"They left me that day, but I can't blame them.
The world had cast me off long before.
We were only children,
Too small for such a burden."
Subject Holding 9B wasn't a name that inspired confidence.
Hell, it wasn't even a name... just a rust-ridden plaque hanging crooked on the concrete wall of a building long since forgotten.
The locals called it the Bunker.
Not because it was secure. Mordis didn't do secure. But because it was buried, half-submerged beneath slag piles and drainage tubes, slouched in the back alley of the Gutter District, ignored, vaguely threatening, and smelling like decay.
Inside, it was worse.
The lights flickered. The walls… well, they listened.
Not in the comforting way, like a friend leaning close. No.
More like a predator waiting for you to sleep.
And they were patient.
They called it an orphanage, but that was generous.
No one ever left after entering the Bunker.
It would be fairer to call it a warehouse. For kids who didn't make the cut.
Not special enough. Not smart enough. Not stable enough.
Swept off the streets and funneled into numbered rooms with thin sheets and thinner futures.
No one expected them to do anything remarkable.
Except vanish.
That they were good at.
Officially, it didn't exist.
Unofficially, everyone in the Gutter knew the Bunker was a dumping ground for inconvenient children—too loud, too poor.
The sort of kids who asked the wrong questions.
Or existed in the wrong postcode.
Dante had been there for years.
Maybe.
Time didn't work right in 9B.
The clocks were all cracked, and the sun never came close enough to bother trying.
He might've been twelve. Might've been fifty.
Didn't matter.
The only things that aged in 9B were your scars.
And those didn't fade.
They grew roots.
Dante didn't talk much. Didn't cry either, which was practically unheard of in a place like the Bunker.
He just watched.
His eyes had that dull, far-off look, like someone had dimmed the light behind them just low enough that no one would bother to fix it.
Some said he'd been here longer than anyone.
Others whispered he'd died in his sleep, and when he woke, he came back wrong.
He didn't deny it.
He didn't deny anything.
He just was. A shadow in the shape of a boy.
But it hadn't always been like that.
There was a time before, when he laughed. Argued. Got into trouble for things that mattered.
Back when Marnie was still around.
Everything changed because of her.
Or more accurately, because she disappeared.
Marnie was all elbows, defiance, and makeshift hope.
She argued for sport. Resisted out of habit.
Had an irritating tendency to believe things could be better.
A walking administrative headache.
Then one day, she vanished.
No warning. No fuss. Just… gone.
One morning, she was there. Red-faced and defiant, mid-argument with the orphanage director over chore allocation, like she was staging a revolution.
The next, her bed was empty.
Still made.
Sheets tight.
Pillow untouched.
After that, Dante changed.
He didn't stop speaking. He simply learned to wait.
To watch.
To let silence do the talking.
He studied the staff.
Learned which footsteps meant danger.
Which silences meant someone wasn't coming back.
He didn't argue.
He didn't fight.
He just waited.
And the others watched him.
Something in the way he moved—quiet, precise, already grieving—told them what words never could.
So the kids held each other tighter.
Spoke in glances.
They found comfort in each other's presence, in the simple proof that someone else still remembered their name.
That they hadn't been refiled. Reassigned. Erased.
Every night, before lights out, Marnie used to whisper the names of the kids who disappeared, like naming them could keep them from being erased completely. A quiet roll call for the ones who had gone before.
Even in that hellhole, they found ways.
Tiny rebellions. Quiet rituals.
And sometimes, they played.
Not because it was safe.
But because pretending it was... believing, just for ten minutes, that they were still children... was the only freedom they had left.