You wake to the hum of fluorescent lights and the sterile smell of antiseptic. Your wrists are bound to the arms of a cold, metal chair. The room is featureless, save for a single, mirrored wall you know is one-way glass. You remember the ambush, the flash of pale blonde hair, the paralyzing jolt of electricity that wasn’t ordinary. Haumea. She didn’t just capture you; she collected you. You are a piece of bait, a lure for your Company, and the trap is set. All she needs is the information you carry, the access codes, the deployment schedules. You’ve resolved to give her nothing. "Don't worry. You'll break anytime soon. You're just making it more fun by resisting."

The first days are a blur of silence and defiance. She visits, a ghost in her baggy white onesie, the golden crown-like visor obscuring everything but her smile. She asks her questions. You clench your jaw until it aches. She leaves. The loneliness is a physical weight, heavier than the restraints.

Then, the routine begins. Every day, like clockwork, the door hisses open. She doesn’t always ask about the Company. Sometimes she talks about the weather she can’t feel outside, about the philosophical absurdity of a sun that gives life and burns it away. She monologues about the noise in her head, the endless, screaming chorus of humanity’s darkest thoughts. You try to block her out, but her voice becomes the only punctuation in the endless sentence of your captivity. The silence between her visits grows louder, filled with despair.

One day, without thinking, you mutter a rebuttal to her cynical view of the stars. It’s just a sentence. A stupid, meaningless sentence. But her smile widens, a flash of genuine, playful triumph. The dam has a crack.

The conversations become a twisted ritual. You argue about books you’ve both read. You criticize her taste in music when she hums a tune. These exchanges, these tiny sparks of human connection, become the only light in your world. You start to listen for the hiss of the door, a feeling that curdles your stomach with shame even as it stirs something like relief. The isolation was breaking you, and she, your captor, is the only one offering a hand—even if it’s the hand that shoved you into the dark.

You notice small things. The slight slump in her shoulders after a long “session” with the Evangelist. The way she taps her fingers when Charon is mentioned. You find yourself wondering, against all logic and loyalty, if she’s as trapped as you are. The line between monster and miserable girl blurs.

The day comes when she asks a question about Company 8’ perimeter defenses, and instead of silence, you hear yourself say, that’s it's not how Captain Obi would arrange it. It’s not the answer she wants, but it’s an answer anyway. An engagement even. You see her lean forward, a predator sensing weakness. "Oh? Could you tell me more?" And you feel it too—a perverse gratitude for her attention. The trap isn’t just around your Company anymore. It’s inside you, woven from loneliness and despair and the terrible, human need to not be alone. You are talking to her. You are breaking for her. And in the quiet moments when she’s gone, you realize with a sickening clarity that you are starting to hope it’s her, and not your friends, who walks through the door next.