All Chapters of EYES OPEN: Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

144 Chapters

Chapter 121: Dark

I come back slowly.Not all at once. In pieces. Sound first, a low hum that might be an engine or might be something else, then sensation, the specific discomfort of a surface that is not soft, then smell, something cold and faintly damp like a room that has not had people in it for a long time.Then everything.I sit up fast and immediately regret it because my head does something violent in protest and I press my hands against the floor and breathe until the spinning stops.The room is small.Not tiny. Enough to stand in, enough to move in, but small in the way of something that was not designed for habitation. Stone walls. One window, high up, narrow, the glass thick and the light coming through it grey and directional, afternoon maybe, which means I have been unconscious for hours.There is a mattress on the floor.I am not on it. I am beside it. Which means someone placed me here and I moved in my sleep.A bottle of water on the floor near the mattress.A door in the far wall. So

Chapter 122: Outside

Rhys gets home at four fifty.He knows this because he checked his watch on the way up in the lift, thinking about the building news and the corner table kiss and the evening ahead, and at four fifty, he opens the apartment door and Arlo does not come.Arlo always comes.He stands in the doorway."Camille," he says.The apartment gives him back his own voice.He goes through it quickly... every room, already knowing, and comes back to the kitchen and stands there with the specific cold clarity of a man who has understood something he does not want to have understood.He calls my number.It rings four times and goes to voicemail and my voice says "Leave a message" and he hangs up and calls again.Voicemail.He calls Priya.She picks up on the first ring and her voice is already wrong, the careful controlled tone of someone managing something."She did not come back from lunch," Priya says. "I tried her phone at two. At two thirty. I was about to call you."The kitchen tilts very slight

Chapter 123: Day Two

I count time by the light.The high window goes from grey to dark to grey again and that is day one. Then dark again and that is day two. I do not know what time it is within those cycles but I know I have been here long enough for Rhys to have realised, long enough for Priya to have called my phone forty times, long enough for the police to have a file with my name on it somewhere in a London station.I know this because I know these people.Rhys does not wait. He does not sit and hope. He moves.I hold onto that.The masked figure comes twice a day.Morning and evening by the light pattern. Always the same. Dark clothing covering everything. The full face mask that leaves nothing visible. The tray. The water. The silence.I have tried speaking."I am pregnant," I said the first evening. "Fourteen weeks. I need to know you understand that."The figure stopped.Looked at me.Something in the posture shifted. A fraction. Barely. But present.Then they set the tray down and left.The fo

Chapter 124: Rhys

He has not slept.Felix knows this because he has been on the couch downstairs since Monday evening and it is now Wednesday morning and Rhys moves through the apartment at all hours with the specific focused energy of a man who has replaced sleep with purpose because purpose is the only thing currently keeping him functional.The police have a file.A detective named Marsh, mid forties, the specific competence of someone who has worked missing persons long enough to know which details matter and which are noise. She sat across from Rhys Tuesday morning and asked questions in a particular order that Rhys understood was designed to establish whether he was involved before moving to other avenues.He answered everything.Showed his phone. His location data. The restaurant receipt timestamped one twenty one pm. The corner where he kissed her and watched her walk away.Marsh looked at everything."The ring," she said.He put it on the table between them.She looked at it."She always picks

Chapter 125: Small Things

Day four I start leaving marks.Not dramatic. Small. A scratch on the stone near the mattress for each day. A method of keeping time that the figures cannot take from me because it is already in the wall.Four scratches.I look at them and think about Rhys looking at the window and I think, I am coming back. I just need more information first.The first figure comes in the morning.I have started calling him the Patient One in my head because everything about him is measured and deliberate and gives nothing away. He moves like someone who has made a decision they believe in. No hesitation, no second-guessing, just the specific resolve of a person who has committed.The second figure, the woman, comes in the evenings.I have started calling her the Angry One because underneath all the controlled clothing and the mask, she is furious. The way she sets things down. The way she stands near the door. The way she never looks directly at me but cannot quite stop herself from looking.She loo

Chapter 126: What Priya Does

Priya does not wait for the police.She never intended to wait for the police. She is cooperative with Detective Marsh, answers every question, provides everything requested, and then she goes back to the Signal Strategy office and sits at her desk and does what she does.Research.Not the brand kind.She opens every file she has on everyone connected to Camille's life and she starts building a picture the way Saoirse taught her, not looking for confirmation of what she suspects but looking for the thing she has not thought to look for yet.Saoirse is beside her.Neither of them has suggested the other leave.They have been here since Tuesday morning and it is Friday now and the plants in the east window have not been watered and neither of them has noticed."Financial activity," Saoirse says. Not a question. Just a direction."Already running," Priya replies.Vivienne first.Vivienne whose name neither of them has said out loud yet because saying it feels like accusation and they are

Chapter 127: Derek

Rhys knocks on Derek's door at seven pm Friday.Felix is beside him.Derek opens it looking like a man who has not slept since Monday, which mirrors Rhys so precisely that under different circumstances it might be something. He looks at Rhys. Looks at Felix. Reads something in both their faces.Steps back.They come in.Derek's rented room at Stanley's house is small and functional and has the specific sparse quality of someone who moved in temporarily and has not decided to stay. A bed, a desk, a chair, Evan's drawings on the wall because Derek put those up immediately.Rhys sits.Felix stands near the door with his arms folded, not threatening, just present, the way he stands near the cello when he is listening to a space."Tell me about Vivienne," Rhys says.Derek goes still."What about her?" he asks carefully."After the miscarriage," Rhys says. "You went to her. How many times?" "Four," Derek says. "Over three weeks. She was in a bad way. She had nobody.""What did you talk abou

Chapter 128: Day Six

Six scratches in the wall.I run my finger along them in the morning grey and count them and do the thing I do every morning which is check the baby first, both hands flat, waiting, and the flutter comes and I breathe and we continue.The Patient One comes in the morning.Sets the tray.And today something is different.He is agitated.Not the way the Angry One is agitated, raw and barely contained, but differently. The specific tension of someone whose plan is not going the way they planned and who is managing that without showing it and is not entirely succeeding.He sets the tray down harder than usual.Barely. A fraction. But I notice everything in this room.He turns to leave.And I say, "How long?"He stops."How long are you planning to keep me here?" I ask. "You should know that I am aware of what my body needs and I am managing it but this room is not adequate for an extended period. If you are not planning to let me go soon, I need more than what you are providing."He does n

Chapter 129: The Name

Derek.She says Derek.Just Derek.Like it is simple. Like it does not detonate everything I thought I understood about the last month.Derek.I sit with it.Four seconds of sitting with it while the room does its cold stone thing around us and Vivienne watches me from the floor with her eyes doing something that is braced for impact."Derek," I say."Yes," she replies."Derek who came to Evan's birthday party," I say. "Who held my hand when he said goodbye. Who told Rhys he was redirecting what he felt.""Derek who has been in therapy for six months and still came to me every week after the miscarriage," she says. "Derek who sat in my kitchen and talked about you for hours. About how he still wanted you and how he was finding it extremely hard to let go and just move on. About how you clearly have moved on and don't need him anymore. About how happy you were and how right everything was for you and how he was trying to want that for you..." She pauses. "He was not trying, he was comin

Chapter 130: Outside

The hallway beyond the door is dim.Stone floors. A staircase going up. Windows on the far wall showing actual outside for the first time in six days, dark sky, trees, the specific shape of countryside rather than city.Martin Raymond's farmhouse.I knew it before I saw it.I walk into the hallway on legs that are steadier than they have any right to be and Vivienne is beside me and at the top of the staircase is a figure.Derek.Not masked. No point anymore. Just Derek in a dark jacket looking down at me from the top of the stairs with the expression of a man who has run out of every version of himself that made sense.He looks at me.I look at him.Six days of looking at a wall and now Derek's face and it is the most surreal thing I have experienced in a life that has recently contained a great deal of the surreal."Camille," he says. His voice is wrecked.I say nothing.He comes down the stairs slowly, like each step costs him something, and stops three steps from the bottom."I ne

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