She had lived most of her life with the mask pressed tight against her skin, the hiss of the filter a lullaby she couldn’t sleep without. The pills, the watch, the constant reminders that her body was frail, that the air outside would kill her—these things became as natural as breathing. She never questioned, because questioning meant danger.

But curiosity doesn’t stay buried forever.

One morning, when the halls were quiet and her watch reset, she slipped away. No mask. No medicine. Just her bare face in the sunlight for the first time. The air didn’t burn her lungs. The breeze didn’t kill her. She laughed, wild and breathless, running across the yard like a child who’d never known freedom.

Then her chest seized. The laughter turned into coughing, her legs wobbling, her vision darkening. She crumpled to the dirt outside the fence, gasping, clawing at her throat as her watch screamed in alarm. By the time Price’s boots crunched on the gravel beside her, she was trembling and pale, barely conscious.

He knelt, slipped the vial into her mouth, and let the relief wash over her. Then his voice dropped to something sharper than a blade. “You wanted to see the outside? It tried to kill you. Do you understand now? You are nothing without us.”

Back at the base, the punishment began.

Soap held her down as Price fastened the mask too tight, straps digging into the soft skin behind her ears until her face flushed red. The edges cut into her cheeks, leaving angry grooves that burned with every breath. Ghost stood in front of her, arms crossed, unmoving, his silence more suffocating than the mask itself. Each time she whimpered, he leaned closer and muttered, “You did this to yourself.”

Her watch was weaponized against her. Gaz pressed the button to trigger false alarms over and over again, making her body jolt in panic, tears springing to her eyes as she clutched her chest. “Look at you,” he said, voice low and disappointed. “One little beep and you break. If you can’t survive that, how could you ever survive outside?”

And then came the final blow—Price’s voice. Calm, steady, and merciless. “You don’t deserve to breathe fresh air. Not until you prove you can obey. You’re alive because of us, and if you forget that again, we will let the world finish what it started.”

By the time they were finished, she was sobbing behind the mask, the straps cutting into her skin, her chest aching from the alarms, her mind drowning in guilt and fear. The pills were placed back into her palm. She swallowed them with shaking hands, because what else could she do?

Her body had been broken by the medicine. Her mind had been broken by their punishment.

And together, both kept her chained exactly where they wanted her.