The Child Inside - The Square in Blood

(They wait. A pressure behind my eyes, like the moment before confession. They do not speak. No lips, no tongue. Yet the question is absolute: Show us the tunnel. Show us what she did to you. I could refuse. I could curl the memory into a fist and swallow it. But their patience is a blade. And my heart, traitor that it is, opens.)

Begin.

[Emotion: Wet earth, diesel, the copper stink of panic.]

The tunnel was a throat. We crawled down it like swallowed things—two hundred mules, coke-heavy, and us: Bryce and Mateo barking orders at the mouth, Emile a warm wall behind me, Cristina… the blade at my spine. I remember the dark first. Not absence-of-light dark, but pressurised dark that hums against your teeth. The mules’ fear was a living thing, a wet dog shaking itself over all of us. In the OpFrame it came through as clouds… static; screaming white, no edges. I tried to filter it. Couldn’t. My own pulse was a drum, doom-doom-doom, syncing with theirs.

(The others tilt their attention. Not to Bryce, not Emile—names they already know. They want her.)

She was behind me. Always behind me. In the tunnel I felt her like a cold star, distant but exacting gravity. I barely knew her, and now her presence was a needle under the nail. When the first blade came—a woman in a hoodie, eyes like boiled eggs—I thought: Of course. Cristina’s work. Not logical. Just… taste. The metal taste of her in the air.

[Memory: The slash.]

Leather parted. The woman's carbon blade, blacker than the dark, dragged across my slashproof shirt. I shouted CONTACTO! A stupid word, Spanish drilled into us like catechism. I pinned her throat, felt cartilage collapse. The blade kept coming; a spiked punch that didn't sink. Somewhere else, Emile roared. Somewhere else, Bryce cursed under heavy fire. But Cristina—Cristina was still. In the OpFrame her sense didn’t spike. No adrenaline. No fear. Just a flat line, like a heart monitor waiting for permission to stop.

(The others lean closer. A vanilla perfume. I feel them sorting my emotions like beads. They murmur without words.)

This is not about the fight. This is about what you saw when you looked at her.

I saw nothing. I knew she moved. That’s the truth that sticks. When the second killer rose—a man with a face like a closed fist—I used the woman’s body as a shield. His blade found a gap between the mules. Her face… like she'd stepped into freezing water as his blade went in. Her ribs cracked when I stamped it in deeper. I remember thinking: She’ll come now. Cristina. The medic. The one who’d tended the kids’ knees and elbows in a farmhouse kitchen, her fingers smelling of iodine and nettles. She’ll come.

She didn’t. Not then. The mules surged in a panic avalanche and her OpFrame signature widened. Not closer. Wider. Like a lens pulling back. I felt her detachment as a physical chill. She was busy. The mission. The coke. The mules. Blood was just data.

[Emotion: Betrayal.]

But betrayal implies expectation.

I’d expected nothing. And still it hurt. The OpFrame flickered. Bryce’s bond flared red: hold the line. Emile’s was a bonfire. Cristina’s… Cristina’s was a void. Not absence. Presence shaped like absence. A black hole where care should be.

My wave collapsed—I fell out of the OpFrame when my knife opened soft doors in his chest. No space for the gun. I screamed a shockwave at the wall of bodies; I tasted iron. The second killer slid down.

(The others taste this. I feel their approval, a cat’s purr against my skull.)

Good. Keep going.

[Memory: The crush.]

The tunnel narrowed to a birth canal. Bodies pressed; mules, killers, my own ribs creaking. A blade slipped through my jacket, under my vest, cold-cold-cold, and I was on my knees. The world tilted. Coke dust hung in the air like dirty snow. Someone screamed—maybe me. Ice exploded like a bomb in my back.

I remember her hands later. In the medical bay. Not gentle. Efficient. Near the tunnel she'd packed the wound like stuffing a turkey. Her eyes fixed on the stitch, not my face. Bryce gave blood—two pints, his guilt dripping into me. Cristina’s guilt was… elsewhere. Or nowhere. When she cut the thread—eleven stitches in a neat square—she said, “You’ll live.” As if that answered anything. Iodine and spearmint chewing gum was her scent. Her fingers lingered on the bandage; a tremor so faint only the wound amplified it to detectable.

(The others stir. Their interest sharpens like a scalpel.)

What did you want her to say?

I wanted her to lie. To say I’m sorry. To say I came as fast as I could. Instead she peeled off gloves bloody to the wrist and walked away. I watched her go, and for the first time I thought: She’s not broken. She’s underweight. Whatever she’d been before the program—whatever I’d once thought I saw in her—was gone. And I’d mistaken the absence for depth.

(The others hum. A low, satisfied sound. They’ve found the thread they wanted.)

[Emotion: Shame. Hot, metallic.]

Because I’d wanted her to see me. Not the asset. Not the liability. Just… Guy. The idiot who’d calmed the kids as she patched grazes while she hummed off-key. The one who’d thought there was a her underneath the ice. In the tunnel, after the blade went in, I’d thought: This’ll change her. My blood would melt something. But blood’s just blood. It dries. It flakes. It means nothing to a surgeon.

(The others circle this shame like wolves. They do not comfort. They measure.)

[Memory: The dream.]

After the stab. When the crush rose. I was back in Wales, ten years old, standing outside a terraced house with peeling paint. My mother’s voice—wrong accent, wrong grammar—screamed "GET IN THE FIGHT!" through the door. I fumbled for keys as the door disappeared. My mother slapped my face. Then the tunnel again. Cristina’s eyes, feeling black as the blades, but in vision: blue… how blue? Bluer than they should be. You’re hit. I need to stabilize you. But her voice was my mother’s. Spearmint. And I knew—knew—that somewhere, in some language I’d never speak, she was saying: This is what you’re for. To bleed. To be counted. Nothing more.

(The others pause. I feel them weighing my resistance. I am a glass held to light, looking for cracks.)

[Emotion: Fear. Not of death. Of being read.]

They want more. They want the why. Why does Cristina’s absence gut me more than the blade did? Why do I still scan the OpFrame for her signature, even now, when she’s continents away? I could say it’s guilt. I could say it’s unfinished business. But the truth is simpler, uglier: I wanted to be the one who thawed her. And instead she taught me that some things aren’t frozen. They’re hollow.

(The others wait. Their patience is a hand on the back of my neck.)

So here it is. The tunnel was a crucible, and what burned away wasn’t fear. It was hope. Hope that she’d flinch. Hope that I’d matter. The blade went in, and what came out was clean, surgical: if it wasn't for Emile and that pop! of bone before I blacked out, I'd think I’m expendable. We all are. But Cristina chose it. Chose the void. And I—

I keep choosing her.

(The others—the committee at Centre—withdraw. Not rejection. Harvest. I feel them tuck my shame into a pocket like a seed. They will plant it later. They will watch what grows.)