Chapter 6 - The First Twitch
“Clara...”
The whisper was trembling, laced with a mixture of shock and terror.
“Did you feel it?” Clara asked, her own heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
“My... my toe. It felt hot. Like a pinprick of fire.”
“That’s not a pinprick, Elena. That’s your nervous system waking up from a six-year sleep,” Clara said, her voice vibrating with conviction. “They told you the lines were cut, but nerves don’t just die because you stop walking. They go to sleep when nobody believes in them anymore.”
Inside the room, a muffled sob broke the silence. It wasn't the quiet, hopeless crying of a child who had given up; it was the raw, venting cry of someone realizing they weren't entirely gone yet.
“Don’t tell Papa,” Elena pleaded through her tears. “If he finds out, he’ll bring Dr. Henderson back with his needles and wires. I hate the wires, Clara. They make me feel like a machine being repaired in a junkyard.”
“I won’t tell him,” Clara promised. “Not yet. But you have to promise me something in return.”
“What?”
“Tomorrow, when the sun is up, you’re going to push against that wall with your hands while you try to stand. Not with machines. Just your own strength.”
“I can’t. My legs will buckle.”
“They might,” Clara admitted honestly. “And if they do, you’ll fall on the rug. But you’ll know you tried. That’s how healing starts, Elena. Not in a hospital room with cold steel, but on the floor, in the dark, deciding you’re tired of lying down.”
Before Elena could answer, a sudden flash of lightning illuminated the hallway, followed immediately by a heavy, metallic click echoing from the far end of the gallery.
Footsteps. Heavy, measured, and unhurried.
Clara froze. The blood rushed in her ears.
“Go!” Elena hissed frantically from inside. “Go, Clara! He’s checking the perimeter!”
Clara scrambled backward, her woolen socks sliding across the polished hardwood. She ducked behind a towering marble bust of a stern Vale ancestor just as Adrian Vale rounded the corner, holding a heavy silver candelabra, his dark robe draped over his shoulders, his face an impenetrable mask of midnight shadows.
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Adrian stopped dead in his tracks. His eyes swept across the empty landing, lingering for a long, agonizing moment on the white door of his daughter’s room.
Clara held her breath, pressing her back so hard against the marble pedestal that the cold stone bit through her uniform.
