Cassian
The first time I saw Wren Hollow, there was blood in the air.
Not his blood. Not yet. But the sharp copper tang hung in the recreation yard like a promise, and I tasted it the moment I stepped into the observation corridor. It coated my tongue, settled in my lungs, made something primal at the base of my skull sit up and pay attention.
I ignored it. I'd spent thirteen years ignoring instincts that didn't serve me.
"What happened?" I asked the guard stationed at the window.
Dwyer didn't turn. Thick-necked, bored-looking, the kind of man who'd been working institutional security so long that violence was just weather to him. He jerked his chin toward the yard below.
"Corcoran snapped. Took out two orderlies before they got him down. We've got it contained.I moved to the window. My job didn't require me to respond to incidents. I was a doctor, not security. I evaluated minds, I wrote reports, I stayed in my clean office with my clean hands and my carefully constructed walls. But incidents meant patients would be agitated, and agitated patients meant my sessions this afternoon would be complicated. I wanted to see the aftermath for myself.
Below, the yard was chaos contained.
Three orderlies pinned a thrashing man to the ground. Corcoran—I knew the name, knew the file—massive and red-faced, still fighting despite the restraints being fastened. He roared, spittle flying, words that might have been curses or might have been prayers. Nurses hovered at the edges, one pressing a cloth to a bleeding colleague's forehead. Other patients had been pressed against the far wall, guarded by two more staff members. Some watched with fear. Some with excitement. Some with the blank, empty stares of people who'd long ago learned that nothing mattered.
My gaze moved across the scene, cataloging, assessing. That's what I did. That's who I was. An observer. A collector of data.
Then it stopped.
In the corner of the yard, far from the violence, sat a figure on a wooden bench.
Small. Curled inward. Dark hair falling across a face tilted toward the chaos with an expression I couldn't immediately read. He was sitting with his knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them, making himself as small as possible. The position should have read as fear. Protective. Childlike.
But his face told a different story.
Not fear. Not horror. Something quieter. Something that looked almost like...
Fascination.
Like he was watching something beautiful.
Like the blood and the screaming and the thrashing bodies were a performance staged just for him, and he was the only one in the audience who truly appreciated the art of it.
My hand pressed against the window glass without my permission.
"Who's that?" My voice came out rougher than I intended, scraped raw by something I couldn't name.Dwyer leaned forward, following my gaze. "Oh. That's Hollow. The one they call the bird."
"The bird?"
"Wren Hollow. You know, like the little bird?" He snorted. "The guys started calling him that. Looks like a stiff wind would break him. Doesn't help that he's got them big eyes, all sad and innocent. The nurses love him. Sneak him extra dessert and shit."
I kept staring at the small figure. "And?"
"And don't let the face fool you, Doctor. He's in here for murder. Three of them."
Three. I should have felt the usual clinical detachment. The familiar distance I maintained with every patient, every case file, every story of human ruin that crossed my desk. Instead I felt... something else. Something that prickled at the back of my neck. Something that made my skin tighten.
As if sensing the weight of my gaze, the boy on the bench looked up.
Straight at the observation window.
Straight at me.Even from this distance, even through the reinforced glass that separated us, I could see those eyes. Pale. Silver-gray. Framed by dark lashes that made them look enormous in that small face. They caught the weak institutional light and seemed to glow with it, luminous and wrong. They were the kind of eyes that made people want to confess things. The kind that held secrets and promised to keep yours too.
For a long moment, neither of us moved.
The chaos continued below—Corcoran screaming, orderlies shouting, nurses running—but it felt distant, muffled, like sound underwater. There was only the boy on the bench and me at the window and the strange electric current that seemed to pass between us through the glass.
Then his lips parted slightly. His expression shifted—the distant fascination melting into something soft. Vulnerable. His whole face transformed, the sharp edges smoothing, the too-knowing gaze softening into something that looked almost like hope.
He looked so young in that moment. So lost. Like a child who'd wandered away from home and couldn't find his way back. Like someone who'd been waiting so long for rescue that he'd forgotten what rescue looked like, but he'd know it when he saw it.
Then he smiled. Just a little. Tentative. Hopeful.
Like he'd been waiting for someone to come.
Like he'd been waiting for me.
I looked away first. I had to. My heart was doing something in my chest that I didn't recognize, something that felt too much like the cracking of ice, and I couldn't afford cracks. I'd spent too long building those walls.
"What's his story?" I asked, proud that my voice stayed steady. Proud that my hands didn't shake.
Dwyer shrugged. "Hollow? Been here two years. Court-ordered evaluation that keeps getting extended. They can't decide if he's faking or really that broken." He lowered his voice, the way people do when they're about to share something they think is important. "Between us? Half the staff thinks he's innocent. Kid that pretty, that quiet—doesn't fit the profile. The other half thinks he's the most dangerous person in this building."
My eyes drifted back to the window. The boy—Wren—hadn't moved. He was still watching the observation window. Still watching me. That small smile still curved his lips.
"The second half," I said quietly, "are probably right."
I didn't know why I said it. I'd never met the boy. Hadn't read his file. Hadn't spent a single minute in his presence. But something in those pale eyes, in that too-innocent smile, whispered a warning my hindbrain couldn't ignore. A predator's warning. The kind that said danger even when everything looked safe.
And something else—something deeper, something I didn't want to examine—whispered that it didn't matter.
That I was going to look anyway.
That I was going to find out.That something in me, some part I'd thought long dead, recognized something in him.
Like calls to like, my mother used to say. Broken calls to broken.
I turned away from the window.
"When's he scheduled for evaluation?"
Dwyer checked his clipboard. "You're down for first session Thursday. Ten AM. Want me to swap you out? Some of the docs don't like working with the high-profile ones."
"No." The word came too fast. I softened it. "No. I'll handle it."
Dwyer shrugged. "Suit yourself. Just don't let those eyes fool you, Doc. I've been here fifteen years. I've seen plenty of pretty faces hiding ugly things."
I walked away without answering.
But his words followed me down the corridor, echoing off the institutional walls.
Pretty faces hiding ugly things.
I thought about the boy's smile. That small, hopeful curve.
I thought about three murders and a face that looked like a prayer.
And I thought about the way my heart had stuttered when our eyes met through the glass.
Pretty faces hiding ugly things.
The thing was—I wasn't sure which one of us he was talking about.