Her body went before her mind could decide. She was out of the bed. She moved in the darkness, the floor cold under her bare feet, every step guided by instinct rather than sight. The crying drew her down the corridor, past the closed doors, deeper into the house she barely knew, into a shadowed space where fear had form and the darkness seemed to press against her skin.
She didn't know who, or what, she would find.
She didn't know if she wanted to.
But she had no choice.
She had to see.
She found the floor beneath her feet. She hadn't changed into the clothes left for her; she was still dressed in what she had worn earlier, and she felt an obscure, almost imperceptible relief at that small armor, her own skin, her own clothes, a remnant of control in an unknown corridor at an hour that had no name.
