6. The woman left behind
Anna's lips moved. No voice. No sound. But Claire understood.
"Find me."
Claire took another step.
The mirror darkened.
Anna's eyes widened in horror.
A rush of cold air.
And the ground vanished beneath her feet. Claire fell, weightless, into the abyss...
---
She woke up.... In a vaguely familiar surrounding.
But didn't have time to process....
Her pulse pounded in her ears. The woman in the corner—frail, trembling, barely clinging to existence—wasn't a stranger.
It was her.
Or rather… the version of her that had been left behind.
Anna Prescott.
The woman's hollow eyes flickered upward, locking onto Claire. A shuddering breath escaped her lips, more like a broken gasp than anything human. Her lips parted, but no words came—only a silent plea, a question carved deep into her gaze.
"Why did you leave me?"'
The room was small—barely more than a cage. The air hung thick with the scent of damp concrete, heavy and stale, seeping into Claire's lungs like a sickness. The walls were stained, streaked with something dark that had long since dried, and the only source of light came from a single bulb overhead. It flickered erratically, casting fractured shadows that crawled across the floor like restless specters.
Somewhere in the distance, water dripped. A slow, rhythmic sound. The kind that would drive a person mad if they were left alone with it long enough.
Claire swallowed hard. The taste of iron coated her tongue.
The shape in the corner, small, crumpled, barely more than bones wrapped in torn fabric. The woman's skin was pale, stretched too tight over her frame, her wrists bruised and raw from the rusted shackles that still clung to them. Dried blood crusted around the metal, marking the evidence of struggles long lost. Her arms curled protectively around her chest, as if she could fold into herself and disappear.
But the worst part was her eyes.
Wide.
Hollow.
Not quite lifeless—but not quite alive, either. They were the eyes of someone who had screamed until their voice was gone, fought until their body gave out, and then—resigned to the slow, creeping embrace of nothingness.
Claire's stomach twisted.
Anna Prescott.
The woman—the forgotten, discarded version of herself—shifted slightly, her breath rattling in her throat. Her lips moved, but no sound came. Just a faint, broken exhale.
A plea.
A question.
Why did you leave me?
Claire took a step back.
She knew this woman
She knew this place
The chains clinked softly, the sound echoing through the silence like a whisper of the past.
Anna didn't move again. Didn't try to reach out.
Because there was no point in trying to grasp something that had already abandoned her.
"Why did you leave me"
Anna didn't speak.... But Claire heard it...
The ground beneath Claire's feet felt unreal, like she was standing on the edge of a cliff, gravity shifting, pulling her into a truth too heavy to bear.
Memories slammed into her, relentless, unforgiving... those terrible flashbacks—
-The words slithered through her mind, soft, coaxing, absolute.
"You're not Anna anymore."
A sharp, sickening crack—pain burst through the back of her skull. The world spun, darkening at the edges, her limbs collapsing beneath her like a puppet with its strings violently severed.
And then—
A different life. A different name.
She woke up in a world that felt like hers, but wasn't. Every memory, every routine, every familiar face—just slightly wrong, like a melody played in the wrong key.
A life that fit her like a borrowed coat.
One she had never chosen.
She hadn't just found Anna Prescott.
She was Anna Prescott.
A sob wrenched from her throat, raw and broken. "No. No, no, no—"
It all made sense. The visions. The whispers. The way her past had always felt off, like a puzzle with missing pieces—because those pieces had been ripped away.
Her entire existence was a fabrication.
The air thickened, pressing down on Claire's chest like a closing fist.
Anna's breath hitched, her bruised wrists trembling as she clutched her shackles. Her wide, hollow eyes locked onto Claire's—pleading, accusing, knowing.
"You're me."
The words cracked through Claire's skull like a gunshot.
A metallic click.
Claire's pulse stilled.
Slowly, she turned.
There he was. Framed in the doorway. Tall. Composed. Smiling.
The same man from the black sedan. The same monster who had stolen her life, reshaped her into something else, something manageable.
What? He's alive ?? Still ?
His head tilted, watching her with something close to amusement.
"Now, now," he murmured, stepping forward. Calm. Unbothered. Absolute.
"I was hoping you'd never remember."
The weight of the past crashed down on Claire, solid and undeniable. No more questions. No more missing pieces.
She wasn't stolen. She wasn't broken.
She was erased.
The man took another step, his presence filling the room like a shadow stretching too far. His gaze flicked between them, assessing, calculating.
"You look upset." His voice was smooth, almost gentle. "I suppose that's understandable."
Claire's fingers curled into fists. The damp air, the scent of rust and decay—it was suffocating. But beneath the fear, beneath the trembling uncertainty, something else stirred.
A rage older than the life she had been forced into.
Because Anna wasn't just a whisper in the dark anymore.
She was awake.
And she was furious.