William was rushed to the infirmary in critical condition. Miller and Phelps left the group to assist in his care. The rest of the doctors, Rowan included, moved to the floor’s lounge to wait for news on their co-workers hopeful recovery.

For how many people were in the room, it should have been a louder commotion, but a somber silence reigned. Every so often, Rowan heard hushed murmurs of reassurance being passed. In the corner of the room, Vincent was shocked into silence. Blood still soaked his clothes, and a few of the other doctors tried to offer comfort, but he was lost in his head.

Rowan was also somewhere else. She couldn't stop seeing the blood bursting from William’s neck, replaying it over and over again in her head. The ice blue color of the subject’s gaze was burnt on the back of her eyelids, his laugh on repeat like a skipping record, echoing off the corners of her skull. She could smell the blood, a coppery tang lingering in her throat, and it made her stomach turn in sickness and regret. It was her guilt that sat the heaviest in her gut, though.

If she had just said something, if she told Miller that the subject had spoken, bellowed at her like a wild animal, perhaps something could have been different. Perhaps William wouldn’t be near death, and Vincent wouldn’t be traumatized, and Rowan wouldn’t feel like she was suffocating.

It was difficult not to eavesdrop on people’s conversations in the quiet room, even though the topic of discussion just made Rowan feel more ill. The doctors debated the safety of the project, bringing into question Miller’s leadership, and even considering the repercussions of quitting. The idea festered in her head the day before as well, and now circled around the rest of her thoughts like a vulture. It was the only way out of this.

But the contract also made it clear that, at the very least, a break of the contract meant her career was as good as over.

She felt cheated, played for a fool. Fate offered her a dream, and she was too busy trying to catch it to notice the strings attached. Now she was tangled up in them. She was stuck in a hell she could have never predicted, where the people around her were suddenly dying and suffering, and the demon set to torture her was a bloodied, laughing boy locked up behind glass. With no option to back out, she felt caged herself, much like the subject of their observation.

Feeling like the walls were slowly closing in on her, Rowan stood and left the room, intending to get some air and clear her head with a walk around the halls. Her thoughts were so clouded with her guilt and fear that she could barely put together a logical thought. Her natural instinct to flee consumed her. At that moment, it seemed worth it to throw everything away just to avoid tumbling deeper into this hell.

It was while pacing the halls, struggling with her resolve, that Rowan almost ran into Miller as the woman turned around a corner from deeper in the labs. Shaken back to reality by the near collision, Rowan immediately began apologizing. “Dr. Miller, please excuse me. I’m a little out of my head.”

“Aren’t we all? With what happened...” She put a hand on Rowan’s shoulder, her concerned expression switching focus as she surveyed Rowan. “You look pale. Maybe you should sit down a moment.”

Miller’s office was just down the hall, and she led Rowan over to the door with her statement. Rowan accepted a seat, feeling faint and sick as she tried to calm down. Miller retrieved a small bottle of water from a drawer and handed it across the desk. Rowan took a sip, but it only made her feel worse.

“I understand if you’re shaken up about what happened. Not many people can witness something so gruesome and not be affected. You should know, though, William is alright. I was on my way to tell the others the good news.”

Miller’s attempt at some comfort was appreciated, but it didn’t relieve her of the bile sitting in her throat.

“That’s good to hear.” She managed the words by taking a deep breath to try and settle her racing heart, but when she opened her mouth next, her thoughts escaped on a trembling exhale. “I think I have to quit this project, doctor.”

Miller sat stunned for a moment, and then the worried line in her forehead chiseled deeper as she leaned forward onto her desk, folding her fingers together. “I’m… very sorry to hear that, Miss Platts.” Miller paused for a moment to gather her thoughts, continuing after she swallowed down a thick emotion. “You had so much potential.”

Rowan tried to bite back the tears stinging at her eyes, Miller’s words confirming more than enough about what would happen. “I’m… sorry…”

She muttered the words, more for herself than for Miller. She was failing herself. She would regret this, she knew she would, but she’d never been so scared in her life, and her body screamed at her to do whatever it took to escape.

Miller leaned back in her chair and sighed heavily, staring at the wall for a moment, like she was trying to comprehend. She had seen something in Rowan that wasn’t there. Something unmovable. Something that maybe she wanted to see in Rowan, and now her disappointment was palpable. It hurt almost as much as the regret sitting in Rowan’s stomach.

“I’m very sorry this happened. I should have expected that an accident like this so early would dwindle my numbers but… It’s a blow nonetheless. I was looking forward to having you on my team, Miss Platts.”

Rowan shook her head, feeling guilty for causing Miller more distress. She offered an explanation before she even thought her words through. “It’s not just what happened to William.”

Miller frowned in reaction, begging silently for further explanation.

“I was going to tell you, but everything happened so quickly this morning, I just… I froze up.” Rowan let her head hang in shame, unable to look the older woman in the eye, shutting her own tightly. “Yesterday, after leaving your office, I returned to the observation room to retrieve some things. While I was there, the subject… He spoke to me.”

Rowan heard Miller inhale a sharp breath, shifting to sit up straighter in her chair. “If that’s true, this is a big deal. He hasn’t spoken to anyone since arriving.” A different emotion snuck into Miller’s tone, and when Rowan lifted her gaze again she identified it in the woman’s dark eyes. She tried to stifle it, but excitement shined in them as she asked, “Well, what did he say?”

Since the attack on William, Rowan's mind had been occupied by other thoughts, and with Miller’s question the memories she repressed from the day before flooded back and caused a cold chill to sweep up her spine. She was sure by the look on Miller's face that her color went a shade paler.

How was she supposed to express what the boy said? That he could hear, through a glass wall and from the other side of a room, her lungs and heartbeat? That he could smell her blood, like some sort of predatory animal? It sounded delusional.

Somehow, she managed to get her mouth working to offer Miller a response. “He said… Impossible things.” Rowan caught Miller’s curiosity shift to impatience, and she closed her eyes again, letting out a calming breath before forcing herself to continue. “I whispered something, and he heard me. Through the glass. I could barely hear my own voice, but he heard me.”

“There is a telec—”

Rowan continued over her when Miller interrupted. “He told me he could hear my heart beating." She squeezed her hands together to keep them from shaking. “He asked if I was scared, and said he could tell I was. That he could smell it.”

Miller let the silence sit, tracing her jaw with a finger as she thought, going through a number of expressions. Finally, she took a deep breath. “What your saying suggests he has exceptionally enhanced hearing and smell.”

Rowan nodded gravely. “It’s about as impossible as him having superhuman strength, and you showed us he was capable of that.”

Any note of skepticism left lingering on Miller’s face dissolved away. She opened the drawer under her desk and pulled out a notepad. “Did he say anything else?” She asked while taking down a note.

Rowan didn’t want to recollect more, but her mind was already deep in the memory and there was no point hiding the information. She kept telling herself as much as she wanted to avoid it, recanting the things he said was important, especially if she was quitting. She didn’t want another accident to happen, even if she wasn’t there to witness it.

“He didn’t seem to be able to see me, so we can at least assume his vision is not that different from ours. But he was able to place where I stood just by listening. He walked over to me and stopped right in front of me on the other side of the glass. He was calm at first, but he got violent suddenly. He was obviously malnourished, and it was making him weak and irritable. He said—” She paused, panic tightening in her chest, but she pushed through it. “He said I smelled delicious.”

Miller must have noticed Rowan’s discomfort, trying to wrap things up to minimize her struggle. “Is that everything he said? Was there anything else?”

Rowan cringed as she remembered his violent bellow. “He yelled at me, like no one has ever yelled at me before. Demanding. He said…”

She trailed off as she remembered, the last thing he shouted at her, with his cold blue eyes burning with a scorching fire. The words that finally torn her feet up from being rooted in fear and forced her fleeing like a terrified animal. She put a hand to her mouth to muffle her sound of realization.

Blood. He had called for her blood, and when he didn’t get it, he took it from someone else. He painted the walls and his face in red and he laughed like a rebellious youth, pleased with his anarchy. Perhaps his actions, made to seem like senseless violence, were actually a calculated plan concocted in a last moment of desperation. An act of starvation.

She had to be crazy, but it explained so much, and she found it hard to ignore the supporting evidence as the memories assaulted her. How on earth was she supposed to convince Miller of this wild assumption, though, when it obviously just sprung into her head? She looked up at the doctor, who sat confused and holding her breath, waiting for an explanation.

“Doctor, do we have donor blood in the infirmary?”

Miller’s eyes narrowed a fraction, not following the intention of the question. “Yes, of course. We used a lot of it with William to stabilize him, but we should still have some on hand. Why—”

“There’s no way I could explain without sounding absolutely insane. I’m not even sure if I believe myself right now, so I need to try something to prove whether what I’m thinking is even possible or not.”

Rowan stood and went for the door, fear suddenly replaced with intense focus, directed solely on proving herself right or wrong. Miller hurried to follow, the two of them rushing to the infirmary.

Rowan was insane. This was so far-fetched, it had to be her imagination running wild again. It must have been thanks to Cameron and his conspiracy theories. She could hear the boy’s yells in the back of her skull, though. Remembered him licking his fingers clean of the red fluid he stained the room in, and she couldn’t fully convince herself of her madness when he had proven to defy all logic and reason previously.

Miller took the lead as they entered the infirmary, retrieving a bag of donor blood from the cold storage. She took it out of the medical fridge and held it for a moment, giving Rowan a weary expression.

“I don’t trust all that easily, Miss Platts. There’s something about you, though. You’re acting crazy, but the look in your eyes is so level it convinces me. Don’t make me regret putting my faith in you.”

Rowan nodded, taking the cold pack from her. If she was wrong, she wouldn’t just be letting herself down, but Miller as well. In that case, maybe she deserved to lose her career over this project. Maybe she wasn’t cut out for this kind of success.

She wasn’t wrong, though. As much as she wished she was crazy, wished it was impossible, that she would go to the observation room and prove her instinct false, she knew it wouldn’t be so. That would simply be too reasonable, and so far nothing about this project followed any reason.

The observation room was only a stride down the hall. When they entered, the subject was leaning against the far wall in the containment room, and Rowan could tell he was pretending not to notice them, even though he probably heard them coming all the way down the corridor.

“Can you unlock it?” she asked while moving towards the security doors.

She needed to get to the food hatch: a skinny, sliding panel at the very foot of the second door, which they’d been using in their attempts to feed the subject. As she neared, he lifted his blue gaze towards her, the look freezing her to her spot briefly. She managed to shake out of the fear when the automated latch unlocked itself, though.

Rowan dragged open the first heavy door and entered towards the second. With trembling limbs, she dropped to her knees, as far from the food hatch as possible. She worried he might be desperate enough to reach through it and grab her. She hesitated again but managed to force herself to lean forward and slide the hatch open, tossing the bag of blood into the containment room. She was on her feet again immediately, hurrying out to Miller’s side.

Beyond the bloodied glass, the subject had yet to move, but Rowan could see his gaze locked onto the blood like a predator. She stepped closer, changing her angle to see him better, and his blue eyes flicked to the sound of her feet. His pupils were wide and black like the day before, and earlier, when he attacked William. He looked possessed, far more animal than human.

He didn’t want to move. He pushed his back into the wall as if trying to hold himself there, but whatever force consumed him was too much to restrain. Rowan blinked, and he was across the room on his knees. He clutched the blood packet tight in his bony fingers, tore into the plastic with his teeth, and drank the liquid inside. He swallowed it down until the bag was dry, refreshing the red stains on his lips.