Naomi’s POV

When I woke, I thought for one strange, fleeting second that I was back in my old room, the one with the peeling wallpaper and the narrow bed. But then the smell hit me. Damp concrete. Rust. The stale tang of smoke that had sunk into the walls long before I arrived.

I opened my eyes to a ceiling stained with water marks, a barred window high above casting a slice of weak light across the room.

Dust drifted lazily in the pale beam. Every sound carried in the silence, the drip of water from somewhere in the pipes, the faint hum of electricity in the walls, my...