OUR DAYS AT THE END OF THE WORLD

“Whatever you do, don’t hold his gaze.”

The warning had barely registered when Maren hit the floor. Her knees struck first, then her palms. Concrete skinned both hands and sent a bolt of pain up her arms. Behind her, machinery groaned into motion. She twisted around just as the metal door began to seal.

“Wait!”

The opening narrowed to a blade of white light. Beyond it stood the people who had dragged her here. None of them moved.

“What the hell are you doing? Let me out!”

No answer. No one even looked at her. The seam vanished. Locks engaged somewhere inside the wall with a final, brutal clunk, and the sound rolled through the underground chamber long after the door had gone still. Maren stayed on her knees, trying to breathe.

This wasn’t a cell. It was too vast for that. Weak lamps dotted the far walls, each one illuminating little more than the darkness around it. The ceiling disappeared into shadow. Corridors branched away in several directions, the whole place built on the scale of an abandoned transit station or a buried industrial complex. Then bare feet stepped into view. Maren’s eyes traveled upward before she could stop them: pale legs, a lean body, a man standing close enough to touch. He stared down at her. The room seemed to quiet around him.

She drew breath to speak. The lights flickered once and died.

“You—”

Darkness swallowed the word. A second later, it swallowed her too.

* * *

Consciousness returned in fragments. Fabric tearing. A hand on her chest. Another dragging clothing from her body. The weight of a naked man pinning her down before she understood where she was. He forced her legs apart.

“No…”

He touched her as though the sound meant nothing. Her body reacted on instinct, and he took that involuntary response for permission. Then he forced himself inside her. Pain snapped the world into focus.

“Stop.” She shoved at him, panic tearing her voice apart. “Stop—please!”

Something shifted in his face when she spoke. Not remorse. Recognition. He knew the words. That was almost worse. He understood stop as a sound attached to an action, but not as a boundary he was obligated to honor. He understood what she was asking. He did not understand why what she wanted should outweigh what he wanted.

Maren fought until her muscles failed. He held her down and continued, unmoved by her tears, her pleading, or the blood. Her body’s reflexes went on betraying her, answering stimulation even while terror consumed her. The contradiction made her feel trapped inside her own skin. When he finally finished inside her, Maren had nothing left. She drifted toward unconsciousness. His hand settled against her throat—not tightening, only resting there. His thumb moved over her pulse with slow, unsettling care, as though he were confirming that she was alive.

Or marking something he intended to keep.

* * *

When Maren woke, she kept her eyes closed. Her body hurt. Her mind felt packed with broken glass. Every time she tried to think, another piece of the night cut through: the concrete, the sealed door, the man’s face, his weight over hers. She went rigid. An arm lay across her waist. Someone was pressed against her back, close enough that she could feel the slow rhythm of his breathing. He had curled around her in his sleep as if they belonged in the same bed. As if nothing had happened. Maren opened her eyes.

The lights overhead were still dim. There were no windows and no hint of morning, only the same cavernous room and the same air that smelled faintly of metal and antiseptic. She looked down at the hand on her stomach. His hand. Very carefully, she turned her head. The man lay behind her with his eyes closed. Up close, he looked disturbingly ordinary. Black hair fell untidily over his forehead. His skin was pale, his features clean and sharply drawn. Handsome, even. With his eyes shut, the wrongness receded until he might have been anyone.

That frightened her more than a monster would have. So did the unwanted pull of him. Fear had not made her blind. She noticed the strong line of his face, the stillness of him, the impossible gravity of his presence. Her body noticed too. Attraction was not consent. A physical response was not consent. She knew that, and still hated that fear and attraction could occupy the same body at the same time. Nothing about him was simple. Nothing about him was safe. Holding her breath, she lifted his wrist. His eyes opened.

There was no haze of sleep in them. They found her instantly, alert and fixed, as if he had only been pretending to rest until she moved. Cold raced over her skin.

“Let me go.” Her throat was raw; the words came out as a rasp.

He watched her.

“Move your arm.”

Nothing. Maren pushed harder, ignoring the pain that flared through her body. His gaze dropped to her hands. Then he let go. She scrambled away so quickly her legs almost folded beneath her. He sat up. Maren threw one hand out between them.

“Don’t come near me.”

He stopped. Not slowly. Not after considering it. One moment he was moving, the next he was still. Maren stared at him. He stared back, his attention so naked and direct that it made her skin crawl. Only then did she realize she was uncovered. She dragged the blanket around herself.

“Who are you?”

Silence.

“What is this place?”

He said nothing.

“Do you understand me?”

The smallest change passed through his eyes. Yes, then. He understood.

“Why won’t you answer?”

Still nothing. Fear pressed against her ribs, but anger was beginning to burn through it. She had been taken from a parking garage, dumped underground, and left alone with a man who had— No. She could not think about that yet.

“Say something.”

He kept looking at her.

“I’m talking to you.”

Several seconds passed.

“Loud,” he said.

Maren blinked. His voice was low, clear, and utterly human. She had expected something rough or distorted, some sound that matched the place they had buried him. Instead he sounded like an ordinary man irritated by noise.

“You can talk.”

He offered no response to the obvious. Maren swallowed. “What’s your name?” For the first time, his silence seemed uncertain. He looked as if he were reaching for something no one had asked him to remember in a very long time.

“Cael.”

“Cael,” she repeated. “Do you have a last name?”

Nothing.

“No last name?”

His expression did not change, but she had the odd sense that he wasn’t refusing to tell her. There simply wasn’t one. Fine. His family history could wait.

“I’m getting out.”

She pushed herself upright. Pain buckled her knees, and she caught the wall before she fell. The remains of her clothes lay nearby, shredded beyond use. She found a white lab coat on the floor, far too large and clearly not hers, and wrapped it around herself. Cael stood. Maren spun toward him. “Don’t follow me.” He stopped again. She watched him long enough to be sure, then headed toward the isolation door. After a few steps, instinct made her glance back. He had stayed where she left him. But he was watching.

Somehow, that was worse. In the panic of the night before, she had barely seen the place. Now she began to take in its true size. Beyond the open floor were several rooms, a few utilitarian tables and chairs, sinks, banks of equipment she couldn’t identify. Exposed pipes climbed the walls and vanished overhead. Black cameras punctuated the ceiling. Maren stopped beneath the nearest one. Memory hit hard enough to turn her stomach. They had watched.

Whatever had happened to the audio or the lights, the camera was pointed straight at the bed. Whoever had put her here had seen everything.

“Hey!” Her voice rang through the chamber. “I know you can hear me. Open the door!”

Only the echo answered.

“What do you want from me? You dragged me here. You threw me in with him. Now you don’t even have the nerve to tell me why?”

Silence. Her pulse hammered as the truth settled into place. Last night had not gone wrong. Cael had not surprised them. The faces on the other side of the door had told her that much before it closed. They knew what lived down here. They knew what he might do to her. They had shut the door anyway. Hatred rose through her nausea, clean and sudden. In that moment, she hated the people watching more than she hated Cael. He had harmed her without understanding why it was wrong. They understood.

They had planned for it. Footsteps whispered behind her. Maren turned. Cael stood a few yards away. She backed toward the door. “I told you not to follow me.” He stopped. For one absurd second, she heard herself and almost laughed. She was trying to establish rules with a man she couldn’t identify, in a facility that didn’t officially exist, after being offered to him like bait.

“Why are you locked down here?”

No answer.

“How long have you been here? Are they afraid of you?”

Cael’s gaze stayed on her face. Too long. The warning returned: Don’t hold his gaze. Maren looked away. “Stop staring at me.” He didn’t move.

“Did you hear me?”

His eyes shifted aside. Maren went still. Some instructions reached him. Others slid past as if she had never spoken. She couldn’t tell whether the difference was comprehension, interest, or choice. She studied him without meeting his eyes. Bare feet. No chains. No cuffs. No visible implants or monitoring equipment. The space around him was enormous, yet nothing inside it appeared designed to restrain him. One man. An entire underground sector.

“Why don’t you leave?”

Cael looked toward the sealed door.

“Doesn’t open.”

Maren frowned. “You tried?” He gave her nothing else. The phrasing bothered her. Not I can’t open it. Just doesn’t open—a fact tested until there was no point testing it again. She let the question drop. First she needed to remember how she had ended up here. Twenty-four hours ago, she had been ordinary. An overworked woman at a desk, irritated by one last email on a Wednesday night. Then the elevator. The parking garage. Her mother’s message.

Come home soon.

The words felt as if they belonged to another life. Maren had only been leaving work. She had never made it home.

* * *

At 9:47 the previous night, Maren had finally shut down her computer. Half the office was dark. Only the lights above her row remained on, bleaching the empty desks in cold white. Her coffee had gone untouched long enough to form a film across the surface. She sent the last email and rubbed the ache at the base of her skull. Her phone lit up. Her mother again.

Come home soon.

Maren typed Okay, slung her bag over one shoulder, and left. The elevator took her to the parking level. When the doors opened, the silence beyond them felt wrong—not frightening, exactly, but too complete. Most of the spaces were empty. Fluorescent lights glowed at long intervals, dividing the garage into islands of white and shadow. She dug through her bag for her keys as she walked. Her car was farther away than usual. Halfway there, footsteps sounded behind her. Maren stopped. So did they. She looked back. Nothing. Empty concrete, parked cars, hard light.

She waited, listening, then told herself she was exhausted and kept going. A hand clamped over her mouth. Her keys hit the floor. Maren drove an elbow backward and heard a grunt. She tried to scream, but someone rushed in from the side and seized her wrist.

“Hold her.”

She kicked wildly. Her heel shrieked across the concrete. She had no idea who they were; there was no time to ask. Something pressed over her nose and mouth, carrying a sharp chemical stink. Maren held her breath until the struggle emptied her lungs. The garage tilted. Every light stretched into a blurred white smear. Her phone lay on the floor where it had fallen, the screen still awake. Her mother’s message remained at the top.

Come home soon.

Then the dark took her.