Thick wooden legs of a dining table rise directly above my dwindling frame. Two high-backed chairs sit empty on either side. A geometric bookcase stands behind them, stacked with real paper books, hundreds of them, my favorite titles prominent, just a few arm’s lengths away. Tucked inside little cubbies, exquisite plants and flowers dot the four walls like lavish wallpaper. High above, imitation sunlight spills through ceiling windows, blanketing the room in a golden-hour glow that never fades.

It’s all designed to make me feel like I’m not in a cell. A well-styled fabrication especially for me—a futile attempt to lull me into a tranquilized submission. When the doctors visit, they even call me a guest.

Dress it up as you like, President Moore. It’s lipstick on a pig.

I’m a prisoner in a prison. A girl with no country.

A girl with nothing to lose.

Two small slits open in the wall beside the dining table, and out pop two bowls, one for each chair. My body jerks at the commotion, my own soft breathing the only sound I’ve heard since I lost track of time.

“Mira,” a soft voice fills the room. “It’s me.”

I open my other eye. “Ava?” I barely breathe. I muster a reserved strength, the kind that allows fathers to lift automobiles off their children, and roll onto my back. Tilting my neck, I search the room with darting eyes, but she’s nowhere. I’m alone.

“Ava, where are you?” I plead. “Are you here?”

“I can be,” Ava’s voice tells me from the speakers. “If only you would agree to eat, we could be together.”

My mind is so muddled, my will so weak, I almost believe those words. Truth and lies seem indistinct and interchangeable. I don’t know what to think anymore. I flick my blurry gaze on the two waiting bowls, one for Ava, one for me.

“Starving yourself will give us nothing, Mira. You’re only keeping us apart,” Ava’s voice presses. “You’re suffering alone by choice. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

But this is the only way.

There’s no escape, and giving in was never an option. Dallas is our inevitable endgame, and if we’re going down, I’ll make sure their win isn’t easy. A hunger strike is the last chance any of this could matter. Maybe people will find out what happened here; maybe it will send a message. The flame might stay alive.

“Please, eat for me, Mira,” Ava’s voice begs.

Ava wouldn’t want me to eat. She would want me to fight.

The voice is Ava’s, but they aren’t her words. They aren’t her truth. I know, in my very soul and with every fiber of my being, that Ava is striking too.

This is another manipulation. Another lie.

“No!” I cry out, banishing the fraud pretending to be my sister.

I brace myself for what comes next.

Four lines of a door materialize on the far wall, and in rumbles the feeding chair. My stomach drops, and a primal panic spreads through me, urging me to crawl away and cower in the nearest corner. I crush the impulse before it can take root. I steel my nerves and sharpen my resolve, knowing my willpower is my best weapon. No fear.

Two doctors, both wearing white surgical scrubs and no-nonsense expressions, wheel the chair toward me. The young one, the same assistant from our last session, leers down at me as she prepares the restraints. Deep-purple bruising swells below her eyes like twin crescent moons, the result of my flailing fist connecting with her nose. I almost smile.

The lead physician looms over me, not bothering to take my vitals or examine my condition. She’s already made up her mind. Or someone made it up for her.

Lying stock-still on the floor, I gather all traces of residual strength.

“What you’re doing breaks every international law,” I protest to deaf ears. “It is my right to refuse food.”

“Based on my expertise, immediate treatment is needed to ensure and preserve the life of Mira Goodwin,” the doctor announces formally. To who? Are people listening? She takes two steps back, out of kicking distance, and nods to her bodyguard of an assistant. “Begin the medical procedure.”

The assistant lunges for my arms, but I’m ready. Awakening my rage, I drive my left foot into her left kneecap quick as lightning, taking her by surprise. She topples over like a struck tree trunk, and as she falls toward me, I use gravity to bury my fist into her solar plexus, just below her sternum.

The air is knocked out of her with a satisfying wheeze, but she rebounds fast and seizes my wrists, slamming me down with her bulky weight. I thrash and writhe until my limbs are spent and I can barely breathe.

My body goes limp. I have nothing left to give.

“Good girl,” the doctor says, pulling on her sterile nitrile gloves. “Allow yourself some dignity.”

The assistant scoops me up like a rag doll and carries me like a child to the feeding chair. Dignity? All I can do is scream.

“Gluts don’t have rights,” she whispers in my ear. “Murderers don’t have rights.”

Incongruous with its purpose, the chair looks like it could belong in a president’s dining hall. With its towering tapered back and cushioned armrests, luxuriously upholstered in a velvet free of any marks of leftover humiliation and torment. A pristine white, the color of purity and surrender.

The instant I’m dropped into the seat, the restraints burst out from hidden compartments, locking around my wrists, ankles, and shoulders, completely immobilizing me. The assistant straps my head into place as the final touch. My fury burns through me like an uncontrollable fire until I think it will consume me. Wet tears drip from my eyes, down my fevered temples, trying to extinguish the flames. Stay calm. Stay calm. Don’t let them break you.

“All secure, Doctor,” the assistant announces.

The lead physician approaches on my right. She sprays two quick pumps of a numbing anesthetic up my nose and positions the long plastic nasogastric tube under my flaring right nostril.

“You’re not a doctor,” I spit at her. Doctors treat and heal, not hurt and torture.

I was going to be a doctor once.

My father was a doctor once. He did harm to others, I remind myself. How many families did he hurt executing the Rule of One?

“It’s easier if you don’t struggle,” the doctor tells me. Easier for you, or me? She inserts the feeding tube up into my nasal cavity and down my throat. I fight to jerk my head away, but even the slightest of movements wreak a violent pain all over my body. I feel the tube slide down deeper, and I start to gag. I cough uncontrollably, choking on trapped air. Still, they keep going.

“Swallow,” the assistant demands, placing a metal straw between my lips. Swallowing and drinking water will help ease the tube past my oropharynx to reach my stomach, the end goal. I resist for as long as I can, but my lips involuntarily curl around the metal, and I finally obey.

The pain and choking stop. “Good girl,” the doctor says. Holding a handheld X-ray scanner over my abdomen, she checks to make sure the tube didn’t end up in my lungs. “Excellent positioning,” she confirms flatly, and peels off her gloves.

Rough hands secure the nasogastric tube to my cheek and chest with a clear adhesive. A distasteful grin on her bloated face, the assistant steps into my fixed line of view, lifting the feeding bag so I can see. “Dinner time,” she whispers, mocking my pathetic helplessness.