I.

The fence stretched fifteen feet high, razor wire curling at the top like frozen waves. She pressed her body against the cold concrete wall and counted the searchlight’s rhythm. Eight seconds of darkness. Eight seconds to cross twenty feet of open ground.

Her fingers found the wire cutters in her pocket. Stolen from maintenance. Three weeks of planning for this moment.

The light swept past.

She ran.

II.

The woods offered no comfort—only branches that clawed and roots that grabbed. Behind her, sirens shattered the night. Dogs, soon. Always dogs.

She found the river by falling into it. The cold seized her lungs, stole her breath, but she pushed forward. Water kills scent. Water kills tracks. Water might kill her too, but that was a trade she’d made peace with.

The current pulled her downstream, away from the shouts, away from the lights, away from the number they’d given her instead of a name.

She let it take her.

III.

Dawn found her shivering beneath a bridge, wrapped in stolen clothes from a farmhouse line. A truck rumbled overhead. Then another.

Highway. Civilization. Ordinary people living ordinary lives, never knowing what existed just thirty miles east.

She climbed the embankment on numb legs. A gas station glowed in the gray morning light.

The attendant barely looked up. “Help you?”

She opened her mouth. Realized she’d have to choose a name now. Any name. A name that belonged to her.

“Coffee,” she said. “Please.”

It was a start.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​