Chapter 15
The Seventh Room
June locked the door behind Elise.
Bell was on the other side, shouting her name. His voice reached the room through a layer of concrete and old insulation, distorted until it sounded like someone calling from underwater.
The seventh room contained a table, two chairs, and a microphone suspended from the ceiling. No windows. No visible camera. Along the far wall, seven speakers had been set into the plaster.
June stood beside the table.
“Where is Mara?” Elise asked.
“You still think this room belongs to her.”
“She brought me here.”
“She brought you to the door. I brought you inside.”
June placed the brass key on the table. “You have twelve minutes before the air system changes.”
“Changes how?”
“It removes the room tone.”
Elise looked at the speakers. “What does that mean?”
“It means any recording made after twelve minutes will sound like a voice without a body.”
The microphone descended another inch.
June touched the table. “Mara said you would ask where she was. She said you would not ask what she wanted.”
“What does she want?”
“A record that cannot be used against her.”
“Then why make one?”
June’s face changed. It was the first expression Elise had seen that did not belong to her own mirror.
“Because people disappear more completely when they leave no evidence.”
The first speaker activated.
Mara’s voice said, “Room seven was built for a witness who could not remember the order of her own life.”
The second speaker answered in June’s voice.
“She remembered the order. You changed it.”
The third speaker spoke as Elise.
“I did not change anything.”
June looked at her. “That is why they chose you.”
The room’s clock began counting down from eleven minutes.
Elise moved toward the door. “Open it.”
“You can leave.”
“Then open it.”
“You can leave if you answer one question.”
The speakers fell silent.
June asked, “What did Mara record the night you said no?”
Elise searched her memory. A kitchen light. Snow against the windows. Mara standing barefoot beside the sink. A form on the table.
Then nothing.
“I don’t know.”
“You do.”
“I don’t.”
“That is what they built me to prove.”
June pressed a button on the table. A strip of paper emerged from a slot.
It contained one sentence in Elise’s handwriting.
I consent to being corrected.
Elise stared at it.
“I never wrote that.”
“You wrote it three times.”
The locked door behind Elise clicked.
Bell shouted from the corridor, “Elise, don’t answer her!”
June smiled without warmth.
“He knows what happens when you answer.”
The microphone lowered until it hovered between their faces.
Mara’s voice came through the fourth speaker.
“Ask her about the child.”
June leaned close.
“Why did you leave Celia’s daughter in the room?”
Elise felt the missing hour inside her mind open like a wound.