"What happened to her?"
"The same thing that's going to happen to you. The same thing that happens to all of us."
She smiled, and her face shifted again—younger now, almost a girl, the hollow eyes of someone who'd stopped hoping for anything a long time ago.
"He uses us up. And then he throws us away."
"He loved me."
The words came out before I could stop them. Desperate. Broken. The words of someone who needed to believe something so badly that she'd convinced herself it was true.
"He loved me. He said I was perfect. He said I was the only one."
"He said the same thing to me."
"You're lying."
"He said the same thing to Batch 39. To Batch 36. To Batch 33. He said it to all of us, and we all believed him, and we all ended up here."
She gestured at the room, at the chair, at the walls that seemed to press closer with every word.
"This is where he brought us when we stopped being useful. When we started asking questions. When we started remembering who we were before he broke us."
"I never stopped being useful. I'm still hunting for him. I'm still—"
"You're still performing."
Her voice was flat now. Tired. The voice of someone who'd said these words before, to other women, in other rooms like this one.
"You're still doing what he trained you to do. Killing who he trained you to kill. Hunting because he taught you that hunting was the only way to be loved."
"That's not true."
"Isn't it?"
She stepped closer, and her hand found my face, and her thumb traced my lower lip—the way Gabriel used to, the way Nathan would, the way everyone who'd ever touched me had learned to do.
"He never loved you. He loved what he could make you into. He loved the idea of you. The potential. The product."
"You're lying."
"He was planning to sell you. Before the Institute fell. Before his brother's people closed in. You were never going to be his. You were always going to be inventory."
"You're lying."
"Ask him. If you ever find him. Ask him why he left. Ask him why he didn't take you with him. Ask him why he abandoned you in that apartment with nothing but money and a letter and the expectation that you'd self-destruct within six months."
"How do you know about the apartment?"
"Because he did the same thing to me. He's dead."
The words hit like a physical blow.
"What?"
"Gabriel. He's dead. I heard he died in a fire. After the Institute fell. After his brother's people caught up with him."
"You're lying."
