SOFIA
The permission came without explanation.
Clara told me that morning, her voice devoid of the usual clinical detachment, replaced by something even more unsettling: a casualness that implied my movements were now a mere administrative detail. I was sitting by the window in my room, tracing the silhouette of the high perimeter walls against the gray sky, when she entered.
“You’ll be going out today,” she said.
I looked up, the words failing to register for a heartbeat. “Out?”
“Yes.”
That was it. No context. No buildup. No map of where I was allowed to go or what I was expected to do. Just a word that hadn't existed in my reality since I first stepped across the Morelli threshold. It felt like a trap, a lure cast into the water to see if I would bite.
I studied her for a second,
