It was something a mind does to survive a thing it cannot stop: it goes somewhere slightly above and to the side, and it watches, and it takes notes.

While one part of me was on that floor, another part was observing with an almost clinical detachment — noting where the cameras were angled, noting that his mother’s voice was carrying clearly, noting, underneath everything, a single cold sentence forming and setting like concrete: this is the last thing these people will ever do to me. I was not planning, exactly.

I was too far outside myself to plan.

But some deep part of me had already understood that what was happening was not a catastrophe to survive but evidence to preserve, and that the worst afternoon of my life was, in the same motion, the afternoon that set me free — and it was quietly, methodically, making sure nothing about it would be wasted.

When he was finished, breathing hard, he stepped back like a man who had won something.

I pushed myself up off the floor.