EPISODE 2: THE DAY THEY CAME
1223 Words
The Dying Gift – Episode 2
The orphanage roof didn’t feel the same without Nali.
The breeze was sharper. The silence louder. The sky no longer felt like it was listening.
Seviah sat on the rusted ledge anyway, legs drawn up to her chest, spine curved like a question mark that had no answer. The book she clutched wasn’t one she had read. It was Nali’s. Still dog-eared, still folded at the corners with notes in the margins — scribbles like:
“What if they’re lying?”
“Do gifts come before blood?”
“Sev, I saw you glow.”
Nali had written that last one in green ink, days before she vanished.
No one believed her. No one even asked.
The official story was that Nali had fallen ill.
“Observation sickness,” the Matron had said, face tight. “She’s been moved to the Recovery Wing.”
But the Recovery Wing had no windows.
And no one ever came back from it.
Seviah didn’t ask questions.
She didn’t speak at all for two days.
The silence inside her became a place.
A room with no door.
A hallway without end.
When the other girls laughed at lunch, Seviah didn’t flinch. When the bell rang for lights-out, she didn’t move. When the Matron pulled her aside and said, “You were close to Nali, weren’t you?” — she just stared.
There was a moment — just one — when she almost broke.
It was the night she returned to their shared blanket.
Seviah pulled it close to her nose and smelled Nali’s skin.
Jasmine. Ink. A little bit of rain.
She closed her eyes. And for a moment, she heard her voice:
“You think you’re broken, Sev. But you’re the only one who’s whole.”
Then — nothing.
The white coats came the next night.
Not with sirens. Not with guns.
Just with silence.
Four of them.
No words. No warnings.
They opened the dorm door and stood there in their clean white suits, hands folded, masks glowing faint blue beneath their eyes.
The other girls pretended to sleep.
No one screamed.
No one blinked.
Seviah sat up slowly, pulling the blanket from her legs. She didn’t resist. Didn’t run. She just looked around the room one last time.
No goodbye.
No Nali.
Only the quiet — and the air, thick as drowning.
She walked out barefoot.
One of the men handed her a uniform.
Another fastened a band around her wrist.
It blinked red once, then dimmed.
“Non-Compliant Female,” one of them muttered.
“Echo-sensitive,” another added.
“Tier One candidate,” said a third.
They weren’t talking to her.
They were talking like she was already gone.
The vehicle was long, black, and windowless.
Inside, she sat alone. No guards. No seatbelt.
Just a humming sound on the walls that felt like a heartbeat.
And a screen above the door that said: Transport S-47: Cleared.
Her file number.
She didn’t know why she had one.
Or when it had been assigned.
She tried to remember her last medical exam.
She couldn’t.
She tried to remember the first time she heard the voice in her head.
She couldn’t.
But she did remember something strange:
A moment, three months ago, when she touched Nali’s wrist — and Nali flinched like she’d been burned.
“There’s something in you,” she’d whispered.
“It feels like… a scream.”
They reached the facility at dawn.
Grey towers. Glass walls. No trees.
The door opened by itself.
And a woman stood waiting.
She wore a grey lab coat and gloves that looked more surgical than warm. Her hair was braided tight, and her face showed no warmth at all — just recognition.
Like she’d been expecting Seviah for years.
“ID S-47,” she said, checking a device.
“Tag confirmed. Room: Observation Block 4. No transfer required. This one’s already in the system.”
Already in the system?
Seviah’s stomach turned.
“I—” she started.
But the woman didn’t let her finish.
“Speaking privileges are suspended for Tier One inductees until confirmation of cognitive silence,” she said. “Please comply.”
Cognitive silence.
As if thinking too loud was punishable now.
They led her through a narrow corridor lit by buzzing white panels. The air smelled like metal and old bleach.
She passed doors with names she couldn’t read. Heard machines humming. A scream — far off, muffled.
She didn’t ask.
She didn’t look back.
Observation Block 4 was a glass cube with no windows.
Inside: a bed. A toilet. A wall light that never shut off.
And a mirror that wasn’t a mirror.
She could feel it watching.
She sat on the floor. Crossed her legs. Pressed her forehead to her knees.
No tears came.
Only the voice.
“You’re getting close.”
She looked up.
There was no one in the room.
“Closer than you think.”
She stood.
Walked to the mirror.
Touched the glass.
And there — right at the bottom edge, in faint, red digital letters — she saw her name:
SEVIAH
It blinked once.
Then glitched.
Then they disappeared.
Her chest tightened.
The room didn’t move. Nothing changed. But something shifted inside her — something low and coiled, like a warning in her bones.
She backed away from the mirror slowly.
Had they deleted her?
Why?
She turned toward the corner where the wall met the ceiling — there was a camera embedded there. She knew they were watching.
She stared at the red light.
Let them look.
She wasn’t going to flinch.
Hours passed — or minutes. The lights never dimmed. No one returned. Her stomach ached, but she didn’t ask for food.
She laid on the bed but didn’t sleep.
Not even when the voice came again.
“You were never meant to be in the files.”
It sounded closer this time.
Like it was inside the walls.
“You were meant to be in the fire.”
Seviah’s hands clenched the thin sheet beneath her. The air crackled. No lights flickered. No alarms.
But she felt it.
Felt the pressure crawling up her arms like static.
A faint glow lit the tips of her fingers. Not white. Not gold.
Something darker.
Like burned silver.
Then, just as quickly — it vanished.
Her hands were normal again.
The light returned to the mirror, no longer showing her name.
Just a new word:
RECALIBRATING…
She stepped closer.
And the mirror glitched one final time — flickered black — then revealed a different name.
Not hers.
But Nali’s.
NALI LETHA S-42
DECEASED: PENDING
Seviah’s blood turned cold.
She stepped back from the mirror, but it was like her feet didn’t belong to her anymore.
That name — Nali’s name — wasn’t supposed to be here. It wasn’t supposed to follow her.
She whispered it aloud, just once.
“Nali…”
The sound cracked in her throat like something forbidden.
The lights overhead flickered.
The bed groaned behind her, metal bending as though from weight — though no one had sat down.
And then—
The door lock clicked.
Once.
Twice.
Then slowly began to turn.
Someone — or something — was coming in.
But her name was still gone.
And Nali’s?
Still blinking.
Pending.
- Writer
