7.Anna's new life
Claire—Anna—felt something shift inside her.
The fear, the confusion, the helplessness… Gone.
All that remained was rage.
Dr. Crane took a step forward, his silhouette cutting through the dim light like a phantom. Unshaken. Unbothered. His smile, a sliver of shadow stretched too thin.
"You were never supposed to come back here" he murmured
Claire barely heard him. Her pulse was a steady drumbeat, her mind sharp, cold.
Her eyes flicked toward the woman in the corner—the real Anna—frail, broken, a whisper of the self she had forgotten. Shackles bit into bruised wrists. Lips too dry to form words. A body wasting away in silence.
Those fragments of memory soon started taking shapes...
Dr Elias Crane
He had kept her here...
Her fingers twitched, curling into fists.
"What did you do to me?" Her voice was quiet. Too quiet.
Dr. Crane's smile deepened. "I saved you."
A whisper. A promise. A curse.
The words slithered under her skin, leaving ice in their wake.
Saved her?
From what?
His gaze darkened, the amusement in his eyes sharpening into something almost reverent. "You were broken, Anna. Weak. I gave you a new life—a better one. A chance to start over, free from your past."
And the worst part ?
She had believed it !
The truth crashed into her like a wrecking ball, tearing through the fragile framework of her reality. Too fast. Too much. Too loud.
Her chest tightened.
Her breath came shallow and rapid, not enough air, never enough. The room tilted beneath her feet. The cold concrete, the flickering bulb, the scent of rust and decay—everything blurred, dissolving at the edges like ink bleeding through paper.
She staggered back, her hand flying to the wall for support, but the sensation of rough stone beneath her palm didn't ground her. It felt foreign. Everything did.
Because she wasn't Claire.
She never had been.
Tears ran down those cheeks while jagged sob ripped from her throat. "No. No, no, no—"
The words came unbidden, spilling from her lips in a desperate chant, as if saying them enough times would undo reality. As if she could force the world to make sense again.
But it wouldn't.
Because this was the truth.
Memories slammed into her, violent and relentless.
The life she thought she lived.
The life that had been stolen.
The hands holding her down.
The sting of a needle in her neck.
A voice whispering, " Forget who you were."
She had been erased.
Her pulse pounded in her ears. Too loud. Deafening. It drowned out every thought, every coherent thread of logic.
She had spent two years walking through a life that wasn't hers. Waking up. Drinking coffee. Going through the motions of a fabricated existence.
And all the while, the real her had been here.
Alone.
Forgotten.
Left to rot in the dark.
The weight of it all was unbearable, crushing down on her chest like a closing fist. The room blurred, the ground threatening to disappear beneath her feet.
No.
Not now.
Her mind screamed for order, for something to hold onto.
She gritted her teeth, her trembling fingers curling into fists.
She forced herself to look at him, standing in the doorway, watching. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes—they gleamed.
Not in concern.
Not in regret.
In amusement.
"You were never supposed to come back here," he murmured again!
Her breath hitched.
A name surfaced. Crawling out from the wreckage of her mind.
Dr. Elias Crane.
Her former psychiatrist.
Her savior.
Her captor.
The man who had stolen her life and stitched together a new one.
Her stomach twisted with a nausea so violent she thought she might retch.
Dr. Crane tilted his head, studying her like an experiment still unfolding. "You were broken, Anna. Weak. I gave you a new life—a better one. A chance to start over, free from your past."
Her hands shook.
He wasn't lying.
She had been drowning in grief after—
Her mind shuddered, resisting. A door slammed shut, blocking whatever memory lurked behind it.
Dr. Crane watched her carefully. Too carefully.
His lips curled into something almost sympathetic. Almost.
"You've to trust me.... I SAVED YOU!!! "
The words sent a chill down her spine.
He had ripped her apart. Hollowed her out. Built a new identity inside her bones.
She had spent years believing the illusion.
She had been his greatest experiment
A slow horror crept through her veins.
She had trusted him. Let him into her mind. And he had rewritten her like a blank page, stripping away every piece of Anna Prescott and sculpting her into something manageable.
Dr. Crane sighed, as if he were growing bored. "Enough of this. It's time for you to sleep again."
He reached into his coat.
A syringe.
No.
Not again.
She moved before she could think.
Pure instinct.
She lunged, knocking the needle from his grip. It clattered to the floor, rolling into the shadows.
Dr. Crane's expression cracked.
For the first time, he looked afraid.
"You—" he hissed. "You shouldn't remember this much."
Claire—Anna—stilled.
And then—
Something shifted inside her.
The fear. The disorientation. The helplessness.
Gone.
All that remained was rage.
Her body stopped trembling. Her breath evened out, slow and steady.
She curled her fingers around a length of rusted chain lying discarded on the floor.
And she swung.