WANT ME BACK. BREAK ME TWICE

The Cold Room

Inside the pitch-black sanctuary of his SUV, the silence was thick with the scent of wet leather and raw despair. Rohan’s breathing was ragged as he stared at the glowing screen of his device.

The decryption script had finished, but the physical damage Treas had caused to the server hardware had left the file corrupted. It was trapped at ninety-two percent.

With a numb, trembling finger, Rohan hit Play.

The video feed flickered to life. The timestamp read ninety four hours ago—the exact day he had boarded the jet for Zurich. The scullery camera showed Elara. She was leaning heavily against the counter, grom yhe time he was giving instructions to his staff, her small frame shaking with a violent, hacking cough. She looked so frail, so utterly exhausted, that a physical ache bloomed behind Rohan’s ribs.

Then, it moved to the moment Treas was talking to Elara only moments after her had left, the look on Treas's face wasn't one of giving instructions, the look was cold with a sickening smile on her lips. Then he saw the moment Treas walked into the house holding Allegra's hand firmly. Funny he had not thought about it, how Allegra was home at the time instead of being in school. He had been too consumed by his own pain and guilt that the thought hadn't even crossed his mind. He noticed the moment Treas pulled Allegra towards the corridor to the back, forcing open the Laundry room. Unfortunately there's no Cameras in that room so h couldn't exactly see what happened there. But something shocked him when he saw the door swing open, Elara crawling on her knees and Treas was right behind her clutching Allegra by the shoulder as the little girl cried, and Elara begged. Treas holding Allegra very firmly as if threatening Elara, then Treas's hand rose up, as if to strike someone.

Rohan leaned closer, his obsidian eyes widening as he watched his wife confront the sick girl. He couldn't hear the audio clearly through the static, but the malice on Treas’s face was unmistakable. Treas lunged forward, her fingers clawing at Elara's uniform, shoving her backward. Elara staggered despite already being on her knees, as she fell hard against the stone floor.

Rohan’s breath caught in his throat. His blood ran instantly to ice. “No,” he whispered into the empty car. “No, no—”

Just as Treas raised her hand again, her face twisted in a manic snarl, the video suddenly froze.

The screen pixelated violently. A spinning loading wheel appeared in the center of the frame, the progress bar stalling ruthlessly.

`[ERROR: INCOMPLETE DOWNLOAD. DATA PACKET 92% RECOVERED. RECONNECTING TO MASTER SERVER...]`

"Damn it!" Rohan roared.

He slammed his wrapped, bloodied fist violently against the steering wheel, the horn blaring a solitary, echoing shriek into the pouring rain. The raw frustration tore through him like an electric shock. He was seconds away from seeing the truth, and the screen was mocking him with a frozen loading icon.

Before he could attempt to force a hard reboot on the script, his phone violently vibrated in his palm, shattering the quiet. The caller ID flashed the estate’s head physician.

Rohan snapped the phone to his ear, his voice a lethal, impatient rasp. "What?"

"Mr. Margualie, you need to get to the private wing of the city hospital immediately," the doctor spoke rapidly, panic bleeding through the line. "It's Madam Treas. Shortly after you left, she suffered a severe panic episode. Her blood pressure has spiked to a critical, lethal threshold. If we cannot stabilize her within the hour, the high pressure will induce premature labor. The baby's life is in severe danger."

Rohan’s jaw clenched so tightly it pained him. He looked out through the rain-streaked windshield, his mind spinning in a vortex of absolute fury and obligation. Treas was shielding herself with his unborn heir. She knew he was hunting her, and she had engineered a medical emergency to pull his hands off her throat.

"I'm on my way," Rohan hissed, slamming the phone down.

He threw the SUV into reverse, the tires screaming against the gravel as he tore away from the old woman’s estate, forced to run back to the very viper who had ruined his life.

Across the Atlantic.

While Rohan was being pulled back into the suffocating web of the Margualie Mansion, a different kind of finality was settling into the subterranean levels of the international medical facility.

The active laboratory was empty now. The high-tech diagnostic monitors had been turned off, their screens dark. Because Elara Vale’s death had been officially called at the sixteen-hour mark—a catastrophic failure of the trust fund's extraction protocol her body could no longer remain in the active medical bay.

Two operatives silently rolled a stainless-steel gurney into the room. Elara’s form was completely limp, her translucent skin resembling carved marble under the dim corridor lights. A heavy, sterile white shroud was pulled entirely over her face, cementing her status. She was no longer a patient. She was cargo.

They wheeled the gurney down a long, concrete corridor, the wheels clicking rhythmically in the empty silence, until they reached the deepest level of the complex: the private, isolated morgue.

The air down here was freezing, smelling heavily of ozone, chemical preservatives, and biting frost.

A lone female morgue attendant was waiting for them. She was professional, clinical, and completely detached from the high-stakes drama that had brought the girl to this country. To her, this was simply another file to close.

"Identity verified?" the attendant asked, her voice echoing hollowly off the tiled walls as she checked her digital tablet.

"Elara Vale," the lead operative replied flatly. "The stasis collapsed. Core failure. We are awaiting further instructions from Zurich regarding repatriation of the remains."

The attendant nodded, sliding open one of the large, industrial stainless-steel freezer slabs. A thick plume of frosty, sub-zero air rolled out of the drawer, tumbling toward the floor like fog.

"Leave her here," the attendant said, unlocking the gurney brakes. "I'll complete the intake logs and prep the freeze."

The operatives turned and exited, the heavy security doors sealing shut behind them with a definitive, pressurized hiss.

Left alone in the absolute quiet of the morgue, the attendant stepped up to the metal table. She reached out and pulled the heavy white shroud down to Elara’s shoulders to perform the final mandatory physical check. Elara’s face was beautiful, hollowed by tragedy, and completely devoid of life. The blackened iron burn on her forearm stood out in horrific contrast against her frozen, porcelain skin.

The attendant picked up her chemical logbook, turning her back to the gurney for a brief moment to log the intake time and serialize the freezer slab locking mechanism.

The mechanical hum of the refrigeration units filled the room.

Then, it happened. From the corner of her eye, against the blinding, polished stainless steel of the operating table, the attendant detected a faint, microscopic shadow of movement.

A tiny, almost imperceptible twitch of Elara’s left index finger.

The attendant froze. Her pen remained suspended over the logbook, her breath catching in her throat. The silence in the morgue suddenly became completely deafening, the air turning thick and heavy.

She slowly turned around, her eyes widening as she stared intensely at the pale, unbreathing girl on the slab. There was no rise and fall of her chest. There was no sound of air entering her lungs.

I'm exhausted, the attendant thought to herself, a cold sweat breaking out under her uniform. The flickering fluorescent lights are playing tricks on my mind.

She took a slow, hesitant step closer to the table, leaning over Elara's perfectly still face, waiting to see if the simulation was truly over—or if the real nightmare was just beginning.