Page 26 of The Savage

When the hood comes off, I blink hard, eyes watering under the white glare. For a moment everything is too sharp, the corridors of glass and steel, walls the colour of bone and light panels sunk into ceilings that stretch endlessly in every direction.

My first, hopeful guess that this is a church is quickly shattered when my second theory rings truer. It is a hospital but it looks less like a place of physical healing and more like a cathedral stripped bare.

A cathedral that worships money, power, influence.

This is no ordinary hospital.

And while I may have been cloistered, I know enough about the world to know this place doesn’t tend to those without means.

Hands guide me forward. My pulse stutters when I glance around me, not from the pressure of their grips but from the sudden emptiness at my side.

The silent man – the one in the balaclava, the one whose voice burned through my very bones when he said It’s you. He’s no longer beside me.

I turn my head, frantic for a glimpse, a shadow, anything. Only bright lights and faceless soldiers answer me.

Stop it.

I clench my jaw before another thought can bloom.

I have no right to wonder where he is. No right to feel this strange tug of concern in my chest. No right to be thinking of him at all when my freedom, my future – my vows – hang in the balance.

And yet… I do.

I can’t seem to stop.

We march deeper inside the structure until we reach a circular antechamber. A woman in combat fatigues waits beside me, another just behind. Their faces are clean, unreadable, the lines of their weapons stark against their uniforms. No insignia. No name tags.

‘Where… where am I?’ My voice is hoarse, too small in the echoing space.

Neither answers but one gestures towards a door.

It slides open without a sound when we near it.

Inside is a small suite with a bed, adjoining bathroom and a wardrobe. Two lamps sit on the bedside tables and the carpet looks soft and plush. There’s a compact fridge set next to a desk and – my eyes widen when I see it – a TV set into the wall opposite the bed.

Luxurious by any measure, and most definitely the kind Madre Superiora and the older nuns would frown and mutter at, but it’s the sterile kind of luxury that feels more like a stage than a room meant for living.

‘Change,’ the taller soldier says after cutting the binds tying my wrist. Her voice carries a faint accent, maybe northern Italian, clipped into command.

She points at the folded garments on the bed and I see my habit, veil, rosary. It’s both familiar and alien to see my belongings outside the confines of the convent, all arranged neatly as if someone had pressed them into service again after a few confusing hours of disuse.

I glance down at my thin cotton nightdress and my skin prickles anew. ‘I – what is this place? Who are you?’

No reply. Just the same measured stare.

‘Did the convent send me here?’ I try again. ‘Am I meant to⁠—’

‘Change,’ she repeats, sharper this time.

My fear curdles into anger.

It’s not a feeling I’m used to any more, and one that feels almost rusty but present nonetheless. ‘I will not undress in front of strangers,’ I say, clutching the neckline of my gown. ‘Whatever authority you think you hold, this is indecent.’

For a moment, there’s no reaction and my heart jolts.

Then the other woman, a little younger, eyes hidden behind dark lenses despite it being the middle of the night, steps closer. She doesn’t touch me. She doesn’t need to. Her stare alone is enough to silence rebellion. The kind of stare that says we’ve carried out worse orders than this.

I swallow hard, my fingers trembling. ‘Fine.’