No.
No, please?—
Let me stay.
Let me stay here where they're alive and I'm small and nothing hurts yet.
But the memory doesn't listen.
It fades the way all memories do—gradually, inevitably, returning me to the darkness I was floating in before.
Except the darkness feels different now.
Less empty.
Less final.
Mom's voice echoes through the void:"You'll be even better."
Dad's whisper follows:"We're watching over you."
And somewhere in the distance—impossibly far away, impossibly close—I hear other voices.
Male voices.
Urgentvoices.
"—blood pressure stabilizing?—"
"—antidote's working?—"
"—just need her to hold on?—"
Sage.
The name surfaces through the fog, carrying with it a tangle of emotions I'm too tired to sort through.
Sage is there.
Sage is fighting for me.
Sage didn't let me walk away.
The realization should spark something—hope, maybe, or determination. The stubborn refusal to die that's kept me alive this long.
But I'm still so tired.
Still floating in this warm, dark space where nothing hurts and nobody wants me dead.
Maybe I'll just rest a little longer.
A few more minutes in the darkness.
Some more seconds of peace before I have to go back to being the girl who kills, the Omega who survives, the heir to a legacy written in blood.
My mother's voice echoes one final time:
“Whip them into shape."
