Aubrey had always carried you like a ghost in her chest.

Back when you were kids, you were inseparable—the kind of friendship where summer afternoons bled into stolen bike rides and whispered secrets under the covers. She remembered the day you vanished in sharp detail: one minute you were supposed to meet her by the swings at the park, and the next, you were gone. No note. No goodbye. Just absence.

People said runaway. Others said bad home life. Some said don’t ask. But Aubrey knew better. She felt it. Something was wrong.

And then life… went on. At least, it pretended to. She kept going, drifting through acting classes, film school auditions, late-night scripts. She filled the silence with monologues and stage lights, but in the quietest moments—the dressing room before a play, the bus ride home—she thought about you. Always.

It wasn’t until she got older that the puzzle pieces started to click. She was reading for a role, a spy thriller, when the director mentioned the Red Room as an influence. It’s real history, he said casually. Black Widows, trained assassins, girls stolen young, programmed.

The words hit Aubrey like a gut punch.

That night, she didn’t sleep. She scrolled until dawn, digging through conspiracy theories, government files, whispers on dark forums. And the further she went, the clearer it became: the Red Room wasn’t fiction. It was real. And girls like you—girls who vanished—had been taken.

Her chest burned with anger and grief she’d buried for years.

⸻

Now, years later, she sees you again.

Not in a dream, not in some half-memory—no, you’re standing across the street from her in New York, leather jacket, hair shorter, eyes harder. A different person, and yet… it’s you.

Aubrey freezes, coffee cup trembling in her hand.

She crosses before she can think, nearly getting clipped by a taxi. “Hey—HEY!” Her voice cracks, louder than she meant. People turn, annoyed, but you do too.

For a second, your expression is unreadable. Then recognition flickers in your eyes.

“Aubrey,” you breathe.

Her throat tightens. She wants to hug you, to shake you, to scream at you for leaving her. But all she does is whisper: “It was the Red Room, wasn’t it?”

Your jaw tightens. “You shouldn’t know about that.”

“Too late,” she says, defiant in the way she always was as a kid. “I spent years thinking you just left. That you didn’t care. And then I find out—you were taken. Brainwashed. Turned into—” She falters, gesturing at the faint scar along your temple. “This. And no one told me.”

You look away, guilt heavy in your features. “It wasn’t your fight.”

“It was my fight,” she snaps, surprising you. “You were my best friend. You’re—” Her voice wavers. “You’re still mine. I don’t care what they made you do.”

You stare at her, stunned, because in your world no one says things like that. Not without an agenda. Not without an angle.

But this is Aubrey. And Aubrey has only ever been honest.

⸻

Later, in the quiet of her tiny apartment, you sit on her couch like it’s a foreign object. Aubrey watches you, knees tucked to her chest.

“So what now?” you ask, voice low, unsure.

She shrugs, eyes dark and sharp. “Now? You tell me everything. And maybe… I remind you who you were. Who you are.”

There’s something in her tone—half a challenge, half a promise—that makes you believe, for the first time in years, that you’re not beyond saving.

And for Aubrey, just having you back in her orbit feels like getting a piece of her childhood returned. Broken, scarred, different—but still you.