Part 7: The Listening
Summary:
Even drugged, even buried deep beneath restraints and static, Riven hears them. The children. Not with his ears. But with something else. A presence. A pressure. A pattern behind the pain. It starts as noise. Then it becomes awareness.
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He didn't know how long he'd been under.
Time was a flat thing in this place — a cold stretch of numbness and light that never changed.
Sometimes he would drift so deep into the dark that he forgot his own name.
But he never forgot them.
The kids.
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At first, it was just noise.
Muffled cries.
Slippered footsteps.
Metal doors opening. Gurneys rolling. Screams cut short.
He thought it was memory.
But then — they kept happening.
The same scream, twice. The same name, from two different rooms.
He realized: this wasn't echo.
This was now.
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He wasn't listening with his ears anymore.
He couldn't.
They kept him sedated, soundproofed, cut off from the world.
And still…
he heard them.
Not words.
Feelings.
Tension. Desperation.
The little ones curled under sheets that didn't warm them.
The older ones trying to be brave for the rest.
The sudden snaps when someone vanished, and didn't come back.
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And one night — no dreams, no clarity — just static in his skull like a storm…
he heard her voice again.
The girl.
The one they killed in front of him.
> Not her voice exactly.
More like the shape of her.
The weight of her fear.
The softness that got twisted and silenced.
And something in him bent with it.
Not power. Not anger.
Just a thread pulling tight. Unseen. Unspoken.
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From his table, unblinking, he whispered hoarsely:
> "I hear you…"
His jaw barely moved.
He didn't even know what he was saying.
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A scalpel vibrated on the tray across the room.
No alarms went off. No one noticed.
Not yet.
But something was growing.
And this time, it wasn't rage.
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It was awareness.
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