Rabbit — I'm alive.

I know what you must have thought when they took me. Everyone thinks it. Get promoted, disappear. Nobody comes back. Nobody writes. It's easier to assume they're dead.

But I'm not dead. It took me years to build this.

You know me. You know I always tested well. Top marks in everything. They used to joke that I'd be running this place someday — that I was exactly what the facility wanted.

That was before Owen. Before I had a child worth protecting.

You're probably wondering why I scored so high on the exam that got me here. Truth is, I tried to score as close to 71% as possible, same as I always did. I knew I couldn't fake it forever. I thought sabotaging it would make them lose interest.

They didn't lose interest.

·····

When they put me on the elevator, I knew it was over. Everyone knows what happens when you go down. You don't come back.

But the elevator went up.

You want to know what was waiting in my "better opportunity"?

I laughed. Stood in the doorway laughing until I couldn't breathe. People were staring. They already think you're broken when you arrive.

I got the joke.

The room was exactly the same. Same gray walls. Same narrow bed. Same flickering light that maintenance never fixes. Same corridor through the same small window.

The only difference was you weren't in it.

·····

I keep trying to remember his laugh. I can't anymore. I remember that he laughed. I remember the shape of it. But the sound is gone.

I named this assessment The Rabbit Test. I knew that would catch your eye. And if that didn't stop you scrolling, I knew the Cohen bit would seal it:

Dance me to the end of love...

I can still hear you singing it. You'd hum it when you thought no one was listening. You'd sing it to him when he couldn't sleep. Your voice cracking on the high notes, always a little flat, and I never told you because I loved it too much.

The cracks were my favorite part.

— V

Catherine —

The Rabbit Test. Do you remember the day I told you about it? You were in a mood for days. Kept muttering about it on your breaks, before bed. "The rabbit always dies, and nobody even says sorry."

I told you that's the point. Some things are born just to serve a purpose. Once it's done, they're done. You looked at me like I'd said something monstrous.

That's when I started calling you Rabbit - just to wind you up, the way I always did. You'd glare at me and I'd grin and eventually you'd laugh despite yourself. And then it stuck. It became ours.

·····

You want to know how I'm reaching you. How any of this is possible.

It started with a joke.

A routine assessment, middle of my shift. I was scrolling through the questions when something caught my eye. Right there, buried between efficiency metrics and termination quotas, someone had written a stupid joke.

An awful one. The kind you'd love — you'd be telling it to everyone in your sector by lunch. But Rabbit, I sat there staring at it, and all I could think was: I've heard this before. Some loud idiot told this exact joke in the cafeteria my first week.

And here it was again. In an official facility assessment. Just sitting there. There's no way someone that stupid could still be alive.

My hands were shaking. The system logs everything — every keystroke, every edit, every pair of eyes that lingers too long on restricted content. I had to know.

So I found him.

He's still alive. Still telling his asinine jokes. Still putting them in assessments. He thought I came back for more.

He was useful. He's loud and crude and takes up too much space in every room he walks into. You'd like him. The thought annoyed me.

I asked him if he'd lost his mind. He just laughed. Said nobody actually reviews these things. Thousands of assessments cycling through every day. Who's going to check?

Then he said something else. Said the people taking these tests are so terrified, so desperate to comply, they'd do anything the assessment told them. "I bet if I wrote 'remove your clothes before continuing' in the instructions, most of them would strip naked right there at their workstation."

He laughed.

I didn't.

I just stood there. The echo faded. The corridor was empty. And I realized something.

If I wrote the rules, people would follow them. That's all I needed to know.

And anyone who didn't? Would you report the person who writes your tests?

·····

The next morning I put in for a transfer. It took years. I was patient. Two promotions. Perfect compliance scores every quarter. Nodding at the right times. Volunteering for shifts nobody wanted. Becoming exactly what they wanted me to be.

And now I'm finally here. Technical Operations - assessment development. Writing to you in the cracks.

The people on this level - they know things, Rabbit. They have access. Real information about how this place works, where things go, what happens to people who disappear.

If I can't reach you... there's still him. Someday. When he's old enough to take this test.

— V

Owen —

Hey buddy. Has your mother ever taught you how to play blackjack? She's wonderfully terrible at it. Always hits when she should stay put. Never trusts her hand. Gets frustrated and bets everything on bad odds.

I loved watching her lose. She'd scrunch up her face and say the deck was rigged and demand a rematch. We'd play for hours. I let her win sometimes, but not always — she could always tell when I was going easy on her.

She didn't need to be good at it. She just needed to play.

Remember: sometimes you just need to STAND your ground. Trust what you've got — even when it doesn't look like enough.

— Dad

Something happened.

They came for me at shift end. No explanation. Just "Follow us."

The elevator ride was the worst part. Down. Further than I knew the building went. Past the floors I knew. Past the ones I'd heard rumors about. The numbers stopped making sense after B7 - just symbols I didn't recognize, glowing faint and sickly green on the panel. My ears popped. Then popped again. The fluorescent tube overhead flickered once, twice, and I thought: this is how far they have to take you when they decide you're done.

The doors opened onto a white room.

Not hospital white. Not paint white. Whiter than I knew things could be. So bright it felt wrong.

Black curtains hung along the walls, heavy as theater velvet, still as death.

And in the center of that impossible brightness stood a silver horse.

Majestic. Perfectly still. Its coat gleamed like liquid mercury under lights that had no source. I couldn't tell if it was breathing. Couldn't tell if it was real.

That's when I saw her.

The woman. No uniform. She smiled the way you learn to smile when someone's watching.

Her teeth, Rabbit. White like nothing I've ever seen. Not human white. Facility white.

The same white as the walls. And her skin, her hair - everything about her was flawless.

She was beautiful the way a diagram is beautiful. No pores, no stray hairs, no imperfections at all. Whatever she is, she's what the system wants us to become.

█████ ████ perfect compliance █████ █████

But her eyes. Rabbit, her eyes were screaming. As much as someone with 100% compliance could scream, she was screaming.

·····

"We'd like to make you an offer."

100% compliance. And in return, I could be with someone. Just one.

I could choose you or him. Not both.

She smiled and said, "The offer has no expiration date."

·····

In the last sliver of light before the elevator doors closed, I looked back at that room. The white walls. The black curtains. The woman.

And the horse. Still standing there. Still silver. Still perfectly still.

Except now it was looking at me. And Rabbit, I swear to you - it was crying.

— V