(NBR: Hi and welcome! My questions are included below:

1. In my last spotlight, many people mentioned that Eurus seems like a more interesting character than Sera. In the context of the fact that you are now properly meeting the mastermind, is there a way in which I can pull Sera up into her role of "main character" and make her more interesting / worth reading? How can I make her jump off the page, so to speak?

2. Recently, I've felt that I've been crossing into over-theatrics: the writing is based on a show that's pretty "Hollywood-esque", so my work is bound be somewhat influenced by that. However, in terms of these past tests that Eurus has been conducting, it's been feeling like a stretch of reality. How can I make these scenes more plausible and believable, both within the content and my writing style?

3. This time around, I'm interested in immersion: where are the spots that need some loving, in terms of drawing you in further and how can I do so. Where are the bumpy spots the interrupted the "journey" (based on content, style, dialogue, structure, symbolism, etc.)?

NBR out.)

(Sera.)

I watched as the governor stood up violently, consumed with an emotion I couldn't describe as he snatched the camera away. Shoving the chair to the side, he stalked out of the room. There were tears running down his face.

Eurus hadn't moved, her dark eyes fixed on the doorway, the trace of a smile still suspending the muscles of her lips.

Having somehow gotten me to the middle of the ocean, it wasn't a leap to assume she already had marionette strings rooted throughout Sherrinford. Perhaps that's what worried me the most. She couldn't have the entire island resting in the palm of her hand, but if Eurus could get to the governor, she didn't have many limits. Limits that a maximum security prisoner should have.

"I've put together something special, Sera Martin," the black-haired woman said, as if the past five minutes had never existed. As if they had melted away. "Got a special guest," she continued, her voice once more taking on that curious quality of detachment.

There was something, something webbed beneath her blank eyes, past the destructive fervor I occasionally caught glimpses of. Something that reminded me of the children I used to play with.

But I was well beyond psychiatric evaluations, my bouts of lightheadedness reminding me just how firmly stationed I was on the receiving end. So, I forced focus on the 'special guest', and my gaze flicked towards Tim.

"Don't be stupid," Eurus scolded, catching the unvoiced inquiry. "Any attachments there are obviously superficial at most. To be fair, it could have been interesting to let you two have a little longer to deepen the emotional ties, but I've got bigger plans for you," she said, tilting her head thoughtfully. Tim flinched.

"Is our guest ready, then?" Eurus turned, her eyes still unnervingly impassive.

Tim nodded mutely. His overall body language screamed words he refused to speak. He was afraid.

There seemed to be something unspoken between the two as he handed me a fresh set of clothes — I hadn't been able to change since they drugged me — and a clipboard with my papers. The room was pregnant with and unhinged sense of peace and I wordlessly slipped into the new clothes. Tim turned to give me a privacy I didn't particularly care for. Eurus didn't move. Didn't speak.

Once I was dressed, she moved forward, hands parting my salt-tangled hair and shifting it over my shoulders. In silence, Eurus braided the coils into two thick plaits. With the care of a mother, she worked through each tangle, smoothing the strands against my skull before binding the hair with two scarlet ribbons.

She stepped back to admire her handiwork. My throat went dry, the silence of the room seeming to reach a clammy hand around my lungs. I didn't dare look down. Something must have satisfied Eurus, because she fixed her pale eyes on Tim. "Lovely, isn't it."

He didn't reply, but seemed to know what his next order was.

Swinging the strap of a heavy-looking gun around his shoulder, Tim pressed it against Eurus' spine as she moved silently out of the room. Theatrics were to begin yet again. The next act was up.

And what's more, she knew I would follow; she knew the nature of my curiosity with an intimacy that made my stomach churn.

But I walked behind the pair anyway, trying and failing to quell my self-disgust. I righted my posture, surrounding myself with the air of professionalism. Tim's face was a perfect, emotionless mask. The camera at the end of the hallways appeared to have been turned off: the governor's doing, most likely. Further proof of his relationship with Eurus seemed against his interests. Understandably so. His own camera had obviously been of a personal variety, but the extent of his allowances seemed to run deeper than blackmail.

Regardless, he was thoroughly compromised.

I walked a few steps behind the pair, the clipboard resting on my hip as we wound through a maze of hallways. We were moving deeper and deeper into the island itself. The walls were getting damper and the linoleum under our feet had long since been exchanged for old brick. Plaster peeled from the walls and arched ceiling, revealing layered coats of paint and the occasional glimpse of bare sandstone. Mounted security cameras had long since disappeared, but we each held our roles admirably. A precaution.

After descending a final flight of steps, we arrived at a steel door, which opened once Tim swiped his ID card. A woman stood inside, muscles flexed in some sort of anticipation. Waiting for us, I suppose.

My gaze traveled past her, to the wall of glass that divided the room in half. And that's when my body betrayed me.

I stiffened, my stomach clenching dangerous and my throat constricting at the sight of the contents of this glass prison. Eurus smiled lightly at my body's treachery. "I told you she was special."

Inside, seated in a solitary chair, sat my mother.

I abandoned any form of composure, rushing to the glass. My mother made no movement of recognition, even though her gaze was positioned in my general direction. One-way glass.

I turned.

"What have you done to her?" I asked sharply.

"Hm. Nothing," she said lowering herself into a chair, though her muscles never relaxed nor released. She was alert in all senses of the word, a strange look of empty hunger pooling in her eyes.

I turned back restlessly to my mother's solitary figure. I didn't react when the woman I had yet to learn the name of, slipped a pair of cuffs around my wrists, the cool metal biting into my skin. The chains attached to the cuffs stretched diagonally, drilled into the stone wall.

It was fatigue at it's finest. I wouldn't be able to relax, to rest. A deadly concoction of emotional and physical fatigue.

I shifted my head to see the unnamed woman bent over a tray and my heart felt like it was clawing its way up my throats when I saw the syringe. She stabbed it into a bottle, watching as the tube filled clear liquid. I struggled against my restraints: I didn't want to see this. I couldn't see this.

I gripped my fingernails into the chains, the bone in my wrists grinding against the cuffs. A haze of irrationality was settling around my brain, helixes of thick panic fogging my thought patterns.

The woman pushed a panel of the glass away, carrying the tray with the glittering syringe to a small table beside my mother. She set it down, lifting the needle to the light. Bile was rising in my throat. I wanted to scream, but Helen Martin sat placidly, watching the woman before her. She wasn't restrained.

"What is it?" my mother asked, wetting her cracked lips.

"Strong," said the woman, speaking for the first time.

My mother nodded. "You said you'd give me three-hundred quid, right? What research is this for?"

"You'll be compensated after this little test, like we said in the paper," the woman said, smiling warmly. "We're going to be monitoring brain activity before and after the drug is administered."

Eye widening, I strained my muscles against the cuffs, the metal digging into my flesh. She didn't even realize she wasn't hooked up to a scanner, an MRI. Nothing. I clenched and unclenched my fists, fingernails tearing at the bonds, but nothing was happening. A white-hot rage was branding my muscles, surging over my skin.

My mother held her arm out and the woman pressed the needle into her skin. I could see countless prick marks, green blooms of bruises underneath her skin, even from a distance.

"Please." My voice tore out of me with a foreign raggedness.

My mother sat back, taking a deep breath, her eyes closing as the drug crept through her veins. I strained against the chains, a raw, terrible scream of anger leaving me. I almost couldn't recognize my own voice. My nails were bleeding now.

"I'm going to ask you a couple questions, okay?" the woman asked with her smooth voice, moving behind my mother.

The figure in the chair nodded.

"When was the last time you had a high?"

"A day ago."

I snapped against my restraints, the bone of my hands straining from their sockets. Over and over. Numb tears slipped down my cheeks.

"Do you have any family members?"

"A sister and brother."

I sunk, my weight suspended by my wrists. My breathing was erratic, oxygen dragging from my lungs.

"It says on the medical records you gave us, that you've given birth."

"Yes," my mother shifted, her eyes still closed and her speech slurring.

"How would you describe your relationship with her?" the woman crossed her arms.

"I thought it was just depression at first. There's some fancy medical name for it, but I can't remember it," she let out a ragged breath.

"Postpartum depression?" the woman offered, moving to the other side of the chair.

"That's it," my mother said, tilting her head slightly. A silence followed.

"Ms. Martin?"

"Mm?"

"The baby. What were you going to say about it?"

My mother lifted her head, opening her eyes to look at the woman curiously. "What'd you say this was for?"

"Just answer the questions please," the woman said, somehow managing to recover a degree of friendliness. Releasing her head back onto the padded seat, my mother smiled a bit, her movements disjointed.

"Yeah. The baby. You know, when I gave birth to her, they all fawned over her, 'she's such a beautiful thing' they said. I didn't really like her much. Awful thing. Every time I looked at her, she was a just a reminder of the life she made me give up. I was angry," she quivered at this, a ghost of a smile twisting her lips. "I resented her. I always felt my life would be so much better if she just wasn't there," her voice was bitter now, eyes creased and palms clenched. "But I figured it out eventually."

"Figured what out?"

"That it's not your fault if you raise a monster."