The Host

ChapterFour

There was no day or night inside the white room. Alina keep on hugging both her knees, thinking….. analyzing.

Only the humming ceiling lights that never turned off, the metallic smell of sterilization, and the mechanical hiss of a vent in the corner. The world outside felt like a dream now — like her lola’s voice, like sunlight, like home.

Alina had stopped crying after some time.

Alam nyang walang magagawa ang pag iyak sa mga oras na iyon.

Now, she lay on the cot, staring at the ceiling. Silent. Watchful.

They fed her twice a day — meals on trays shoved through a slot in the door. They didn’t speak unless they had to. Each day was the same: injections, questions, observation.

“Do you feel any abnormalities in your body, Alina?”

“No.”

“Any unusual thoughts? Changes in perception?”

“No.”

“Do you remember anything… from the night of the bite?”

She hesitated. “Just pain. Then nothing.”

The woman asking the questions — Dr. Evelyn Graves, as she’d heard the guards call her — smiled in that unsettling, clinical way again.

“Good,” Graves replied. “You’re doing well.”

But Alina didn’t believe that for a second.

She cannot trust anyone anymore.

----------------------

Three days later.

They took her to a different room.

This one was larger. Dimly lit. Cameras in the corners. A single chair sat at the center.

As soon as she stepped inside, she felt it — pressure, heavy and strange, crawling over her skin. A sound, almost too low to hear, buzzed in her ears.

They were watching her closely now. Testing something. Like some lab rat.

Dr. Graves stood behind a tinted window, a microphone clipped to her coat. A low voice came through the speakers.

“Sit.”

Alina obeyed.

The metal was cold under her. Her wrists still bore red lines from the zip ties.

“Your vitals have been steady. No signs of abnormality. Yet the bite from Specimen 23 should have produced results by now,”

Graves said. “That makes you an anomaly.”

Alina stayed quiet.

“Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully — at least partially.

“I think you do,” Graves said, tilting her head.

She nodded to someone behind the glass.

A loud buzz filled the room — and suddenly, the air changed.

It became heavy. Electric.

Alina felt the fine hairs on her arms rise.

Her heart beat faster — not out of fear, but instinct.

A part of her — buried, hidden, restrained — stirred beneath her skin.

But she gritted her teeth, curled her fists, and fought the pull.

Not yet.

They couldn’t see it.

If they saw it, they’d never let her go.

======================

Later, in her cell, she wrapped herself in the thin blanket and sat in the corner, shaking.

She could’ve stopped that noise. Could’ve bent the room into silence. Could’ve made every camera shatter and the guards freeze mid-step.

But not without revealing everything.

What if they used her to hurt others? What if they turned her into a weapon — or worse — studied her like a thing?

She wouldn’t survive that. Not again.

So she played along.

Harmless.

Broken.

Forgettable.

But deep down, behind her calm expression and bruised arms…

Alina was memorizing everything.

The guard rotations.

The access cards.

The keypad tones.

Even the scent of Graves’ perfume — subtle lavender.

She wasn’t weak.

She was waiting.

====================================

Elsewhere in the facility, Dr. Graves reviewed her data with a furrowed brow.

“She’s showing extreme cognitive control. Emotional suppression. She’s either a failed host... or she's shielding us from the truth.”

One of the technicians leaned closer. “If she’s hiding it, what do we do?”

Graves tapped a file labeled: Subject 0: Reyes, Alina – Origin: Philippines – Status: Unmanifested

“We’ll increase exposure. Pressure breaks everything eventually.”

She stared at the video feed of Alina’s cell.

“She just doesn’t know it yet.”