novelraw Chapter 198: The Cage
Chapter 198: The Cage
Sera woke slowly.
Not the soft kind of waking that followed sleep.
This one scraped its way into her skull like metal dragged across concrete.
Her head felt stuffed with cotton and broken glass, her stomach tight and wrong. She didn’t move. Didn’t open her eyes yet. The air carried too much information already.
She felt the cold metal under her shoulder. It wasn’t uncomfortable, per say, but it was enough to tell her that she wasn’t at home anymore.
The steady hum of electricity through walls.
The faint chemical bite in the air that clung to things scrubbed too clean.
And...
She forced her eyes open.
The ceiling was far away from her. Too far to be normal.
Ten feet above her, steel panels crossed in a grid so tight that even the shadows stayed in neat little boxes. The plexiglass walls were closed in at eight feet by eight feet, a perfect square built for something less than human comfort.
The door was made of the thick material. The kind meant to hold things in.
As much as she hated being in a cell again, Sera had to appreciate the fact that she wasn’t in a dog’s cage that barely held her.
Across from her, separated by another line of bars, Luci lay curled in on himself. The wolf barely fit in the space they’d shoved him into. His silver fur brushed against the plexiglass every time his ribs moved.
His head rested on his paws. His ears twitched once but didn’t lift.
They’d drugged him hard.
The sight made something low and wrong stir under her ribs.
The creature.
It had been quiet for days, only a low thrum when the hunts had ended, when the food had been fresh, when the nights passed without trouble.
But it wasn’t quiet now.
It rose the way water rises in a place already drowning.
He betrayed us, it hissed, and Sera could feel the rage simmering under her chest. It was no surprise to her that they had been betrayed. In fact, she didn’t even have to ask who the ’he’ was that her creature was talking about.
After all, she had never trusted Noah since the moment he walked into the gym.
The only thing she was thankful about was the fact that every morning, before breakfast, she put everything from her room into her space.
As much as she couldn’t leave Luci behind, she couldn’t leave Oogie Boogie behind either.
She didn’t bother to answer her creature, now was not the time to be distracted.
He bound the others. Sedated the wolf. Called the men with the guns.
It spoke in pulses, not words. It was too enraged for words.
Instead, Sera got impressions, images. The feel of her own body carried like film spliced through another reel—the soldiers tying wrists, the stretchers waiting under the rotors, the sound of boots in her tower.
She hadn’t been awake.
But the creature had never slept. But since the body was useless because of the sedatives, the creature couldn’t take over and kill everyone.
It had watched everything that happened, all through her eyes, right up until the point that Noah had put a hood on her head and blocked her sight.
Now her creature shifted through her veins like oil through water, weighing every detail, every remembered movement, measuring the order of deaths for later.
Would we spare him? it asked, curious rather than merciful. He brought the wolf.
Sera looked at Luci again.
His ears still didn’t lift. His body stayed curled tight, breath slow and even.
She rolled one shoulder against the floor and sat up slowly.
The world tilted once, then caught itself.
The creature didn’t comment when her fingers pressed against the plexiglass. It didn’t need to. The smooth surface didn’t give her anything to grip, no weak spot to exploit.
However, instead of being upset, Sera simply shrugged her shoulders.
This wasn’t the first time... she knew what would happen.
At some point in time they were going to take her out of the cage. After all, what was the point of keeping her alive if they weren’t going to use her for something.
All she had to do was buy her time and wait for them to drop their guard.
And they would... they always did.
She leaned her forehead against the cool surface, feeling the hum of the room through her bones.
Where were the others?
No voices carried through the walls. No footsteps marked familiar weight. The corridor outside ran in both directions, pale and square and empty.
The creature stretched inside her like something testing its own edges.
This place will break, it told her.
Not yet, she answered.
Luci’s tail shifted once against the floor.
His paws flexed.
He was waking slow. Like her.
She watched the twitch in his ears, the faint movement of his jaw when he dreamed through the last of the drugs. He would open his eyes soon. He would see clear cage that he was in. He would hate it. He would hate them.
And when she gave the word, he would tear through the first thing in reach.
But not yet.
The air tasted wrong.
It was too clean. Too empty.
The creature did not like it.
He will die, it decided.
Once again, Sera didn’t ask who. It was already understood.
Noah.
It showed her his face in perfect detail—the calm when he’d carried the wolf, the way he’d tied the knots on wrists and ankles without hurry. The way he’d watched as the straps went down across her chest, her arms, her legs, his expression as smooth as the syringe sliding home.
Bringing Luci didn’t matter.
He will die, the creature repeated, softer now. Just... less slowly than the others.
Sera sat back against the wall.
She breathed once. Twice. Measured the hum of lights above.
After a while, footsteps could be heard coming in her direction.
It wasn’t the heavy march of soldiers. Not the stagger of prisoners. These sounded neat. Shoes built for halls like this, built for walking between cages without looking at what was inside them.
She didn’t stand.
The creature didn’t stir either. It coiled low in her chest, watchful.
Keys clinked. Paper shifted. A clipboard’s hard edge tapped once against a thigh before the steps stopped outside her cell.
"Oh," a voice said, calm and brisk, as if she had been waiting for this moment all morning. "You’re awake."
Dr. Layla Orhan stood on the other side of the bars, her pen poised above the top page.
Like she had never seen Sera before in her life.
Too bad Sera couldn’t say the same.