The only.
The memory shifted.
I was in a different room now. White walls. No windows. A woman sat across from me—blonde, hollow-eyed, her hands wrapped around a cup of something that steamed.
"He never talked about the others. He said I was the only one. He said I was perfect."
"You're lying."
"Maybe."
She smiled, and it was the saddest thing I'd ever seen.
"Maybe I'm not real at all. Maybe you made me up."
I blinked.
The bar came back.
The whiskey was still in my glass. The stool was still cracked. The door was still closed, and the woman I was waiting for hadn't arrived.
Batch 39.
Had Gabriel mentioned her?
Had he said she was a failure? A subject who didn't take? A mind that couldn't bend?
Or had I imagined the whole conversation—invented it to fill the silence, to give myself context, to make sense of the blonde who kept appearing in my dreams?
I didn't know.
I couldn't know.
The memories were water, and my hands were sieves.
The door opened.
I looked up, and she was there.
Young. Pretty. Blonde—not the blonde from my dreams, or maybe the same blonde, or maybe a different one entirely. Her hair was lighter, longer, pulled back in a ponytail that swung when she walked. Her eyes were hollow in a way I recognized, a way that made my chest ache.
She'd been broken too.
By someone like Gabriel.
Or by Gabriel himself.
She crossed the room and sat on the stool beside me. Didn't ask permission. Didn't introduce herself. Just sat, her hands folded on the bar, her eyes fixed on the bottles behind the counter.
"You're Bunny."
Not a question.
"Who's asking?"
"Someone who knows what you're looking for."
She turned to face me, and her face shifted—or maybe it didn't, maybe my eyes were playing tricks, maybe I was so exhausted that I couldn't trust anything I saw.
