When Felix opens his eyes, a woman is inserting a needle into his arm. He gasps in fear and tries to pull away, but to his surprise, two leather straps hold his wrists tightly against an iron chair. He watches the green liquid being injected into his veins. He screams as the burning pain of the venom courses through his arm like fire. Gritting his teeth, he breaks into a cold sweat as his body convulses. It all happened so quickly that he hadn’t even had time to process it. The woman moves away and tosses the syringe into a trash bin. Normally, people are unsettled when someone screams so loudly it seems to tear their throat apart, but she remains indifferent. As if she’s used to it.

Felix has a headache. A headache like he’s never had before. His vision is blurred, and he doesn’t even know when it started—before that woman injected the liquid or after? He can’t recall ever focusing on her features: he understood she was a woman from the delicate shape of her face, from the touch of her hands, but even though he just saw her, if someone asked him to describe her, he wouldn’t be able to. Then it hits him—maybe my vision was blurry even when I opened my eyes. I was just too traumatized to realize it.

“Where the hell am I?” Felix groans, but the words come out slurred. He starts to suspect that the woman just drugged him. He feels as if his jaw is falling asleep—no, as if every muscle is relaxing to the point of no longer responding properly to his commands. Felix tries to close his hands into fists but can’t. His fingers remain still; at most, they twitch slightly.

The woman doesn’t respond to his garbled words. She sits a couple of meters away from him. Felix notices her long, wavy raven hair. She leans her small frame against a desk. Felix can’t focus, but he sees her arm lift, her hand move. He imagines she’s writing something. About him? Maybe.

What’s the last thing he remembers? Felix strains his mind. He was supposed to meet Dylan. But did he ever make it to the meeting? That fragment of memory eludes him. He pushes harder. Yes, he’s sure now. The last clear memory he has is receiving a message from Dylan telling him where they were supposed to meet. He had put away his phone, grabbed his keys, and left his apartment. After that—nothing.

“Hey, bitch,” Felix growls with what little strength he has. “Your friends already cleaned out my pockets. What else do you want?”

The scrape of a chair against the floor puts Felix on edge. He can’t see her clearly, but he feels the woman is looking at him. She rises from the chair and walks toward him. Close. So close that Felix can smell the acrid scent of patchouli. So close that he can now see her green eyes and olive-toned skin, the kind typical of southern Europe. “What did you just call me?” she asks, her tone defiant.

And Felix loves a challenge. “Bitch. Didn’t you hear me?”

A jolt runs through Felix from head to toe, amplified by the metal chair to the point where he feels his heart swell in his chest, threatening to burst. It doesn’t, but what if it had? Suddenly, his bravado evaporates, slipping away along with his soul. He feels cold. An unnatural cold. At first, he thinks it might be a reaction to the taser, but then he realizes it’s panic.

“They should have cut out your tongue,” the woman hisses. Then she presses the taser under Felix’s chin, and for a moment, he fears another shock is coming, but nothing happens. The heavy plastic device lifts his face. Felix’s vision worsens by the second, but the woman probably doesn’t care. She likely only cares about what she sees. “You’re a miracle case. I hate people like you. People who never really pay—not in full.”

Screw you, Felix thinks. He’s never considered hitting a woman before this moment. “You don’t know a damn thing about me.”

“I know everything about you,” she whispers in response. “We know everything. That’s why you’re here. Because we know.”

“Jesus, so full of yourself,” Felix slurs, his tongue so heavy in his mouth that his words are almost unintelligible. “You think you’re powerful just because you know some crap about me?”

“Knowledge is power,” the woman says, emphasizing the phrase. “Without knowledge, people aren’t much different from animals. But you’ll learn that. Oh, you’ll learn it. You’ve already lost much of your memory—it’s buried so deep inside you that you’re not even aware it’s gone. You don’t even know what’s missing. And soon, very soon, you’ll be empty. A blank slate. A bastard like you doesn’t deserves to be wiped clean of all the filth you’ve accumulated. And yet, at the same time, that’s exactly what you deserve: to be erased.”

For a moment, Felix thinks this is the typical villain speech, the one given when the hero is down, nearly defeated. Except at that point, the hero is supposed to deliver an unexpected blow and turn the tide. Instead, Felix feels as though his body no longer belongs to him. Maybe even his mind isn’t his anymore. The woman is right. His mind is full of memories that feel like scattered photographs on a floor: not all of them seem to be his, and he can’t connect them to anything.

“You’re a sinner,” the woman says. “Do you know how a sinner can still hope to earn God’s grace? Paradise?”

Felix remains silent. Not because he doesn’t want to respond, but because he can’t move. Even his thoughts feel slowed. His eyes have almost completely failed him. He can distinguish only light from darkness. The woman is now just a shadow moving away.

“If it were up to me, I’d have let you die. But someone decided to give you a second chance. A path to atonement. You’re a little miracle bastard. Yet I’m sure someone as twisted as you will still find a way to screw it up—ruin yourself all over again.”

Felix’s head lolls forward. A deep sleep envelops him.

“We’ll meet again.”

Felix is sucked into oblivion and spat back out. His forehead smacks against the floor as his eyes snap open. The woman is gone. The place he was in—wherever it was—is gone too. There’s only white light. The white light of his cell. Everything is as usual.

And yet everything is different.

For the first time since he’s been there, he’s recovered a memory.

His heart pounds in his chest as he pushes himself up from the floor, his palms scraping against the rough surface.

That word again.

Atonement.

Path to atonement.

Felix looks at the cells with renewed terror.

Path suggests heading toward something. Freedom, maybe?

And yet, I’m sure someone as twisted as you will still find a way to screw it up—ruin yourself all over again.

Felix’s gaze falls on the faded bloodstain. Ivan’s blood. Suddenly, he feels a chill throughout his body.

He doesn’t even want to think about it.

He doesn’t want to, he can’t.

He can’t think that he may have made things worse for himself by trying to survive.

And yet, the knot in his throat tightens, and he can’t loosen it.

Did I destroy my chances by killing Ivan?

But most of all...

Was there ever a chance of getting out of this place?