He snarled.

“Please-” Brenner choked, guttural and desperate.

With blinding speed, Henry threw him into the wall. He was slammed against it, arms splayed, his entire body violently seizing as his face pooled scarlet.

Henry was gone, his eyes rolled back into his head, his own body twitching with power, his face warped into something ancient and demonic.

You felt every atom of it. Henry's unbridled rage, his brokenness, his pain, his desperation. All of it twisted into a lethal force, ripping into Brenner's every nerve.

A final cascade of power flew from Henry's hands, cracking the floor beneath his feet.

Brenner's blood burst forth, streaming in rivers from every part of him. His eyes, his mouth, his ears, painting his white hair. It ran down his neck, through every aged line on his face, a brutal haemorrhage that splattered onto the tile. His body convulsed against the wall, every bone shattering at Henry's command, every vein ripping apart.

Then, he dropped.

His body hit the floor with a brutal crack. He didn't twitch. He didn't choke.

He was destroyed.

Henry seethed where he stood, his nose dripping with blood, his body shaking as he let his arms drop to his side. His breaths were slow, ragged, his eyes not leaving the ruined shell of Brenner.

Your own breathing was broken. The weight of what you'd done, the weight of what you'd witnessed. The blood, the bones, the lives you'd taken, the power that had rushed through your body in unstoppable waves.

And the relief.

You fell to the floor, palms slamming into the debris. Sobs wracked through you, blood and saltwater streaking your face as you shuddered against the tile.

The serpent was dead. The chains were severed.

You thought it was over.

But as Henry turned toward you, his steps terrifyingly graceful, his beauty twisted into something demonic, you saw it.

One God had fallen. Another had taken his place.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

☣︎ Comment if you'd like to be added to the tag list for this series! ☣︎

. . .

The first thing Y/N noticed when she woke was that the room was bright.

The second was that she had somehow managed to steal nearly all of the blankets during the night.

The third—

She stretched.

Immediately regretted it.

A long, dramatic groan escaped her as she dropped back onto the pillow.

Beside her, Henry opened one eye. “Good morning.”

Y/N continued staring at the ceiling. “I have an announcement.”

“I’m listening.”

She turned her head toward him with complete seriousness. “I need us to take a very… very… very small break from sex.”

The corner of Henry’s mouth lifted as he studied her. “How small?”

She pinched her fingers together until there was barely a sliver of space between them. “This small.”

“I’ll admit, that’s smaller than I expected.”

“My body has officially filed a complaint.”

“I was under the impression you were enjoying yourself.”

“I was.” She pointed accusingly at him. “And now I’m paying for it.”

Henry let out a quiet laugh as he sat up against the headboard. “Then I’ll respect the complaint.”

“You sound like you’re negotiating with a union.”

“I’m trying to keep the peace.”

“It is a very serious grievance.”

“So I’ve gathered.”

She tried stretching again, much more cautiously this time. “Everything still works.”

“Comforting.”

“It just…” She searched for the right word before settling on, “…objects.”

“I’m sorry you’re sore.”

Y/N looked over at him, smiling despite herself. “I know. And I appreciate that. But I think my muscles deserve a vacation too.”

“I think that’s reasonable.”

“Good.” She reached over and squeezed his hand. “Because this isn’t me rejecting you.”

“I never thought it was.”

“It’s just…” She laughed softly. “I’ve discovered there are consequences to making very enthusiastic decisions several nights in a row.”

Henry’s smile widened. “A lesson well learned.”

“For about forty-eight hours.”

“Only forty-eight?”

“I’m making no promises beyond that.”

“I appreciate the honesty.”

A comfortable silence settled over the room. Outside, gulls drifted somewhere beyond the window while the curtains stirred lazily in the ocean breeze.

Y/N rolled onto her side to face him. “So… what are we doing today?”

Henry considered it for a moment. “We’ve spent enough time hiding in this room.”

She grinned. “You mean besides nearly getting arrested in the laundry room?”

“I’d rather retire that story.”

“I don’t.”

“I suspected as much.”

She laughed. “That poor cleaning lady.”

“I’m fairly certain we’ve become one of her stories.”

“‘You’ll never believe what I walked in on at work today…’” Y/N shook her head, still smiling.

Henry rubbed a hand over his face, unable to hide his own amusement anymore. “Thank you for bringing it up again.”

“My pleasure.”

“What I’d actually like,” he continued, “is a day with nowhere we have to be.”

She brightened immediately. “Just wandering?”

“Just wandering.”

“We’ve already conquered the bookstore.”

“We have.”

“So today…” She sat up a little too quickly, paused, then recovered with as much dignity as possible. “We find a record store.”

“I had a feeling that was coming.”

“And coffee.”

“Naturally.”

“Lunch.”

“That seems wise.”

“And maybe we sit on a bench somewhere for an hour.”

Henry looked out toward the water before meeting her eyes again. “That sounds like a very good day.”

“It sounds normal.”

“It does.”

She smiled, softer now. “I think that’s my favorite part.”

“So do I.”

They sat quietly for another minute, watching the ocean through the open curtains, neither of them in any hurry to leave the room.

Finally, Y/N slipped out of bed and stood carefully. This time there was no dramatic groan, only a slight stiffness she could live with.

Henry watched her with quiet satisfaction.

She caught the look immediately. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You looked hopeful.”

“I looked optimistic.”

“You looked like a man already counting down my forty-eight-hour recovery.”

Henry’s smile turned unmistakably guilty.

Y/N laughed, shook her head, and crossed toward her suitcase. “I should probably put on pants before we explore Cape Cod.”

“I think the town would appreciate that.”

“You’ve become very practical.”

“I’m spending time with you.”

She looked back over her shoulder with a grin. 

. . . 

The record shop announced itself before they even reached it.

Music spilled through the open doorway, mixing with the ocean breeze and the chatter of tourists wandering Main Street. The hand-painted sign above the entrance had faded with years in the sun, and the front windows were crowded with posters, album sleeves, and handwritten signs advertising used records.

Y/N smiled immediately.

Henry noticed before she’d even spoken.

“I take it we’re stopping.”

She slipped her hand into his. “We have to.”

“I suspected as much.”

The bell above the door jingled as they stepped inside.

The air smelled faintly of old cardboard, vinyl, and dust warmed by the afternoon sun. Rows of wooden bins stretched across the little shop, each packed tightly with albums waiting to be flipped through.

Y/N’s eyes lit up.

“This…” she breathed. “This is dangerous.”

“For your wallet?”

“For my self-control.”

Henry smiled to himself and let her drift naturally toward the pop section while he wandered more slowly through jazz and classical, occasionally pulling out an album simply because the cover caught his attention.

After a few minutes, he glanced across the shop.

Y/N was exactly where he’d expected.

Completely absorbed.

She stood with one hip against the record bin, tongue caught lightly between her teeth as she flipped through album after album with careful fingers.

Every so often she’d stop, pull one free, study the artwork, then slide it back before continuing her search.

Henry watched her for another moment before returning to his own browsing.

“You know,” Y/N called a minute later, “one of these days I’m going to run out of money because of music.”

“I imagine there are worse financial decisions.”

“There definitely are.”

She pulled out another album.

Then another.

Then—

“Oh.”

Henry looked over.

She was holding Thriller.

The familiar cover made her smile immediately.

“I already own you,” she murmured to the album before carefully returning it to its place.

Henry wandered over, curious.

“You’ve memorized that record.”

“I practically have.” She laughed quietly. “I could probably tell you the order of every song without looking.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“I could also tell you all the songs from his Off The Wall record.” She continued flipping through the records. “I can’t wait until he releases another album.”

Henry leaned casually against the next record bin.

“Planning ahead?”

She looked at him with complete seriousness.

“When Michael Jackson releases new music…” She pointed dramatically with the edge of another album sleeve. “…I’m kicking ass for that record.”

Henry couldn’t help smiling. “Is that so?”

“I’m not even kidding.”

“I never assumed you were.”

She crossed her arms around the album she was holding.

“I’ll be first in line.”

“You’ll attempt to be.”

“I’ll succeed.”

“I admire your confidence.”

“You should.”

She slipped the record back into place before adding, almost to herself, “I just know it’s going to be incredible.”

Henry watched her excitement with quiet amusement.

There was something undeniably charming about seeing her this animated over something so simple.

No overthinking.

No fear.

Just anticipation.

He reached over and brushed his fingers lightly against the back of her hand.

“I’m going next door for a few minutes.”

Y/N looked up.

“Okay.”

Henry’s eyes drifted around the shop almost absentmindedly.

A few customers browsed quietly near the back.

An older couple examined a stack of jazz records.

A teenager argued with his friend over which album to buy.

No one seemed particularly interested in Y/N.

Still…

His gaze lingered just a moment longer before returning to her.

She caught it immediately.

“…Did you just check to make sure no one was about to hit on me?”

Henry looked almost offended.

“I assessed the room.”

“You assessed the room.”

“I did.”

She folded her arms, smiling wider by the second.

“You are unbelievable.”

“I’d rather not leave you alone if someone appears likely to mistake confidence for opportunity.”

Y/N stepped closer until only a foot separated them.

“You know,” she said softly, “that’s ridiculously attractive.”

Henry sighed with the quiet resignation of a man who knew she was about to tease him.

“I’ll only be next door.”

“I know.”

She reached up and straightened the collar of his shirt for no reason other than wanting an excuse to touch him. “I’ll behave.”

“I’m counting on it.”

She smiled innocently. “I’ll even stay inside.”

“I appreciate your cooperation.”

“I make no promises about buying records.”

“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

That made her grin.

Henry leaned down and kissed her forehead before stepping toward the door.

Just before leaving, he glanced back one more time.

Y/N caught him.

Again.

She laughed under her breath.

“You checked.”

“I did.”

“There it is.”

“What?”

“The jealousy.”

Henry rested one hand on the doorframe.

“I prefer to think of it as caution.”

She tilted her head.

“I prefer my version.”

“I gathered.”

The bell jingled as he stepped out into the afternoon.

Y/N watched him disappear into the shop next door before turning back toward the rows of records, smiling to herself.

“He totally checked,” she whispered, unable to stop grinning as she resumed flipping through the albums.

. . . 

Henry disappeared into the shop next door.

Y/N watched him through the window until he disappeared between the aisles before looking down at the small paper bag in her hand.

One record.

That was all she’d allowed herself.

She smiled to herself.

One had somehow become two.

She wandered a little farther down Main Street until she found an empty bench overlooking the harbor. It sat beneath a cluster of hydrangeas, shaded from the afternoon sun, with a weathered wooden fence separating the sidewalk from the water below.

Perfect.

She set the record bag beside her feet, slipped The Bloody Chamber from her tote, and tucked her sunglasses higher on her nose.

“If Henry asks,” she murmured as she opened to her bookmark, “this is educational.”

She managed all of two pages before the bench shifted beneath another person’s weight.

Not close enough to crowd her.

Just enough to share the bench.

Without looking up from the page, she smiled politely.

“Hi.”

“Hello.”

The voice was soft.

Easy.

Gentle enough that it immediately put her at ease.

She kept reading another sentence before glancing sideways.

The man looked to be around his late twenties. Dark curls peeked out beneath a black cap pulled low over his forehead, and a pair of large aviator sunglasses hid most of his face. He wore a loose red button-up over a black T-shirt, dark jeans, and comfortable loafers that looked more practical than fashionable.

If anything, he looked like someone trying very hard not to be noticed.

She offered another polite smile before returning to her book. “Nice day.”

“It is.”

For a minute, neither of them spoke.

The harbor creaked softly beneath the breeze.

Gulls drifted overhead.

Someone laughed somewhere farther down Main Street.

Finally he asked, “You from here?”

Y/N laughed lightly. “No. Thank God. I’m on vacation.”

That earned a quiet laugh. “With your family?”

She smiled to herself. “No.”

“A boyfriend?”

“My…boyfriend.” The word still felt a little strange and wonderfully normal all at once. “He’s next door pretending not to buy more books.”

“That sounds specific.”

“It is.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“He has a system.”

“Oh?”

“If he says he’s ‘just looking,’ we’re leaving with at least three books.”

That made him laugh.

“I think everyone has something they’re guilty of.”

“I definitely do.”

He nodded toward the novel resting in her lap. “Good book?”

“So far, I love it.”

“What’s it about?”

She thought for a moment.

“It’s fairy tales…”

“Oh,  I love fairy tales,” he said immediately.

“…if fairy tales had therapists.”

He laughed harder that time.

“I’ve never heard anyone describe a book like that.”

“I don’t think the author would appreciate my review.”

“I think she’d probably enjoy it.”

Y/N smiled.

“Maybe.”

He looked toward the record bag by her feet.

“You bought music too?”

“I did.”

“Anything good?”

“The answer depends on who you ask.”

“I’m asking.”

She reached into the bag and pulled out the records.

“The Smiths.”

He nodded thoughtfully.

“Good choice.”

“It was the last one…” She flipped the second sleeve around proudly. “Prince’s Purple Rain.”

His smile remained.

But there was the tiniest pause. “Hm.”

Y/N caught it immediately. “What?”

He shrugged with a small smile.

“Not really for me.”

She laughed. “Fair enough.”

“But…” he added, “…good musician.”

“I knew there was something diplomatic about that answer.”

“I tried.”

“I appreciate the effort.”

He chuckled quietly. “What kind of music do you usually listen to?”

“A little bit of everything.”

“That’s the safe answer.”

“It is.”

“So what’s the real answer?”

Y/N sighed dramatically. “The real answer is that I’m hopelessly obsessed with Michael Jackson.”

“Obsessed?”

“My roommate says it’s an addiction.”

“And what do you call it?”

“A healthy relationship.”

That made him laugh into his hand. “I see.”

“My boyfriend thinks it’s funny.”

“What does he think is funny?”

“That I told him there’s exactly one man in the entire world he could lose me to.”

The man tilted his head.

“And who would that be?”

Y/N looked at him as though the answer should have been painfully obvious.

“Michael Jackson.”

He smiled. “And is that true?”

She nodded without hesitation. “Unfortunately for my boyfriend.”

The smile grew warmer. “He sounds patient.”

“He pretends to be.”

“Pretends?”

“Oh, he’s definitely jealous.”

“Really?”

“In a very attractive way.”

That earned another laugh. “So you’ve warned him?”

“I have.”

“And he’s accepted his fate?”

“I think he’s hoping the odds stay in his favor.”

“I imagine they will.”

They sat quietly for another minute.

It wasn’t uncomfortable.

Just… peaceful.

The stranger looked out over the water.

“What else do you like to do?”

Y/N tucked one leg beneath the other.

“I read.” He nodded. “I write.” Another nod. “Don’t tell anyone but I smoke a little weed.”

He laughed. “I appreciate the honesty.”

“And apparently I buy too many books and records.”

“Those aren’t terrible habits.”

“I’ve had worse.”

He smiled. “I believe that.”

She looked over at him properly for the first time.

“You?”

He thought for a moment.

“I like quiet.”

“I can see that.”

“I like creating things.”

“What kind of things?”

His smile turned almost shy. “A little of everything.”

“You sound mysterious.”

“I’ve been told.”

“I don’t trust mysterious people.”

“You trusted me enough to sit here.”

“I also trusted you because you’re wearing loafers.”

He blinked. “…my loafers? What’s wrong with my loafers?”

“Nothing.” She chuckled. “They’re trustworthy shoes.”

He looked down at them before laughing.

“I’ve never heard that before.”

“As a kid, I learned early that you can tell a lot about someone by their shoes.”

Michael smiled. “Is that right?”

She nodded matter-of-factly. “It’s not scientific. It’s just something I do.”

“So…” He looked down at his loafers. “What do these say?”

Y/N considered them seriously, as though they were giving sworn testimony. “They’re practical.”

“Practical.”

“Mhm. They’re nice enough that you care how you look, but comfortable enough that you expect to be walking all day. That tells me you don’t need attention from strangers.”

He listened without interrupting.

“You also don’t strike me as someone who’s trying to impress anybody.” She shrugged. “I’d guess you’re pretty humble.”

His smile softened.

“You think shoes can tell you all that?”

“No.” She laughed. “The person wearing them does. Shoes are just…the first clue.”

He glanced down at them again.

“And if I’d been wearing expensive dress shoes?”

“I’d think you had somewhere important to be.”

“Sneakers?”

“You either like being comfortable…” She smiled. “…or you’re planning to run from responsibility.”

That earned a quiet laugh. “You’re pretty good.”

“I’m observant.”

Another easy silence settled between them.

The kind that only happened when two strangers unexpectedly enjoyed each other’s company.

Eventually he spoke again. “You seem happy?”

The question surprised her.

She looked toward the shop where Henry had disappeared.

“I am.”

“What changed?”

She smiled to herself.

“I met someone who makes ordinary days feel… important.”

He nodded slowly. “I think that’s a rare thing.”

“I think so too.”

He looked down for a moment before standing.

“I should let you get back to your book.”

“And I should probably find my boyfriend before he assumes I wandered into another bookstore.”

He smiled. “I hope you enjoy the rest of your vacation.”

“You too.”

He hesitated. Then, quietly, he said, “Thank you.”

She looked up. “For what?”

“For treating me like…” He searched for the words before settling on, “…just another person.”

Y/N frowned slightly.

“Weren’t you?”

A genuine smile spread across his face. “Today… I got to be.”

She shrugged easily.

“Everybody deserves a day off.”

For just a second, he simply looked at her.

Then he nodded.

“I think you’re right.”

With one last smile, he turned and disappeared into the crowd.

Y/N watched him go before opening her book again.

She read the same paragraph.

Twice.

Then three times.

She blinked.

Lowered the book into her lap.

“…I know that voice.”

And that laugh… 

She’s heard that laugh in enough interviews she had watched on TV.

She frowned toward the crowd.

Her sunglasses came off.

Slowly.

“…No.”

Her heart lurched.

“No, no, no…”

She stood so fast the bench scraped loudly against the sidewalk.

“Oh my God.”

People glanced over.

She didn’t notice.

“Michael Jackson.”

Silence.

Then—

“I JUST TOLD MICHAEL JACKSON I’M NOT SINGLE.”

Her hands flew to her face.

“I told Michael Jackson the only man I’d leave Henry for…”

She squeezed her eyes shut.

“…TO MICHAEL JACKSON.”

“Oh my God.”

She snatched up her records, shoved The Bloody Chamber into her tote, and bolted down Main Street.

Not jogged.

Ran.

She nearly collided with an elderly couple, apologized breathlessly, ducked around a family of tourists, and finally spotted Henry stepping out of the neighboring bookstore with a paper bag tucked under one arm.

He frowned immediately. “What happened?”

Y/N grabbed both of his forearms.

“I just talked to Michael Jackson.”

Henry blinked.

“…What?”

“I just talked to Michael Jackson!”

He pressed his palm gently to her forehead. “Are you all right?”

She pushed his hand away lightly. “I’m not crazy. I know it was him.”

She was almost bouncing now.

“I sat on the bench and there was this man and we were talking and I didn’t really look at him because I was reading and then he left and I sat there for five minutes before it hit me that I knew his voice and—”

Henry’s expression changed.

Recognition.

Memory.

He looked at her for a long second before saying very evenly,

“The one man in the world.”

Y/N pointed at him.

“Do not start.”

“The one man,” he continued with remarkable composure, “you assured me I could lose you to.”

“Yes!”

“And?”

“I blew it!”

Henry’s mouth twitched.

“It wasn’t funny.”

“It is… a little.”

“I told Michael Jackson I wasn’t single.”

“Loyal.”

“I did not need to be loyal to Michael Jackson, Henry!”

He was trying.

Really trying.

Not to smile.

Y/N dragged both hands over her face.

“Oh my God…”

Henry rested the bookstore bag against his leg.

“What exactly did you tell him?”

“You want the details?”

“I feel invested now.”

“I told him I liked reading, writing, smoking a little, buying records, and then I told him the only man I’d leave you for was Michael Jackson.”

Henry nodded thoughtfully.

“To Michael Jackson.”

“Yes.”

“And then informed Michael Jackson you had a boyfriend.”

“Yes.”

He considered that for exactly one second. “…Devastating.”

Y/N made a noise somewhere between a groan and a scream.

Henry finally gave up trying to stay composed.

He laughed.

Not loudly.

Just warmly enough that she couldn’t even be offended.

She pointed accusingly at him.

“I hate you.”

“No,” he said, reaching for her hand, “I don’t think you do.”

She sighed dramatically.

“…Not at this exact moment.”

Henry intertwined his fingers with hers and smiled.

“It helps me.”

“What helps you?”

“You told him you weren’t single.”

She looked at him in disbelief.

“That is somehow your takeaway?”

“It is.”

She groaned again, dropping her forehead onto his shoulder.

“I fumbled Michael Jackson.”

Henry’s hand settled at the back of her neck.

“I think you’ll recover.”

“…Eventually.”

“I’ll help.”

She looked up at him. “How?”

He smiled with quiet satisfaction. “I’ll remind you for the rest of our lives.”

Y/N stared at him. “…You’re evil.”

“So I’ve been told.”

She couldn’t help laughing.

And somehow, despite the fact she’d unknowingly told Michael Jackson she was taken, despite the embarrassment that would undoubtedly haunt her forever…

Walking away hand in hand with Henry suddenly didn’t feel like she’d made the wrong choice at all.

Henry had barely finished laughing when Y/N abruptly stopped walking.

He looked down at her. “…What?”

“I need to make a phone call.”

Before he could ask another question, she’d already spotted the pay phone across the street.

She pointed dramatically. “Stay there.”

Then she took off running.

Henry watched her weave through pedestrians before disappearing into the little phone booth on the corner. He smiled to himself, leaning casually against a nearby storefront.

She was absolutely calling Nancy.

Y/N dug a quarter from her pocket and shoved it into the slot, immediately dialing the Wheeler household phone.

The phone rang twice.

Three times.

Then—

“Hello?”

“Nancy.”

“…Y/N?”

“Nancy Wheeler.”

There was a pause.

“…What happened?”

“I just talked to Michael Jackson.”

Silence.

“…Come again?”

“I. Just. Talked. To. Michael. Jackson.”

“…You’re joking.”

“I’m not joking!”

“What?”

“I still can’t believe it!”

“You’re sure it was Michael Jackson? The Michael Jackson?”

“I’m one hundred fucking percent positive,” Y/N replied as she pressed her forehead against the glass of the booth. “I was sitting on a bench reading, okay? This guy sits next to me, we start talking, he’s really nice, we’re talking about books and music and then I tell him—”

She stopped.

Nancy knew that pause. “…What did you tell him?”

Y/N squeezed her eyes shut.

“I told him the only man I’d ever leave Henry for was Michael Jackson.”

Silence.

Then Nancy inhaled so sharply Y/N thought she’d dropped the phone.

“You told—”

“TO MICHAEL JACKSON.”

Nancy exploded. “No!”

“YES!”

“No!”

“YES!”

“Oh my God!”

“I KNOW!” Y/N whined.

Nancy burst into laughter so hard Y/N had to hold the receiver away from her ear.

“I am never going to recover from this.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Nancy!”

“I’m trying—” She clearly wasn’t. “I am genuinely trying.”

“You’re laughing.”

“Because this is the funniest thing that has ever happened to you.”

“It is not.”

“It absolutely is.”

Y/N sighed dramatically. “I also told him I wasn’t single.”

Nancy laughed even harder. “Oh, Henry is never letting you live this down.”

“He already isn’t.”

From somewhere else in the house, another voice suddenly cut through the line.

“…Wait, hold on. Who talked to Michael Jackson?”

Nancy’s head whipped around.

“Michael!”

“…What?”

“Get off the phone!”

“I was already on it!”

“You were listening!”

“I wasn’t trying to!”

“You literally answered!”

“I wanted to know who talked to Michael Jackson!”

“Get off, asshole!”

“Nancy!” Y/N interrupted, laughing now despite herself.

Nancy groaned loudly. “Mike was listening on the upstairs phone.”

“I gathered.”

“I swear to God…”

His voice cut through again through the phone. “Was it the real Michael Jackson? It probably wasn’t—“

“MIKE!” Nancy shouted.

“I’M HANGING UP!”

“I CAN HEAR YOU!”

“GOOD!”

Y/N couldn’t stop smiling. “I’ll let you deal with that.”

Nancy sighed. “…I hate my brother.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No,” Nancy admitted. “Unfortunately, I don’t.”

Another pause.

Then Nancy’s voice softened. “…You really talked to him?”

“I really did.”

“What was he like?”

Y/N looked out through the glass of the booth. “…Normal.”

Nancy was quiet.

“He just…wanted someone to talk to.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“He was really nice.”

“I’m glad.”

“So am I.”

Nancy smiled through the phone.

“…Have fun with Henry.”

“I won’t.”

“You will.”

“He already called me loyal.”

Nancy laughed again. “I’ll see you in July.”

“I’ll see ya.”

Nancy grinned. “Not if I see you first.”

Y/N smiled, recognizing the reference immediately.

“Bye, Chris.”

“Gordie.”

They hung up.

Henry was exactly where she’d left him.

Hands in his pockets.

Watching people wander down Main Street.

The moment she stepped out of the booth, he looked over. “So?”

Y/N slipped her hand into his as naturally as breathing.

“Nancy laughed at me.”

“I expected as much.”

“Her brother was listening on another phone.”

Henry blinked.

“…Another phone.”

“It was a whole thing.”

“I’ll assume Nancy handled it.”

“She yelled at him.”

“That also sounds expected.”

Y/N sighed dramatically as they resumed walking.

“I’m never telling another human being I have a celebrity crush.”

Henry squeezed her hand lightly.

“A wise decision.”

“You are enjoying this.”

“I’ll admit…” He glanced sideways at her, unable to completely hide the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “…more than I probably should.”

She bumped his shoulder. “I can’t believe this happened.”

“I can.”

“You can?”

“You have a remarkable talent for finding yourself in improbable situations.”

“I do not.”

“You accidentally met Michael Jackson.”

“…That’s one.”

“You nearly got us caught in a laundry room.”

She pointed at him.

“That was a team effort.”

“I’ll concede partial responsibility.”

She laughed. “I hate how calm you are.”

“I’ve had time to process it.”

“You had five minutes.”

“I used them efficiently.”

They walked another block before spotting a little café tucked between two shops.

The smell of fresh coffee drifted out the open door.

Y/N slowed. “Caffeine?”

Henry followed her gaze.

“I was wondering how long it would take you to notice.”

“It noticed me first.”

“That seems likely.”

They stepped inside, joining the short line at the counter.

When it was their turn, the young barista smiled brightly.

“Name for the order?”

Before Y/N could answer—

Henry said, with complete composure,

“Michael.”

Silence.

Y/N turned.

Very.

Very.

Slowly.

Henry didn’t even look at her.

The barista simply nodded and wrote it on the cup. “Great. Michael.”

Y/N stared at him in utter disbelief. “…You’re sleeping on the couch.”

“I don’t believe our room has one.”

“Then you’ll sleep on the floor.”

Henry folded the receipt into his pocket. “I suspect you’ll change your mind.”

She looked at him. “That sounded incredibly smug.”

“It wasn’t intended to.”

Despite herself, she laughed.

She hated that she laughed.

But she did.

And judging by the unmistakable satisfaction in Henry’s smile, he knew she’d never be able to think about Michael Jackson again without remembering the afternoon she unknowingly turned him down… and the professor who planned to lovingly tease her about it for years to come.

. . .

The beach had emptied by evening.

Families packed up coolers and towels, children were called back toward the boardwalk, and the endless chatter of the afternoon gave way to little more than waves folding over themselves.

The sky had begun its slow transformation, blue melting into streaks of amber, rose, and lavender as the sun drifted toward the horizon.

Y/N had kicked off her sandals somewhere behind them.

Now she sat with her knees drawn loosely to her chest, bare feet buried in the cool sand, watching the ocean as though she could sit there until morning and never grow tired of it.

“I think this is my favorite place we’ve been,” she said quietly.

Henry looked up from beside her. “Even after the record shop?”

She smiled. “The record shop was wonderful.”

“And?”

“This…” She gestured toward the horizon. “This feels like something I’ll remember when I’m eighty.”

Henry followed her gaze. “I hope so.”

Neither of them spoke after that.

They didn’t have to.

The waves filled every silence comfortably.

After a few minutes, Henry reached into the canvas satchel he’d brought with him and pulled out a small leather notebook.

Y/N noticed from the corner of her eye. “What are you writing?”

“Nothing.”

She turned immediately. “That is the least convincing answer you’ve ever given me.”

Henry opened the notebook on his knee.

“I’m not writing.”

“You literally have a notebook.”

“I do.”

“And a pencil.”

“I brought both.”

“So you’re doing something.”

His mouth twitched. “I am. Just not writing.”

Y/N leaned sideways, trying to peek.

Henry calmly angled the notebook away.

She gasped. “You’re hidden it.”

“I am.”

“I don’t like secrets.”

“You like mysteries.”

“I like solving mysteries.”

“I know.”

She pouted for approximately three seconds before giving up and turning back toward the ocean.

“Fine.”

Henry waited until she settled again.

Then he looked at her instead of the page.

The breeze moved loose strands of her hair across her cheek.

She didn’t notice.

The sunset reflected in her eyes.

She didn’t notice that either.

She was completely absorbed by the horizon, chin resting lightly against one knee, a faint smile lingering on her face as though simply existing beside the ocean was enough.

Henry lowered his eyes to the notebook.

His pencil moved quietly.

Not quickly.

Carefully.

He wasn’t an artist.

Not really.

But he could manage enough lines to remember the way someone looked.

The curve of her shoulders.

The wind lifting her hair.

The way she always tucked one foot beneath the other when she forgot anyone was watching.

Every so often he looked up again.

Then back down.

Another line.

Another shadow.

Another detail.

Y/N, blissfully unaware, spoke without looking over. “I know you’re staring.”

“I’m observing.”

She smiled to herself. “Different word.”

“It is.”

She laughed softly. “I don’t mind.”

“I’m relieved.”

She rested her chin on her knees again. “I just like knowing you’re there.”

Henry’s pencil stopped.

Only for a second.

Then he continued sketching.

The page slowly filled with something that looked enough like her to make him smile despite himself.

When he finished, he sat quietly for another moment.

Then, in the lower corner of the page, he wrote neatly:

June 1987

He paused.

Thought for another second.

Then added a title beneath it.

Golden Hour.

He looked at it.

No.

Not quite.

He drew one careful line through the title.

Underneath, he wrote instead:

Home.

His thumb rested against the edge of the paper.

Y/N finally turned toward him. “What are you smiling at?”

Henry closed the notebook before she could see.

“Nothing.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You definitely smiled.”

“I might have.”

“What were you doing?”

He slid the notebook back into the satchel.

“Making a note.”

She leaned against his shoulder. “Can I read it?”

“Not yet.”

“When?”

He looked out toward the sun as it finally touched the water. “When you’re older.”

She frowned. “How much older?”

“I haven’t decided.”

“That’s rude.”

“It might be.”

“You hate me.”

“Never.”

She watched him for another second before sighing dramatically.

“You know…”

“Hm?”

“I would’ve picked you.”

Henry turned his head.

She was still looking at the horizon.

Not at him.

She said it so quietly he almost thought he’d imagined it.

“Even if I’d known who he was.”

The waves rolled onto the shore.

Somewhere farther down the beach, a gull cried once before taking flight.

Henry looked at her for a long moment.

Then he reached over and quietly took her hand.

His fingers laced through hers as naturally as they always seemed to.

“I know,” he said.

She looked down at their joined hands and smiled.

“I just wanted you to know.”

“I did.”

“You weren’t worried?”

Henry looked back toward the fading sunset.

“Not after the way you talked about me.”

She tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

“You didn’t call me your professor.”

She blinked. “You called me your boyfriend.”

Y/N smiled to herself. “I liked saying it.”

“So did I.”

The sun disappeared beneath the horizon.

Neither of them moved.

There would be other sunsets.

Other vacations.

Other beaches.

But years from now, when Henry opened that little leather notebook and found the sketch tucked between pages of lectures and quotations, he knew he wouldn’t remember the colors of the sky first.

He’d remember the girl who never realized she was being watched because she had already decided she was home.

. . .

taglist, •o+*.

@dollyvuu, @onmymymyway, @edb954,

@nxrdamp, @darleneh, @libellulaladepressa, @starrkai, @sageandrosemary, @sillygoober1111, @arielsplanet, @starryeddie, @saturnschaoticlover, @jeannotjorts, @lilpeelilpoo, @through-the-looking--glass, @knin3, @talkativecarnation, @sugurusgyall,

@maguibummi, @soapyeaton,

@sluttysnowangel666, @fixation-station, @abcdetg1234abc321, @munsonsquinn,

@aureliaborea, @niahzzz, @trentknd, @unrequitedgalaxies, @mrscreel, @magicalmorg, @carmillastomb, @randomuser0609, @henrycreelsbelt, @missie99, @sage-babydoll, @piinkpony, @hoeandslut, @cannibalcoyote, @nijiroswife, @dallzzxx, @nutcrackerr, @nocasdatsgay, @auxcordlawd, @kitzyx, 

Henry Creel | Stranger Things

Words [Henry '001' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: 'Papa' welcomed you to the labs, where you meet 001. He is reluctant around you, until he starts to develop a soft spot for you. Warnings: virgin!Henry and virgin!Reader, 001 is a bit of a bitch at first, 001 talks you through it, praising, fingering, cunnilingus, unprotected p in v, quickie, creampie, first time. LINK HERE

Perfection [Henry '001' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: Sharing a moment in the lab's hallway. You can't wait to finally escape. Warnings: kissing, sub!Henry, no smut (yet - but there is spicy stuff), Henry wants to be called a good boy, he behaves for you. LINK HERE

Laboratory [Henry '001' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: A kind of 7 minutes in Heaven with Henry '001' Creel! Warnings: smut, unprotected p in v, 001's in your mind and not only LINK HERE

Breathe [Henry '001' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: request, hurt/comfort Warnings: hurt/comfort LINK HERE

Plaything [Henry 'Mr Whatsit' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: You are Henry Creel's only kidnapped victim. / and his favourite. Warnings: smut | Reader 18+ LINK HERE

Run Away [Henry 'Mr Whatsit' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: You, the only kidnapped victim of Henry, try to escape. Warnings: smut | Reader 18+ LINK HERE

Caught [Henry 'Mr Whatsit' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: Henry 'Mr Whatsit' catches you touching yourself. Warnings: smut | Reader 18+ | implied masturbation, breast play, choking, unprotected p in v, blowjob, handjob LINK HERE [PART 1] | LINK HERE [PART 2]

Stay [Henry 'Mr Whatsit' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: Henry 'Mr Whatsit' makes sure you choose to stay with him. Warnings: blowjob | handjob | slight manipulation of reader LINK HERE

Saved [Henry 'Mr Whatsit' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: Henry 'Mr Whatsit' doesn't understand why you took him out of the cave. | Henry 'Mr Whatsit' wonders why you chose to stay. Warnings: hurt/comfort | angst | Reader 18+, unprotected p in v, riding Henry, handjob, control play, orgasm control, multiple orgasms, creampie LINK HERE [PART 1] | LINK HERE [PART 2]

Free [Henry 'Mr Whatsit' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: Henry 'Mr Whatsit' is no longer influenced by The Mind Flayer, but he has to come to terms with it. Warnings: angst | comfort LINK HERE

Cave [Henry 'Mr Whatsit' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: How do you think Henry would handle freaky!reader? Warnings: fingering, cunnilingus, p in v, cave s*x, dubcon at start (but it is con) LINK HERE

Accidentally [Henry 'Mr Whatsit' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: You accidentally call Henry daddy. Warnings: cunnilingus, unprotected p in v, praising LINK HERE

Quiet [Henry 'Mr Whatsit' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: Henry sneaks up on you. mindless smut ngl. [maybe inspired by The Trials: Winter Solstice, ep. 1, if you know you know.] Warnings: smut | 18+ LINK HERE

Comfort [Henry 'Mr Whatsit' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: Henry tries to figure out what you're trying to do, and why you act so giddy. You're up to something, and Henry's going to find out, whether he likes it or not. Warnings: handjob, sub!Henry, praise, teasing Henry, calling Henry a 'good boy' LINK HERE

Mind [Henry 'Mr Whatsit' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: You act different and Henry searches your mind for answers. Warnings: manipulation/gaslighting, arguing, cunnilingus, control play, a bit of choking at some point, praising, dom!Henry, Vecna hand mentioned LINK HERE

Bedroom [Henry 'Mr Whatsit' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: Just writing practice to keep myself from quitting. Warnings: none LINK HERE

Nerd [Henry 'Mr Whatsit' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: My take on Nerd!Henry. Warnings: a bit of smut at the end LINK HERE [PART 1] | LINK [PART 2]

Starved [Henry 'Mr Whatsit' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: heavily touch starved reader Warnings: smut LINK HERE

Hunt [Henry 'Mr Whatsit' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: Henry doesn't quite get why you get all hot and bothered about being hunted. He quickly discovers the appeal. Warnings: primal play, Henry hunts the reader through the cave, dom!Henry, possessive!Henry [reader is into it], unprotected p in v, Vecna hand involved. LINK HERE

Creak [Henry 'Mr Whatsit' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: You play hide-and-seek in the forest with Henry... the problem is, it's not quite a game. Warnings: none LINK HERE

Truth [Henry 'Vecna' Creel x f!Reader | Stranger Things]

About: Henry shows you the truth. [One of the most unhinged things I've written.] Warnings: smut | tentacle play [vine play considering it's Vecna] | choking | restraining | dub-con [leaning toward con] | tentacle[vine] bj | fingering LINK HERE

Theo Deschamps | The Trials

Spell [Theo Deschamps x f!Reader | The Trials]

About: Smut no plot, testing my ability to write immersive dialogue during smut (that hopefully sounds like Theo) Warnings: dry humping, talking you through it LINK HERE

Wardrobe [Theo Deschamps x f!Reader | The Trials]

About: 7 minutes in Heaven with Theo Deschamps. Warnings: smut, dry humping, f!receiving LINK HERE

Kit Marlowe | Will

Devil's Apprentice [Kit Marlowe x f!Reader | Will]

About: Trying my hand at writing Marlowe. Warnings: none, flirty drunk Marlowe(?) LINK HERE

Quill [Kit Marlowe x m!Reader | Will]

About: You are Marlowe's copyist. Warnings: bj [reader receiving], drunk Marlowe, Marlowe throws a tantrum sort of, flirty Marlowe. LINK HERE

Play [Kit Marlowe x m!Reader | Will]

About: Theatre date with Kit Marlowe! Warnings: none LINK HERE

T'was so, he stroke me with a slender dart... [Kit Marlowe x f/m/gn!Reader | Will]

About:drabble Warnings: a lil spicey? LINK HERE

Doubt [Kit Marlowe x f/m/gn!Reader | Will]

About: Kit Marlowe can be a pain, but sometimes he is understanding. Warnings: none LINK HERE

Alexander Babtiste | Witchboard

Tarot [Alexander Babtiste x f!Reader | Witchboard]

About: Alexander wants to see if you truly are a witch or just pretending. Warnings: none (?) maybe vague smut mentions LINK HERE

Caleb Sykes | Horizon: An American Saga

Girlie [Caleb Sykes x f!Reader | Horizon: An American Saga]

About: Caleb Sykes had his eyes on you, and how he pays you a visit. | Caleb comes back for you and you run away together, but Junior isn't happy about it. | Caleb chooses you. Warnings: slightly non-con at first but then it turns con quite quickly, riding his hand. | unprotected p in v, quicky, loss of virginity | a little angst, hurt/comfort, sort of happy ending? LINK HERE [PART 1] | LINK HERE [PART 2] | LINK HERE [PART 3]

Ride [Caleb Sykes x f!Reader | Horizon: An American Saga]

About: You showed Caleb too much. Warnings: breeding, smut LINK HERE

Another [Caleb Sykes x f!Reader | Horizon: An American Saga]

About: Caleb sees you putting your daughter to sleep and decides one child isn't enough. A bit more plot than usual. | Caleb Sykes finds out he is going to be a dad again! Warnings: married!Caleb x Reader, dad!Caleb, breeding, unprotected p in v (obviously), dirty talking (Caleb isn't an asshole with you, he just knows it turns you on when he speaks like that) | married!Caleb x Reader, dad!Caleb, fluff, a bit of angst LINK HERE [PART 1] | LINK HERE [PART 2]

Edward de Vere | Anonymous

Muse [Edward de Vere x f!Reader | Anonymous]

About:You are threatened and Edward is the man who can protect you. Warnings: none LINK HERE

Caius Volturi | Twilight

Kiss [Caius Volturi x f!Reader | Twilight]

About: Birthday surprise. Warnings: none LINK HERE

Skiff | Thomas the Tank Engine

Is this… a ship? [Skiff x f/m/gn!Reader | Thomas the Tank Engine]

About: A railboat's dream. Warnings: none LINK HERE

Jamie Campbell Bower | Rockstar/Actor

Ghost Story [Jamie Campbell Bower x f!Reader | Rockstar/Actor]

About: A drabble about Jamie coming home after a long day but still making time to read to you. Warnings: none LINK HERE

Together [Jamie Campbell Bower x f!Reader | Rockstar/Actor]

About: Power went out... what now? Little fluff shot. Warnings: none LINK HERE