Lila’s body shivered like she had been dragged out of freezing water and left there to rot.

Every movement came wrong.

Sharp. Delayed. Jerking.

The restraints around her wrists rattled against the wheelchair while saliva slid from the corner of her mouth, dripping down her chin onto her lap. Her breathing kept catching halfway through, little broken noises escaping her throat as she whispered to herself over and over again.

"Adrian..."

Then quieter.

"Adrian..."

The soldiers stationed around the room kept their distance without realizing they were doing it. One of them had a hand hovering too close to the pistol at his hip. Another couldn’t stop staring at her teeth.

Not because of the blood.

Because of how badly she looked like she wanted to use them.

When Jennifer walked into the room, Lila didn’t react at first.

Her head stayed lowered.

Her body twitched once.

Twice.

Then Jennifer stopped directly in front of her, and Lila slowly lifted her face.

Hatred sat there first.

Then grief.

Then something deeper than either of them.

Her eyes were so bloodshot her pupils barely looked human anymore.

Jennifer took her in carefully. The drool. The trembling hands. The way her jaw clenched every few seconds like she was fighting herself from the inside out.

Interesting.

Very interesting.

"You look like you’re in pain, Lila," Jennifer said softly.

Lila stared at her without blinking.

"Or was it Leah? I’m not entirely sure anymore."

One of the scientists behind Jennifer stepped forward nervously.

"Jennifer—it’s dangerous to get too close to her. She’s very unstable right now and we still don’t fully understand the—"

Jennifer raised a hand without looking at him.

The scientist stopped immediately.

Then, after clearing his throat, he spoke more carefully.

"From extensive observation, we’ve concluded the subject’s infection urges are tied directly to prolonged separation from lattice prototype zero. Not violence. Not stimulation. Him." He glanced toward Lila carefully. "Being away from Adrian for this long appears to be causing psychological and biological deterioration simultaneously."

Jennifer looked back at Lila.

Then smiled.

"That a fact?"

She crouched in front of her.

Close enough to smell the blood on her breath.

Lila suddenly lunged.

The wheelchair slammed backward as restraints snapped tight across her chest and wrists. Her teeth barely missed Jennifer’s face.

Several soldiers jerked forward.

Jennifer didn’t even flinch.

Instead, she looked fascinated.

"How adorable is that?" she murmured.

Lila kept straining toward her, breathing hard through her teeth.

Jennifer tilted her head slightly.

"But even if you wanted to see him..." she said quietly, "how are you so sure he wants to see you?"

Lila’s movements faltered.

"I don’t care..." she muttered hoarsely. "I don’t fucking care..."

Jennifer’s expression softened into something almost sympathetic. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

"That’s the problem though, isn’t it?" she asked. "What you feel for him isn’t healthy. It isn’t even love, not really. It’s dependency. Clinical obsession." Her fingers brushed lightly against the armrest of the wheelchair. "The infection wired itself around him. Your body literally cannot function correctly without him nearby."

Lila’s jaw tightened.

Jennifer kept going.

"And honestly?" she whispered. "Doesn’t Adrian deserve better than that?"

Silence.

"Someone normal," Jennifer continued. "Someone stable. Someone that doesn’t look at him like food and salvation at the same time."

Lila’s breathing turned uneven again.

Jennifer leaned closer.

"Someone like me."

One of the soldiers shifted uncomfortably behind them.

Jennifer ignored it.

"I’ll be frank," she said. "Right now, all you are is an obstacle. You keep dragging him backward every single time he has the chance to become something greater." Her eyes lowered slightly. "And eventually, Adrian’s going to realize that too."

Lila stopped moving.

Completely.

The room went still with her.

"And when he does," Jennifer whispered, "you’ll be out of the picture for good."

Nobody expected what happened next.

Not the soldiers.

Not the scientists.

Not even Jennifer.

Lila broke down.

Not violently.

Not angrily.

Her face crumpled with sudden, horrifying grief as tears mixed with the blood running down her mouth. Her shoulders shook against the restraints in uneven spasms while small sounds escaped her throat that didn’t even sound human anymore.

Not because they were monstrous.

Because they sounded hurt.

Deeply hurt.

One of the younger soldiers looked away.

Another frowned like he didn’t understand what he was seeing.

Infected people screamed.

They attacked.

They tore flesh apart.

They did not cry like this.

Jennifer watched quietly for a few seconds.

Then she stood.

"I’ll let you see him one last time."

—

Pain moved strangely through the body after a certain point.

It stopped feeling sharp.

Stopped feeling immediate.

Everything became pressure instead.

Pressure behind the eyes.

Pressure inside the skull.

Pressure in the chest.

Something painful shot through me as the medics worked around the table.

I couldn’t move anything except my eyes.

Leather restraints dug into my wrists and chest while machines hummed around me with low mechanical consistency. Blue light pulsed somewhere above my head. I could see reflections of it sliding across steel instruments.

A plastic device forced my mouth open enough to keep me from biting down. Every breath scraped awkwardly through my throat around it.

I could still hear everything. Nothing ever played in my ears.

Maybe that was intentional.

The scrape of metal trays.

Fabric shifting.

Rubber gloves snapping against skin.

Jennifer speaking quietly to someone near my feet.

I stared upward and tried not to think.

That was harder than it sounded.

Because thinking meant remembering.

Chicago.

The track field.

Lila laughing with blood on her mouth after smashing someone’s head through a car window.

Vivian smiling at me through television static.

The world before all this.

The world after.

Something cold touched the side of my head.

A scientist adjusted something near my temple while another monitored a screen beside him.

"Neural activity’s fluctuating again," one of them muttered.

"Expected," another answered.

Jennifer stepped into view beside me.

She looked beautiful in a way that made my skin crawl.

Not because she was trying to intimidate me.

Because she genuinely looked calm.

Gentle.

Like none of this disturbed her at all.

"I’ve got a guest for you, sweetie," she whispered.

Her thumb stroked my cheek.

"She seemed really excited to see you."

I stared at her.

Nothing in me had enough strength left to look angry anymore.

Jennifer noticed.

Something flickered across her expression at that.

Not pity.

Satisfaction.

Then movement caught my eye near the far side of the room.

A wheelchair.

At first my brain didn’t process it correctly.

Then it did.

Lila.

My chest tightened so hard it hurt.

She looked worse than I’d ever seen her.

Blood matted her hair to the side of her face. Her arms strained weakly against restraints wrapped around the chair. Her body jerked every few seconds involuntarily, like something inside her nervous system kept misfiring.

But her eyes found mine instantly.

And stayed there.

Everything else in the room disappeared for a second.

The machines.

The lights.

Jennifer.

All of it.

Lila tried to move toward me.

The restraints stopped her.

A broken sound escaped her throat.

Not a word.

She couldn’t speak.

Or maybe she just couldn’t force it out anymore.

Something inside me cracked quietly.

Jennifer noticed immediately.

Of course she did.

She bent slightly beside Lila’s wheelchair, one hand resting against the handle while she leaned near her ear.

"I like this part," she whispered.

Lila’s eyes filled with hatred so raw it almost looked physical.

Jennifer smiled faintly and looked back at me.

"See?" she said softly. "Even now, you still look for each other first."

One of the scientists approached carefully.

"Jennifer, we should begin implantation before neural stress spikes further."

Jennifer nodded once.

Then she looked at me again.

"Do you know what the saddest part about all this is, Adrian?" she asked quietly.

I stared back at her.

"The two of you really could’ve loved each other properly under different circumstances."

A sharp pain exploded through the side of my skull.

My vision blurred instantly.

One of the machines emitted a long mechanical whine while my entire body locked against the restraints.

Lila jerked violently in the wheelchair.

The scientists kept working.

"Hold him still."

"He already is."

"Signal’s destabilizing."

Pain flooded through me again.

Not physical this time.

Something deeper.

Like fingers digging through memory itself.

Images flashed behind my eyes too quickly to fully process.

My mother’s face.

Snow falling outside the compound.

Lila asleep against my shoulder.

Vivian smiling.

A knife entering flesh.

Running.

Screaming.

Blood.

More pain crashed through me.

I heard Lila struggling harder now.

Metal clanged violently somewhere behind me.

Jennifer didn’t even turn around.

"It’s alright," she said calmly. "She can’t reach you."

Another pulse hit my skull.

Something warm slid from my nose.

Blood.

The machine above me beeped faster.

"His resistance is abnormal," someone muttered.

"No," another scientist said slowly, staring at the monitor. "Wait."

Jennifer finally looked over.

"What?"

The scientist frowned at the screen.

"The lattice is integrating..." he said carefully. "But certain emotional pathways aren’t collapsing correctly."

Another surge of agony ripped through me.

My back arched against the restraints involuntarily.

Lila made another broken sound from across the room.

And somehow—

Somehow—

Through all the noise in my skull—

I focused on it.

Just that sound.

Her.

The scientist stared harder at the monitor.

"That shouldn’t be possible..."

Jennifer’s expression changed slightly.

For the first time since entering the room, she looked uncertain.

Then every machine around me suddenly screamed at once.

The lights overhead flickered violently.

And somewhere deep inside my skull—

Something opened.