Just Breathe

POV: Zuleika Mahfouz

By the time Zuleike reached the observation hallway, the building had been emptied of voices. It was the long, after‑hours quiet that makes every small sound a choice: heel, breath, the whisper of her sleeve against glass. Through the narrow pane in the lab door she saw Ji already under: shoulders loose, chin slightly tipped, breath moving in a neat count that matched the small metronome Garrett had set beside the recorder. The red dot pulsed like a patient heartbeat.

You came to verify protocol, not to spy, she told herself. You’re the one who hates rumor. But the room on the other side of the glass did not look like rumor; it looked like slow surgery. Garrett wasn’t looming or theatrical; he sat with the posture of a clinician, voice measured enough to sand the edges off words. Ji answered in that same cadence—stripped of ornament, obedient to rhythm. The answers weren’t technical. They were… confessions taught to sound like findings.

A method is a method, Zuleike argued with herself. If it’s bounded, documented, reversible— The thought went thin when she watched the change travel across Ji’s face: the focus, the warmth, the tiny tremor at the corner of her mouth when Garrett leaned in. His hand, steady, slipped from the line of the table to the quiet triangle of shadow where Ji’s skirt draped over her thigh. The motion was efficient, hidden by furniture, unmistakably intimate. Ji’s breath hitched; Garrett’s voice softened by a degree that only a microphone would notice.

Stop it—interpret what you see, don’t react. But interpretation didn’t help. It didn’t look like ****. It looked like consent that had been engineered.

The hallway air thinned. You should knock. You should say something. Instead, Zuleike realized she’d been holding her own breath. She stepped back from the glass so quickly her shoulder tapped the opposite wall. The image didn’t come with her—it stayed on the inside of her eyelids.

Move.

She fled.

The east stairwell swallowed her steps and threw them back in uneven echoes, as if another set of feet were half a beat behind. Concrete breathed cold. It’s the best. I want it always, her memory repeated in Ji’s voice—threaded with Garrett’s patience. A duet.

Maybe she wanted it. Maybe she was safe. Maybe you misread. The rationalizations lined up like handrails and failed to hold her weight. If you’re wrong, you apologize. If you’re right and you do nothing, you live with it.

There was only one person to tell: Dean Thomas.

Dean Thomas’s suite was wrong for the hour. Reception lights out; beyond the glass, the inner office in low standby glow. No staff. No Dean. Only Farida stood near the console, campus windbreaker thrown over a hoodie, fingers worrying the strap of a tote as if she’d been waiting for something she didn’t want to arrive.

“I need to speak to the Dean. It’s urgent,” Zuleike said. Her voice came out too loud and bounced back thin.

Farida’s eyes flicked toward the dark office and back. “She isn’t here,” she whispered. Her throat worked. “We shouldn’t call. No calls.”

“What?”

“He hears them,” Farida said, voice shaking—afraid in exactly the right places. “Everyone here listens to him now. Please.” She stepped closer, lowering her voice. “You saw it, didn’t you?”

Relief cracked through Zuleike’s ribs. I’m not insane. Someone else saw the outline. “Yes. We have to warn Dean Thomas.”

Farida shook her head hard. “Not from here.” She reached for Zuleike’s forearm with both hands, as if to steady her. The touch was careful, human. Zuleike let herself lean a fraction into it. Thank God. Not alone. A second later, something like a pinprick kissed her skin—small as a gnat bite, so brief she almost dismissed it as panic. On Farida’s ring, the smooth band had a tiny burr she didn’t remember seeing.

“Farida—what did you—”

“Shh,” Farida breathed, eyes wide. “No calls. He hears them. Listen—if I leave with you, they’ll flag it. Cameras, badge logs… Simone’s at the console. I’ll keep them busy—trip a maintenance loop, stall anyone he sends. That buys you minutes. Go.”

For an instant, the fear on her face smoothed flat, like paint settling. Then it snapped back, perfect. “Run.”

You don’t know her well enough to trust that, a small voice said. But you have no one else.

Zuleike stumbled back. As she turned, a too‑quick laugh slipped from Farida and followed her into the corridor like a thread.

Did she laugh? No. You’re amped. You’re hearing things.

She ran.

She kept to the stairs, cut a diagonal through the long corridor, and aimed straight for the lot. Don’t look behind you. Looking turns echoes into footsteps. She took the corner fast—

—and a figure in a hoodie barreled into her. Shoulder to sternum, air punched out; the floor rose up and took her knees. Papers scattered from the stranger’s tote like startled birds. A faint antiseptic smell clung to the hoodie.

“Sorry—sorry!” the runner blurted, not meeting her eyes, already gathering pages with panicked, fumbling hands. “Didn’t see you—sorry!” Another quick bump as they squeezed past, then the slap of sneakers fading down the hall.

Zuleike pushed up, palms stinging, heartbeat in her teeth. Accident. Just an accident. She patted her coat by reflex, felt—for a heartbeat—the familiar rectangle, then nothing but fabric. It’s there. It has to be. Check later. Keep moving. The apology echoed behind her like a laugh.

The parking lot air felt sharp enough to cut. A security cart hummed far down the lanes to no destination. Observe, don’t catastrophize, she ordered herself, and fumbled for her phone. Gone. A hole where an object should be. Did you drop it in the hall? Or did they— She shut the thought down before it could finish.

She locked the doors and started the car.

It began as a fizz under the skin where Farida had held her—a carbonated calm that wasn’t calm. Adrenaline, she told herself. Crash after the run. But the fizz didn’t ebb; it spread, curled up the inside of her forearm like smoke learning the shape of a room.

Streetlights smeared at the edges. The dashboard clock double‑blinked, then steadied. The radio found only static that ticked in metronome beats and, once—she would swear to it—formed the syllables of breathe.

Placebo. Suggestion. You’re primed. You saw too much.

Her fingers tingled where Farida had touched her. The steering wheel felt damp though it wasn’t. She wiped her palms on her skirt, checked the mirrors, checked them again. In the rearview a pair of headlights hung too steady for too long, and then when she looked back they weren’t there. Tail? No. You’re inventing tails now.

Her thoughts began to echo—first a polite reverb, then a chorus that answered her a half‑beat late: Home. Home. Write it down. Write it down. Her jaw clenched; she **** it loose and heard her teeth click like a metronome finding tempo.

This is anxiety.

This is something else.

She watched her blinker flash: tick—tick—tick. The same pace as Garrett’s metronome. She turned it off.

At this hour, her place was seven minutes from campus.

By the time she reached her building, dusk had pooled into corners. The hallway smelled of dust and old heat. You are safe now. Four locks. Light on. Write it down. She fumbled the keys. The cool fizz in her arm had ripened into a slow, wrong clarity—as if the world had been sharpened two notches past useful. The grain in the door looked like writing she couldn’t quite read. The peephole stared back.

Inside, she locked the door twice, three times, as if numbers could matter. Write it down. All of it. Make it real.

Plan: timestamp an email to Dean Thomas, bcc the ombuds archive, save a local PDF. If the net fails—print and drop it in the night box.

Bounded, documented, reversible—say it out loud, make it true.

Laptop: dead. The battery icon blinked once, in pity, and vanished. You charged it this morning. Did you? The plug slid from her fingers; she missed the outlet by a country.

Router: blinking red in a rhythm she recognized—tick, tick, tick. She laid a dish towel over it to stop the pattern, but the rhythm continued under the fabric, polite as a neighbor tapping a wall.

Fallback: paper. Pen. Door. Hand it to a neighbor—any witness.

Her phone was still gone. She checked the table, the sink, the shoes by the door, the freezer—ridiculous—and found a single coin. She put it on her tongue to prove a point to herself and spat it out at once. Metallic taste isn’t proof of anything. The coin clanged in the sink with the wrong delay, a late echo like a joke told twice.

Placebo. Suggestion. Then: No. You know onset curves. This is neither flight‑pill nor coffee nor panic. This is the hallway under your skin.

Her hearing widened until the apartment became a topographical map of tiny sounds: the refrigerator motor speaking low vowels; the ceiling tick answering; her own breath arriving from too far away. Latency slipped into everything—sound a half‑second behind sight, thought a half‑second behind will.

Call someone.

No calls. He hears them.

Her knees found the floor. The tiles were cooler than they should be. She pressed her palm to the spot Farida had held and felt—she would swear to it—something like a bubble moving under the skin, rolling obediently when she pushed. She laughed once; it came out thin. Hallucination. You don’t hallucinate. You’re fine.

A draft she couldn’t source lifted the papers on her table and set one down neatly: a blank page. For a second she saw CLEAN LINE typed across it in thin, patient letters, but when she blinked it was only paper.

A soft click from the front door.

The lock turned.

You locked it. You did. Twice. Did you? Her memory unspooled three versions at once: yes, no, yes. All persuasive.

The door opened anyway.

Footsteps, careful, domestic, like someone entering their own home. Neighbors, she thought, and then knew it wasn’t.

Garrett filled the doorway as if the frame had been built for him. Behind him, Farida stepped in with a small canvas case at her side. Lexi followed, composed, immaculate, as though the evening belonged to her.

You could scream, Zuleike told herself. Her mouth made the shape and no sound arrived.

They stopped a measured distance away and looked down at her on her knees. Zuleike watched herself as if from another room, a woman in a tableau: one hand braced on tile, one pressed to her forearm as if she could pinch out whatever was moving under the skin.

Garrett didn’t look angry. Or surprised. Just calm. “Onset time?” he asked, not looking away from Zuleike.

Farida’s voice was soft. “Eight to ten minutes.”

You trusted her for the length of a pinprick, Zuleike thought. That’s all it took.

Garrett nodded once. “Noted.” Then, almost kindly, to Zuleike: “The dose will hold. You’re safe.”

Safe like Ji looked safe, she thought, and the thought slid sideways and dissolved.

Lexi’s shadow crossed the floor and touched Zuleike’s hand like cold smoke.

The edges of the room went out of focus. You will remember this. You will write it down. You will— The sentence broke in the middle and forgot its end.

She tried to speak, but her mouth forgot the shapes of words. Sleep rose like deep water.

Darkness leaned in.