CHAPTER 45: MEASURED WORDS

The lecture hall smelled like old carpet and over brewed coffee.

Sera sat in the third row of the lecture hall to the right. Not so close as to stand out, but not so far as to look like she was hiding. She had her notebook open, her pen poised between her fingers, but she wasn’t taking notes. Not today. The creature inside her was awake. Not agitated, not angry. Just... alert. It liked listening to her psychology lectures, it liked learning about the human mind.

Professor Halvorsen’s voice echoed off the walls, smooth and bored. He was younger than most of the faculty—mid-thirties, maybe—with the tailored blazers and manicured beard to prove it. He liked his TED Talk energy, liked leaning against the front desk with one hand in his pocket while he gestured with the other. He didn’t lecture. He performed. And he was his biggest fan.

"...which brings us to the psychology of fear responses," he said, clicking to the next slide. "Panic buying, bunker-building, hoarding. These are all very human reactions to perceived existential threats."

The slide was titled Prepping & Paranoia: Modern Survivalism in Mental Health.

Sera didn’t blink.

Professor Halvorsen grinned, clearly enjoying himself. "And look, we’ve all seen it—right? That one cousin who refuses to eat anything that isn’t vacuum-sealed? The neighbor who owns six generators and a thousand pounds of rice? Prepping culture feeds off anxiety, off this idea that the world’s about to end, and only they’ll be ready."

Laughter rippled across the room, loud and obnoxious, as if not preparing was the true judge of sanity.

But Sera didn’t laugh. She didn’t move. Instead, her eyes tracked her professor like he was a deer in the woods.

The creature inside of her seemed to have the same feeling.

Prey.

Unknowing the thoughts in her head, Halvorsen walked across the front of the class, his hands animated. "But let’s be honest—most of them aren’t reacting to real threats. They’re reacting to discomfort. To uncertainty. And instead of managing it with therapy or coping mechanisms, they stockpile granola bars and tinfoil hats."

More laughter. Louder this time. Someone in the row behind her snorted. Another added, "I think my uncle is a granola bar."

Sera’s fingers tightened on her pen. The creature inside her was no longer still. It shifted, alert and prickling beneath her skin. Not hungry. Not violent. Just... watching.

She didn’t move her head, but she studied Halvorsen from beneath her lashes.

Medium height. Lean. Clean fingernails. Cheap watch. Breath smelled faintly of mint and soy latte. He laughed at his own jokes, and always paused after them—like he expected applause. His eyes never scanned the room. They searched for a mirror.

He was the kind of man who would call a warning ’hysteria.’ The kind who would step over the truth if it didn’t fit the narrative he’d prewritten on his whiteboard. The kind who would be the first to scream when the shelves went empty.

Sera let the pen fall against her notebook.

She didn’t need to write any of this down.

She would remember.

Not because it mattered. But because the creature inside of her wouldn’t let her forget.

It memorized scents. Faces. Sounds.

Measured words. Weak minds, the creature hissed.

Halvorsen clicked to the next slide and went off on a tangent about the Y2K scare. How people had built underground shelters and stored gallons of water in plastic drums, only to emerge embarrassed and sun-starved when the world didn’t end.

"And the irony," he chuckled, "is that if there were an apocalypse, most of them would be dead within the first week anyway. Panic is not the same thing as preparation."

Sera’s jaw shifted.

She didn’t disagree with the last part.

But the people he described weren’t the ones who buried food caches in the forest. They weren’t the ones who memorized the layout of every grocery store in a five-mile radius, or learned how to treat wounds without power, or studied seasonal migration patterns of deer.

They weren’t the ones who could go still for hours, heart barely beating, waiting for the sound of footsteps that didn’t belong.

She was.

And she had no intention of correcting him.

Let him laugh. Let them all laugh.

The girl to her left whispered something to her friend and glanced Sera’s way. They giggled behind their sleeves. Sera didn’t even look at them. The creature inside her cocked its head. One second. Two. Three. Then dismissed them.

Sera waited for the hour to crawl by. She didn’t tap her foot. Didn’t fidget. Just sat like a statue until the projector shut off and the professor clapped his hands together.

"All right, everyone—don’t forget, your essays are due Friday. Topic: how society uses humor to cope with fear. Keep it under three pages."

Students packed up, chairs scraping. The room buzzed again with voices and movement. Sera didn’t move right away.

When she finally stood, she slung her bag over her shoulder, tucking her notebook away.

She walked slowly. Deliberately. Not back toward her dorm.

Not toward the gym.

Not toward people.

Instead, she took the long way.

Out the back of the psych building. Down the path that curved behind the student greenhouse, through the gravel lot no one ever used. Her boots crunched against salt and grit, and she breathed in the cold until her lungs stung.

Her mind wasn’t blank. It never was.

It was sorting.

Cataloguing.

Measured words. Weak minds. Forgettable smells.

But the laugh—Halvorsen’s—stayed.

Not because it mattered. But because something inside her had decided it might, one day.

She turned down a narrow footpath and slipped through the edge of the woods that bordered the university’s north fields. There were still old deer tracks pressed into the frost.

No fresh ones.

Too many people nearby. Too much light.

She didn’t need to hunt tonight.

She wasn’t hungry.

But she wanted stillness.

Silence.

A place where no one was mocking things they didn’t understand.

She pulled her scarf higher over her mouth and slowed her steps again.

Every time she tried to help, to warn, the world responded the same way: laughter or silence. Smiles that didn’t reach eyes. Concern masked as kindness. Therapists with lavender rooms and pens that clicked too loud.

She was done explaining herself.

She would survive.

The rest of them?

Well.

They’d already written themselves out of the story.