Not because she’s in danger—
Because Wu grabs her wrist as he falls.
Everything happens at once.
Hannah cries out.
Wu falls backward toward the exposed reactor shaft.
I grab Hannah with both hands.
For one horrible second—
Wu hangs suspended over the glowing reactor core below us holding Hannah’s wrist in a death grip.
His face is inches from hers now.
And through blood and reactor light—
he whispers:
“You’ll always belong to Ascension.”
Hannah stares down at him.
Then slowly—
slowly—
she pries his fingers off her wrist.
“No,” she whispers back.
A beat.
“I belong to me.”
And Director Wu falls screaming into the reactor core.
78
Hannah
Wu disappears into the reactor light below.
One scream.
Then nothing.
No dramatic final words.
No last manipulation.
No control.
Just silence swallowing a monster whole.
The reactor shaft flashes violently beneath us once—
