Chapter 7 · Scalpels and Shackles

"Get your hands off me, Renn!"

I didn't just pull away; I slammed my shoulder into his chest, trying to create an inch of breathing room. The metal cuffs on my wrists clattered, a sharp, mocking sound that echoed through the sterile hallway. Silas didn't budge. He just tightened his grip on my arm, his fingers digging into the skin with a pressure that said *I own you* more than any contract ever could.

"You're not a prisoner right now, Mira. You're a surgeon," he said, his voice a low, dangerous vibration near my ear. "And right now, your patient is screaming. Or singing. Whatever the hell this plague calls it."

He shoved me forward into the quarantine ward. The sound hit me first—a wall of melodic, haunting harmony. It wasn't a choir; it was a death rattle. Twenty kids, all of them under ten, sitting upright in rusted cots, their eyes glazed, singing a song that had no lyrics, only a humming grief that made the marrow in my bones ache.

"They're crashing," I snapped, shaking him off and lunging toward the nearest bed. "Why the hell are we standing here talking? Get me a kit.