After the Coliseum, I attended my first group session. The room was stark, a sterile box humming with fluorescent lights and the heavy, unmoving scent of stale, recycled air. Rows of seats wound around a large pillar, their metal cushions offering only coldness.

  Cassian and Julian sat nearby, their whispers threading through the quiet. I felt the weight of eyes on me. My breath hitched, a small, involuntary sound I hoped no one heard. I pressed my palms against my thighs, trying to still the tremor in my feet that threatened to betray my composure.

  Then I realized the vibration wasn't in me, but in the metallic floor beneath.

  Uriel paced to the center, the only sound the soft, almost predatory, scuff of his shoes on the polished floor.

  "Welcome, everyone," the director's voice boomed, echoing slightly in the sterile space. "Today, we continue the crucial work of understanding yourselves," his voice was as flat and calm as a lake. "Control is not a cage; it is the key. This session will focus on harnessing the raw power within, transforming it into..."

  As the director droned on, Julian's grey eyes met mine. For a second, his lips quirked into a barely-there curve that crinkled the corners of his eyes before his attention snapped back to Uriel; Cassian, on the other hand, just leaned back on the chair legs out and wide, arms crossed, his gaze fixed forward.

  The large pillar flickered with static, a chaotic dance of white noise. Beside me, Julian shifted almost imperceptibly, his breath catching audibly. A strange pull tugged at the edges of my vision, shadows shifting just beyond sight. Then, a dizzying lurch, as if the floor had dropped out from under me.

  Fire. Shield. Beam. Collapse. Light. Blank. The director's voice became a distant murmur; the world faded to grey.

  When my senses abruptly snapped back, the director was still speaking, his words distant and muffled, as if they were being heard underwater.

  I caught a new scent. It was sharp, acrid, and different from the stale air and the lingering disinfectant.

  It smelled... familiar, but not comforting. It reminded me of the smell of rotting eggs back home, a stench that shouldn't be in such a sterile place.

  Julian suddenly snorted, a loud, sharp sound that cut through the drone. He leaned towards Cassian, a grin already splitting his face.

  "You know," he stage-whispered, loud enough for half the room to hear, "I'm starting to think 'control' is just a fancy word for 'holding one back in'." A ripple of choked laughter went through the rows, quickly escalating into a series of guffaws.

  Amidst the cacophony, I stared at the director. He tilted his head slightly, a thin smile playing on his lips. His blue eyes, however, scanned the room, steadily taking in every face as we laughed.

  The laughter eventually subsided, leaving a hollow echo in the sterile room. A peculiar haze seemed to linger in the room, a faint ringing persisting in my ears.

  ——

  It wasn't until later, when the Institute signal bathed the dormitory in dim purple light, that I saw Ripper.

  As Cassian told me before we split, it was the Institute's way of telling us that it was bedtime. The heater in the wall ticked softly; the mini fridge humming beneath the stillness, a low vibration that seemed to anchor the silence. Shadows stretched long and deep across the floor, claiming the corners.

  I sat on my bed, the scent of floor wax filling my nose. The springs creaked sharply beneath me, the sound ringing too long in the hollow space. A mirror hung on my side of the wall, catching fragments of the purple light and reflecting a place too frozen to be real.

  Ripper lay hunched over, his shoulder still as he busied himself with something on his bed. To his side, a bookcase held several well-worn volumes and stacks of papers.

  "What?" Ripper didn't look up, his voice flat as the scratch of his pencil.

  "You could've ended it." The words came out like I was exhaling glass.

  I waited, but he didn't turn. The only sound was the sound of scratching and the low hum of the fridge.

  "Why didn't you?" My voice was a thread in the dark as I forced myself to look at the back of his head.

  Ripper paused, then closed the notebook with a soft, decisive snap. "So," he said, still not looking back. "You watched the show, too?"

  He tilted his head slightly, just enough for the purple light to catch the edge of his profile. "Lian was smart enough to back down. That's the only reason she's still breathing."

  Ripper’s eyes were fixed on some invisible point on the floor. "If she hadn't..."

  Ripper didn't finish the sentence. Instead, he brought his thumb and forefinger together, then snapped them apart in a sharp wet pop of his tongue.

  A crooked grin spread across his face. "Like a dropped melon. Messy. Final. End of show."

  "So, you really would've done it…" The words died in my throat. I had to swallow hard just to keep the air moving.

  Ripper snorted, a sound too sharp to be laughter. "I don't bluff." Those cold, metallic, gold eyes found mine, catching the purple light like shards of broken glass.

  I didn't look away. I searched those alien depths for the monster everyone else saw, wondering if it looked anything like the one hiding inside me. "Queen says you're dangerous…"

  "You met her?" His voice flattened; the mockery gone. He held my gaze without blinking, his stare so heavy it seemed to pull the walls inward.

  "Yes. She said I should stop following you before I get hurt." I gripped the edge of the mattress. "That you're the Midwich Ripper... or so they say."

  "Oh, so you've finally heard of me?" He tossed the notebook aside and simply rose, his body uncurling through the mattress as if the frame were made of smoke. His limbs stayed locked in place as he drifted upward, looming over me like a shadow that had forgotten how to be heavy. "Good." He pulled his lips back, skin stretching taut until his grin was a static, skeletal grimace.

  "It's just as she says." Ripper threw his arms wide, his eyes flaring a violent gold that collided with the dim purple light, turning the air between us into a muddy bronze. "Yes, I am the Midwich Ripper," he said, his voice ringing louder than the small room could hold. "I ruined that town."

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  "I slaughtered everyone. I killed all those people." His eyes flickered toward me, the gold light fracturing. "I left the walls bleeding..." The room plunged back into that bruised purple.

  "They're right about me," Ripper said, now no more than a silhouette against the dark. “You should stay clear. I’m not safe.”

  He turned his back to me and retreated to his bed, the movement heavy. "I break things," he muttered, almost to himself. "People. Places. Names." He didn't look up as he opened his notebook. "You think you're different?"

  I didn't answer. I could feel the words thickening in my throat, a hard lump I couldn't swallow. His voice, brittle like glass about to shatter, anchored me to the floor. If I stayed quiet, I'd be admitting he was right. If I stayed quiet, I wouldn't belong here either.

  "Yeah..." I said, my voice barely a breath. "I'm a monster too." I didn't have a name like his. I was the kind that broke things quietly.

  "I'm not safe either."

  Ripper gasped, his eyes wide. "Oh no. And what are you? The Gremlin of Halden, perhaps?"

  I'm not a gremlin!

  The jerk recoiled, his shoulder sinking halfway into the wall behind him as he clutched his chest with both hands.

  "Let me guess, you're a threat because you wear unmatched socks and carry a heavy backpack full of unearned tragedy?"

  He paused, his eyes scanning me with a sharp, gold glint.

  "You're practically a war crime! A one-girl disaster zone of hurt feelings."

  Maybe I'm a cryptid, more myth than person.

  I got up and padded over to the mini fridge, the distance between us still feeling too small.

  "No, you're not just a war crime—you're a whole damn tribunal." Ripper's grin twitched, his eyes lingering on me for half a second. "They'd need a separate wing in a maximum-security asylum just to process your tantrums!"

  He keeled over backward, his boots kicking up as he hovered an inch off the mattress, eyes fixed on the ceiling. "Hell, you probably journal in glitter pen and call it shadow work!"

  I sat cross-legged on the floor and focused on the straw of my juice box.

  "Or maybe it's worse. Maybe you're just a brat with a sticker chart for coping skills and a juice box labeled 'cry later.' The Gremlin of Halden, the martyr of the month. Should we build you a shrine?"

  I'm more like the Sasquatch... I wanted to say it back: to tell him I was something blurry and far away, but the words felt too heavy to lift.

  "...light a candle? Maybe commission a tragic ballad?"

  He didn't wait for me to answer. He simply tilted forward, his body weightless as he drifted off the bed and sank toward the floor until he was crouching right in front of me.

  The juice box crinkled in my grip-a thin yet sharp sound. A bead of condensation slid down my wrist, cold enough to make me flinch. I didn't feel mythical. I felt small and terribly ordinary.

  "Seriously, you cry like it's a hobby. Is there a club? Do you get matching shirts?"

  I drained the drink slowly, my eyes never leaving his as the straw gurgled against the bottom of the carton.

  He leaned in, eyes twinkling as his voice dropped low, almost to a hiss. "Or maybe it's much worse. Maybe you're the World Eater. Maybe you'll tear the sky open and swallow the world—right after you finish your Lucky Charms."

  I blinked my fingers, tightening around the empty juice box.

  "I don't want to eat the world," I said, staring at the space between us. "I just want it to stop yelling." The air there didn't just shimmer; it frayed, the edges of the shadows curling and snapping as if the room were trying to peel away from itself.

  Ripper's grin stayed fixed, a white slash in the dark, but the rest of him went utterly still, as if he'd stopped breathing just to listen to the room tear.

  "I hurt my father…"

  The words came out too fast, too raw. I tried to swallow them back, but they'd already spilled, staining the silence between us.

  I looked down, then forced my eyes back up. His jaw was clenched so tight the bone looked like it might snap. His breathing had shifted: shallow, held thin, as if he were the one bracing for a blow.

  He was probably mad. Or disgusted.

  "I broke him," I whispered, the words finally snapping.

  My chest tightened, and the tears I'd been holding back began to leak. I covered my face with my hands, shoulders heaving.

  The juice carton buckled in my grip with a soft, wet crunch. It was too fractured to hold its shape anymore. My tears became a torrent then—hot and fast and impossible to stem.

  So, I tried to hold myself together, but the cracks ran deeper.

  I felt Ripper's eyes on me, heavy and steady through the sound of my own sobbing.

  "Yeah…" he finally admitted, voice low and rough. "I did the same to mine."

  The air hung between us; the only sound was the jagged rhythm of my own breath. Through the blur of tears, I watched him turn away, his hand curling tightly into the fabric of his pants.

  The mattress groaned under his weight, followed by the dry flap of paper. Ripper fumbled as he searched through his notebook, his fingers catching on the edges of the pages.

  His hand hovered with the pencil, poised... but motionless.

  I wiped my face with the back of my hand and pushed myself off the floor. My legs felt hollow as I climbed onto my bed and pulled my knees to my chest.

  Then I saw it: from here, his shoulders, usually squared and defiant, were slumped. His back curved inward, as if he were trying to fold into himself, to disappear from his own skin. He looked less like a monster and more like something breaking in slow motion, a boy folding into the gaps of his own silence.

  I didn't speak. I just lay back and stared at the ceiling, listening to the hush.

  The heater hummed, then clicked.

  The faucet dripped as I just watched the shadows.

  Eventually, the same scratching from before reached me. It was a slower, softer rustling.

  I turned my head and watched him. The light caught the notebook, and I could see his hand moving within it, not with the sharp, confident strokes from before, but with lines so soft they were almost ephemeral, as if he were trying not to wake something.

  Ripper's breathing was shallow, barely moving—a fragile rhythm in the quiet room.

  A few minutes later, he shifted slightly, and the notebook slipped from his grasp, landing open beside him like a fallen bird. As the pencil finally ceased its scratch, the silence felt heavy, like it was pressing me into the floor.

  I watched him for a while, his body curled inward, a shadow among shadows. He didn't stir.

  With a ragged breath, I pulled my gaze away from Ripper, shifting to the other side of the bed. The sound of a pencil etching softly on paper still echoed in my head. A weird change to all the bragging I had heard from him before. The world didn't scream in response to my pain. It watched. I tried not to listen.

  I couldn't sleep; the cold seeped into my bones.

  I missed being held. I wanted the kind of holding that came from my parents, not the dramatic gestures of soap operas. I didn’t want worship like that, the jerk said. I just wanted someone to look at me and not flinch, not see the broken monster that I was. I wanted to be… wanted. Not for what I could survive. Just for being me.

  I trembled and leaked tears until I remembered: monsters don’t cry. So, I tried to stop.

  But I’m cracked. And cracked things leak.

  Then I heard it: a soft, broken sound in the dark, a murmur I couldn't quite place, but felt familiar.

  Ripper—Halden's myth; Midwich's wound—was talking in his sleep.

  I turned to him; he was still asleep, curled into himself as if trying to disappear. A posture I recognized all too well.

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed, needing to go to the bathroom. But as my foot nudged the notebook, my gaze couldn't help but linger on it. I remembered his hand moving across the page. I reached for it slowly.

  Ripper's drawing showed Lian sprawled on the couch, half-sunken into the cushions. Her head was tilted slightly, legs folded lazily, one arm tucked beneath her head, the other flipping a sideways middle finger. Her lips curled, her eyes glinting as if she'd just pulled off something clever and wasn't done yet. She looked like she'd just woken up, already causing trouble.

  I blinked; the gesture was crude, but the smile softened it, like a private joke between survivors. A pang hit me. Not for the gesture itself, but for the warmth in it. The way she could tease him and still feel safe, the way he'd drawn her: not as a threat, not as a victim, but as someone who could laugh.

  I wanted that.

  That sense of warmth and connection... that safety.

  I closed the book slowly, my fingers tracing the worn texture of the cover longer than I should have. It felt almost alive beneath my touch as I set it gently beside him. My hands pulled away quickly, as if they might burn.

  I rubbed my forearms, then turned back to my own bed, seeking comfort in the familiar sheets.

  Maybe Ripper wasn't proud, maybe he was trying to remember better.

  I had thought that amongst monsters one couldn't dream of mercy.

  But maybe they do.

  Maybe they dream of being wanted.

  If mercy makes us monsters, then I’ll be one.

  I just wanted to be wanted.