Mira Pov
They didn’t take me back to the holding room.
That was the first thing that felt wrong.
When the door opened, and I was told to stand, I expected the same corridor I had already started to memorize, the same dull walk back past identical doors and silent guards. Instead, the direction changed.
Left instead of right.
Deeper instead of back.
No one explained why.
The woman who had collected my blood walked slightly ahead of me, holding a tablet close to her chest like it mattered more than anything else in the building. She didn’t look at me once, not even when I slowed down a little just to see if she would notice.
She didn’t.
That silence between us made my thoughts louder.
We passed two guarded doors before I realized the atmosphere had changed. The guards here didn’t
