❝𝐈𝐟 𝐈 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐬𝐨, 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐲 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝒐𝒏𝒍𝒚.❞
Selfishly fascinated with her own strength, Valen Ferreira is willing to do nearly anything and everyth...
PRIOR TO ITS TRANSFORMATION INTO A CLINIC FOR THE FEEBLE-MINDED, the Sanatorium once served as the core of the State's medical infrastructure, where one was brought from their weakest to their strongest; all feasible thanks to the earnestness of the doctors, nurses, and the others who dedicated themselves day and night to the duty that was preserving the health of the State. This wondrous building boasted multiple wings─including a famed technology wing─ a courtyard filling the space between aforementioned wings, and a modest cathedral perched on its northern edge.
That all changed since the Occupation.
The Sanatorium had experienced a radical change in atmosphere, devoid of the environment of healing that once brimmed the corridors. It'd been replaced with an overpowering dolor, so overpowering it robbed one of words and thought, Woe festered in the cracks in the walls. Men and women sporting eerily clean coats traversed the building, lacking the warmth and sincerity of those who once stood in their place.
A coat-clad woman guided Valé down a dim corridor, tightly gripping her by the hand, and not in a caring manner, either─ it was more of an advisory manner, a way of establishing who was the one in power, a reminder of her position in society: nothing more than a forsaken soul who'd soon join the burgeoning mound of bodies obscured from the world.
And that would be after the agony she dreaded enduring.
Valé shuddered when a bloodcurdling scream rang from a neighboring vestibule, which was promptly muffled. Coming toward them was a surgeon, whose once pristine clothing was now bloodied, stained in a staunch red. She squinted─a blood clot clung to her shirt. Valé looked downward, finding solace in the tiled flooring─until she found a bloody footprint.
She looked up and straight on.
As the woman steered her down a staircase, Valé dimly recalled what'd happened before she'd awoken that morning, before she'd awakened to a blank ceiling and a scratchy, smelly cloth draped over her body. It'd all happened so quickly. Frighteningly quickly─ yet she could recall every subtle detail, things she normally overlooked in other circumstances.
She was eating dinner with her mother.
Out of the six chairs in the dining room, only a third of them were occupied─ her father and brothers would help themselves to leftovers once they'd returned from their grueling twelve-hour shift in the fields, their varying shades of tan beaten even tanner by an uncompromising sun. They enjoyed the little food they had on their cracked plates: a modest serving of rice and beans, a slight, but haunting implication of the State's increasingly insecure state of affairs.
