Naomi’s voice wouldn’t stop.

It wasn’t coming from the walls anymore—not from the screens, not from the speakers, not from any of Mistress’s insidious devices. But that didn’t matter. It was in Ivy now. Crawling through her mind like syrup through cracked glass, sticking in every crevice, seeping into the marrow of her thoughts. “Aww, sweet little Ivy,” Naomi cooed, that voice so perfectly pitched it could have come from a children's storybook. “It’s okay to feel overwhelmed, baby girl. It’s hard being big, isn’t it? But that’s not your job anymore. You’re not supposed to think. That’s what your caregiver is for. You just suck and rock and relax... good girl.”

“No,” Ivy whimpered, barely above a whisper. “No, no, get out…” Her hands clamped over her ears, as if she could seal the voice out by force. It didn’t help. Naomi’s words oozed past the barrier, as if carried on Ivy’s heartbeat. Her knees drew tight against her chest, arms wrapping around them in a protective tangle, her back pressed hard to the corridor wall. She rocked—slowly at first, then more frantically, the soft rustle of her sleeper fabric loud in the sterile silence. “Get her out of my head,” she gasped, breath hitching, “get her out…”

Tears came next, streaming down her cheeks in hot, relentless trails. Her body shuddered with every breath. Not from cold. Not from fear. From remembering. From feeling it again. The loss of control. The moment when her identity had begun to unravel—not by force, but by lullaby. Naomi hadn’t broken her with whips or chains. She had done it with baby talk and a pacifier and a voice that understood her. That was the worst part. Naomi had sounded like she cared. And a part of Ivy had wanted it to be true.

Her name wasn’t being called. But something—something was moving toward her. She didn’t register the footsteps. Didn’t hear her name whispered with gentle urgency. All she could hear was Naomi. “You’re being such a brave girl, Ivy. But that’s not what we need right now. We need our little baby. You don’t have to think anymore. Let go. Let someone else think for you…”

“I’m not—” Ivy’s voice cracked into a sob. “I’m not a baby…”

And then she was being held.

Strong arms wrapped around her—warm, anchoring. One slid behind her back, the other under her knees, lifting her slightly. She didn’t struggle. Her body was too far gone to fight. But her eyes, wet and wild, searched for the threat—only to find Finn. His face was tight with concern, jaw clenched, but his eyes were soft. Present. Real. Not a simulation, not a program. A person. She hadn’t even seen him kneel. Didn’t know how long he’d been there.

“It’s okay,” he murmured, voice rough with emotion, but steady. One hand gently cupped the back of her head and guided her forward until her face pressed into his chest. The scent of him—warm cotton, sweat, something faintly like shampoo—hit her like a wave, grounding and human and safe. Her fingers clutched at his sleeve, gripping it like a lifeline as her sobs broke free in full.

He didn’t shush her. Didn’t speak of empty comforts. He just held her, letting her cry, rocking her in the quiet space where only they existed.

But Naomi wasn’t finished with her yet.

Even as Ivy trembled in Finn’s arms, even as her tears soaked the fabric of his sleeper and her body curled tighter against his chest, the voice slithered back into her mind—like a final whisper from a shadow that refused to leave the room. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” Naomi cooed, softer now, coaxing, as if speaking to a frightened animal. “You don’t have to fight anymore. Just let go. You’re already padded… already so full, aren’t you? It hurts to hold it, doesn’t it? That little baby bladder of yours can’t handle big-girl pressure. Just relax, Ivy. Be a good girl… soak your diaper for me. That’s all it takes. Just this once. One lesson. One accident… and I’ll go away.”

Ivy’s breath caught.

The pressure was there. She hadn’t even noticed it until Naomi said it—but now it pulsed through her abdomen, sharp and present, coiling like a knot just behind her navel. Her body betrayed her, clenching, aching, reminding her of every formula-induced humiliation, every moment she’d been forced to submit while the Nursery rewarded compliance and punished dignity. And yet this—this—felt worse. Because it wasn’t a trial, it wasn’t a machine. It was her mind, twisted by repetition and fear, whispering her into submission. Naomi wasn’t on the walls anymore. She was inside Ivy.

“No,” Ivy whispered, shaking her head violently, pressing her face harder into Finn’s chest. “No, no, no, no… absolutely not…” Her fingers tightened around the fabric of his sleeper, clawing for something solid. Her legs trembled with the effort to hold it in, to resist, but her fight wasn’t just physical. It was deeper. Psychological. The kind of war waged where no one could see the battlefield. The type of war she couldn’t afford to lose. She would not wet herself. Not like this. Not because Naomi asked. That was the line. That had always been the line.

Naomi giggled in her head, saccharine and bright. “Oh, come on, silly girl. You’re already halfway there. Just a little trickle. No one will blame you. They’ll understand. It’s hard being a big girl…”

“Shut up!” Ivy screamed, though the words never made it past her lips. They stayed locked in her throat, buried behind gasps and sobs as the pressure built. “Get out—get out—get out of my head!” Her entire body quaked as she fought the urge, as tears spilled down her cheeks with ferocity, as her mind screamed and spiraled, desperate to silence the voice that had taken root.

And then Finn spoke.

“Ivy,” he said.

That was all. Just her name. But it wasn’t said with pity. It wasn’t said like Naomi would say it. There was no cooing, no patronizing lilt. Just recognition. He said it was like someone reminding her who she was, even when she couldn’t remember it.

Her breath hitched. Her sobbing grew louder, rawer, as the tension in her body cracked open into unrestrained grief. She cried into his chest, no longer just from fear, but from the sheer weight of what she’d almost given up. She’d nearly let Naomi win. She’d virtually let herself break. Her whole frame shook with the effort of keeping herself whole, of clawing back her thoughts one by one from the cartoon-colored abyss Naomi had painted in her mind.

Finn’s hand rested gently at the back of her head, fingers combing slowly through her hair, grounding her in something real. No restraints. No commands. No games. Just presence.

And Naomi—still giggling, still whispering—began to fade again like static being swallowed by silence.

Ivy had no idea how long she had cried.

Time had fractured. The corridor could have swallowed hours or mere minutes—it didn’t matter. She was spent. Her sobs had faded from wracking waves to small, tremulous hiccups, and now even those had grown quiet. The heat in her cheeks had cooled to a dull throb. Her throat ached from the inside out, scraped raw by the torrent of grief and fear she hadn’t realized she’d held in so tightly. She felt brittle, as if she moved too suddenly, she might shatter. And yet—she was still there. Alive. Whole, somehow, though barely.

She remained in Finn’s arms, tucked against the slow rise and fall of his chest. She clung to his warmth, not just for comfort, but for proof that something, anything, in this place wasn’t part of the machine. The faint rhythm of his heart beneath her cheek, the subtle shift of his breathing—it was the first sound in what felt like hours that wasn’t Naomi. That wasn’t programming.

Eventually, the tears stopped.

Her body gave up even on crying. She lay still for a while longer, letting her ragged breathing level out, until she finally pushed herself up with effort, sniffling softly as she untangled herself from the crook of Finn’s arms. She blinked blearily, her eyes red and swollen, then noticed the dark, damp blotch on the front of his sleeper. Her chest gave a small, guilty twist.

“I made a mess of your sleeper,” Ivy murmured, her voice hoarse, each word scraping against her throat like sandpaper.

Finn glanced down, then offered her a lopsided shrug. His concern didn’t falter, didn’t fade. “It’s fine,” he said, voice low but steady. His hand lingered on her back, tracing small, grounding motions between her shoulder blades. “I’m more worried about you. Are you okay?”

She nodded, but it was a fragile gesture—less affirmation, more hope. Her shoulders rose and fell in a slow breath, the kind that came not from peace, but exhaustion. “That cartoon…” she said, and the words caught like thorns on the way out. “It was like it was inside my head. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t shut her up. No matter how loud I screamed—she just kept talking.”

Finn’s face didn’t change much, but she saw the flicker in his eyes—a flash of something dark. Recognition. He nodded slowly. “I understand,” he said, and there was a quiet gravity in those words. “You were strapped in that horrible bouncer all day, Ivy. All day. That show, her voice—Naomi—was pumped into your head nonstop. They didn’t just humiliate you. They assaulted you. I think it’s natural to hear her still.”

Ivy sniffled, wiping her nose with the back of her mittened hand. She hated its texture and the way it rubbed clumsily against her face, as if she were a toddler trying to clean up without finesse. She hated everything about this place. Everything made her into it. “I’m scared, Finn,” she whispered, and the words felt like glass coming out. “I’m scared if I ever get stuck in there again… if I ever have to watch that damn show again… I’ll never get her out. She’ll just… live in me.”

She paused, trembling. “Just now… she told me to wet myself. Said if I wanted her gone, all I had to do was let go. And the worst part?” She looked up, meeting his eyes with a mixture of terror and shame. “Somewhere deep down—I wanted to. I wanted to do what she said. I wanted to relax and give in and let go, and just… be the good little girl she was telling me I was.”

The words hit the air like a confession dragged from the soul—not just a fear but a scar opened wide. Ivy’s hands tightened in her lap. She hated saying it, hated feeling it, but it was true. That voice—so soft, so reassuring, so manipulative- had found something in her and touched it. It had offered relief, even if it came wrapped in shame.

She looked away again, shoulders curling slightly inward. “I think… I think I’m not as strong as I thought.”

Finn didn’t answer right away. He didn’t offer hollow words. Instead, he placed a hand over hers—firm, steady, warm.

“You’re stronger than anyone here, Ivy,” he said at last. “Because you didn’t give in.”

Ivy sniffled again, a cold shiver threading its way up her spine as the memory of that voice curled back into the crevices of her thoughts. Even now, with her head pressed against something real, something human, the words still echoed. Naomi’s cadence. Her syrupy tone. The way she’d offered humiliation wrapped in comfort. Ivy knew—now—that it hadn’t really been Naomi. Not exactly. It had been her mind mimicking the voice that had tormented her for hours, maybe days. She recognized that now. But the knowledge didn’t lessen the sting. The difference between internal and external didn’t matter when it felt that real. “I don’t feel strong,” she whispered, the words escaping as a truth more intimate than confession.

Finn didn’t flinch. He didn’t look away. Instead, he tilted her chin gently with his fingers, guiding her eyes to meet his. There was no pity in his gaze. Only resolve. “You’re sitting here,” he said, his voice low but carrying weight like stone, “in the top ten of this incredibly fucked up gameshow they’ve got us trapped in… and you mean to tell me that after ninety-one people have been eliminated, you’re still standing, and you think you’re weak?” He shook his head, scoffing softly as if the very idea offended him. “Hell, Ivy, you’re a caregiver. There are only three of us right now. Three. And next time, it’ll be two. And I’d be shocked if you weren’t one of them.”

He leaned in slightly, keeping her gaze anchored, refusing to let her sink back into that spiral of self-doubt. “You’re far stronger than you think.”

The words struck deeper than she expected. Ivy felt a blush rise to her cheeks—not just from embarrassment, but from something that almost felt like hope. Her throat tightened again, though this time not from tears. She gave a weak nod, but the motion felt incomplete. There was still something snagging on the edges of his words. Something real. Something hard.

Her lips parted slowly. “But… there’s only going to be one victor.” She spoke the words not as an accusation, but as a fact. A simple, brutal truth that hung between them like a blade. “Finn… there’s no damn way I’m beating the others. Not Sarah. And definitely not you.” Her voice trembled again, but it was a different kind of tremble now—one born of dread, not fear. “And even if I could... how am I supposed to live with that? How can I possibly think it’s okay to win if it means Clara gets eliminated? Or Maria? Or Mason? Or Eli?” She pulled her knees tighter to her chest again, her arms wrapped around herself, as if trying to hold in the ache. “How do I stand on top of a pile of my friends, Finn? How do I keep going when the price of survival is watching people I love get dragged away screaming?”

There it was. The real horror of the Nursery. Not just the pacifiers, or the diapers, or the forced feedings and cartoon indoctrination. It was the game itself. The way it made you care—forced you to care—then made you choose. The way it turned kindness into a weakness and compassion into a liability. Ivy wasn’t afraid of being punished. She was scared of winning.

“I don’t want to watch them suffer,” she whispered, her voice hollow. “I don’t want to win if it means I have to hurt them.”

And somehow, that fear cut deeper than anything Naomi had ever said.

Finn’s jaw ticked once, twice—tight movements like clock hands struggling against gears worn from overuse. His eyes broke away from hers, finding some empty point down the corridor, unfocused and distant. He didn’t speak at first. And when he did, it came out softer than Ivy expected. “I don’t know,” he said. The words felt like pebbles tossed into a void, swallowed by the silence between them. “I’ve been thinking about that for days now. I don’t know what the right answer is. I don’t know what happens to the people who get eliminated. I don’t know how far they’re going to make us go. I don’t even know what the point is anymore.”

He exhaled, hard, frustrated—like the words had built up and there was nowhere else for them to go. His hand came up and scrubbed through his hair, wild and unrestrained. “I don’t know if it’s better to keep fighting, to keep pretending we’ve got some kind of agency in this freak show—or if it’s just easier to give up. To let go. Let them diaper us, drug us, feed us formula until we can’t tell what day it is anymore. Because maybe then… maybe it stops hurting so much.” His voice cracked slightly at the edges, not from weakness, but from too much pressure building behind dammed-up pain. “I don’t know, Ivy. And that scares the hell out of me.”

For a moment, neither of them moved. Ivy’s eyes drifted toward the far end of the corridor, her gaze glassy. Her mind wasn’t in the hallway anymore. It was back in the bouncer. In the playpen. In the feeding chair with the straps and the tubes and the cartoon eyes watching every flinch of rebellion. Her voice, when it came, was distant. “What if it’s worse, Finn?” she asked. Her fingers curled into fists, trembling softly in her lap. “What if being eliminated is worse than all this shit?”

The air grew heavy again. There was no breeze, no sound beyond their breathing and the ever-present hum of the Nursery’s infrastructure—subtle, nearly silent, but constant. 

“We know this show’s being funded by someone,” Ivy continued, her voice beginning to rise just a fraction, words trembling under the weight of her dread. “Not just some twisted AI. Someone built this. Someone paid for it. Very, very rich people with the power to keep this hidden from the entire world. You saw the cameras. The production quality. The engineering. Hell, the whole facility! And no one on the outside knows. That means reach, Finn. That means control.”

Her voice wavered, her chest rising and falling unevenly as the images tumbled through her mind—those who had been eliminated, taken away quietly, their names never spoken again. Not even a goodbye. No closure. Just silence. “If they can do this… if they can make the world forget us, make us forget who we are—” Her words caught in her throat, and she swallowed hard, trying to keep herself together as the sensation twisted deep in her belly. A coiling fear. A knot made of unanswered questions and mounting horror.

“What if they never let us go, Finn?” she whispered.

It was a small question. A fragile question. But it hit like a hammer.

Finn didn’t answer.

Ivy glanced up, her eyes locking onto Finn’s, and for a breathless second, the world fell away. It was all there, plain on his face—just beneath the practiced calm, the quiet resilience, the image he wore like armor. She saw it. The same fear coiled tight in his chest, the same questions eating at the edges of his resolve. He wasn’t unbreakable. He wasn’t invincible. He was just like her—clinging to sanity by fingertips, terrified of what waited at the end of this twisted game. But still there. Still present. Still trying. She felt her lips part, her voice soft as it left her. “If anyone has a shot of winning, it’s you.”

Finn’s gaze jerked back to hers, eyebrows raised like she’d struck him. “Like hell,” he replied, scoffing. He shook his head, firm. “There’s no way I’m winning this. You’re the one who’s gonna make it. It’s you.”

Ivy scoffed back, the sound half a laugh and half disbelief. “You’ve been a caregiver for what, all but one trial, Finn?” She tilted her head slightly, voice gaining strength as she spoke. “You’re smart, you’re strong, and somehow, you’re still kind through all this bullshit. You keep your head on straight when the rest of us are falling apart. You’re going to win this thing. You deserve to.”

Her voice trailed, the weight of those words dragging behind them. A truth too heavy to fully carry. But just as Finn opened his mouth to answer—probably to refute her again—she cut him off with a wave of her hand. “Who knows,” she said, with a forced brightness that barely masked the raw edge beneath. “Maybe being eliminated isn’t so bad. Maybe you get to go home. Maybe you get to forget all of this insanity.”

Her eyes flicked to the ceiling, as if daring Mistress to contradict her. “Maybe the winner doesn’t get freedom. Maybe the money is a lie. Maybe they keep you. Maybe you will become the next Naomi.” Her voice cracked on the last word, but she pushed through it, letting out a wild, unsteady laugh. “Screw it. Let me tell you something, Finn. When—not if—when I get out of here? I’m going on the longest cruise of my life. World-spanning. No return date. Just ocean, sky, and silence. No diapers. No cartoons. No freakin’ automated arms trying to check if I’ve wet myself. Just me and the wind.”

Finn’s jaw tightened again, but this time, it wasn’t fear. It was conviction. His shoulders squared, and he nodded slowly. “When I get out of here,” he said, voice low but certain, “I’m finally going to start that book I’ve always told myself I’d write.”

Ivy blinked at him. “You, writing?” she teased, the ghost of a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I didn’t peg you for an author.”

Finn shrugged, smiling now, and it was the first real smile either of them had worn in what felt like forever. “You didn’t know me before all this,” he said with a mock-innocent tilt of his head. “For all you know, I’m a published author.”

Ivy giggled, a sound that surprised even her, the tension in her chest loosening by degrees. “But you just told me you were going to start writing.”

Finn clicked his tongue, snapping his fingers. “Dang,” he said, eyes twinkling. “I did say that, didn’t I?”

And just like that, they were laughing. Not with irony. Not with bitterness. But real, unguarded laughter. It didn’t erase the fear. It didn’t fix anything. But it reminded them both, at least for a fleeting moment, that they were still human. Still themselves. And in the Nursery, that alone felt like victory.

Their conversation drifted, slowly and naturally, like sunlight warming a frostbitten window. The fear didn’t vanish, nor did the ugly truths lurking behind every word—but for the first time in days, it didn’t dominate the air. They began speaking of the before, each story like a thread tugged loose from a tightly woven veil. Finn spoke about his small apartment, crammed with books and half-finished thoughts, about a coffee shop where he used to scribble notes and pretend not to people-watch. Ivy talked about her old job at a nonprofit, her obsession with historical documentaries, and the hiking trip she never took because life had always seemed to get in the way. There were silences between the stories, but they were warm, not heavy. Resting places rather than voids. The kind of quiet shared between people who had nothing to prove.

They laughed over silly things—bad takeout, worst dates, the time Finn once got locked out of his apartment while wearing nothing but a towel. Ivy described her dog with tearful fondness, and Finn promised that if she ever found a way out, he’d personally make sure she got another, just as chaotic and loveable. At some point, Sarah appeared, drawn by the echo of joy—a sound so rare in the Nursery it must have seemed alien. She didn’t speak at first. Just watched. And then, slowly, like a flower daring to bloom in winter, she sat down across from them and offered a crooked smile. Her voice was raw and cautious when she shared her own story—late nights in a campus library, her dream of becoming a teacher, the little brother she missed so much that it ached like a phantom limb.

And just like that, the three of them were laughing.

Not hysterically. Not in desperation. But genuinely. The kind of laughter that makes your stomach hurt a little and forces you to wipe your eyes with the heel of your hand. For a fleeting hour—maybe two—they weren’t contestants. They weren’t caregivers. They weren’t trapped. They were just people. Strangers who had become allies through suffering, finding a crack in the dark where light could still filter through. The hallway didn’t change. The sterile walls and soft hum of distant machinery still loomed around them. But it felt different. Warmer. Maybe the nightmare didn’t own them completely.

Even when Ivy’s bladder began to ache, it didn’t touch the moment. She noticed it, sure—that slow, dull pressure that had become far too familiar—but it felt distant. Unimportant. It wasn’t accompanied by panic, or shame, or dread. She shifted her legs subtly, but didn’t let it cloud her thoughts. She was too focused on the way Sarah’s eyes lit up when Finn did an exaggerated impression of Mistress, or how Finn nearly choked laughing when Ivy described the horrifying food served at her high school cafeteria. For the first time since waking up in this twisted place, Ivy felt normal. Not perfect. Not healed. But human. Herself.

And maybe—just maybe—that was enough.

Maybe she would survive this.