In the car "Anna is getting the ship ready; we can leave as soon as it's prepared," Roland said, his voice steady but tinged with concern.
"Thank you, Roland," Leonora murmured, pressing a hand to her temple.
"Don't worry, sis — you just need to rest for a while." Roland glanced at Youri, asleep on the backseat. "He's asleep, huh? I haven't seen you cry in a long time, sister."
Leonora's jaw tightened. "Shut up. If you tell a soul about this, I'll kill you myself."
"My lips are sealed," Roland said with a small, wry smile.
A few hours later — aboard the ship
"Come on, Youri, wake up. We're leaving." Youri groaned, lifting his head slowly. "Where are we, Roboy?"
"At the ship. Ready to leave," Roland replied.
"Finally," Youri muttered, still half-lost in the fog of a hangover.
Inside the ship
"Sister, where are you going?" Roland's voice trembled, his hands gripping the edge of his seat. Panic flickered in his eyes.
"Stay there, Roland! I have unfinished business with him!" Leonora's voice cut through the cabin like steel, sharp and relentless. Her every movement radiated danger, a storm barely contained.
The sliding doors hissed open. Leonora's obsidian eyes locked onto Youri, blazing with fury. She strode forward, shoulders squared, jaw clenched, the weight of his word's pressing down with every step.
"Earlier… you said I turned you into this. What did you mean by that?" Her words were like jagged knives, low, deliberate, full of accusation. She grabbed him by the collar, yanking him upright with a ferocity that rattled him.
"When did I say that?" Youri tried to shrug, but his eyes betrayed a flicker of unease.
"Don't you dare play dumb with me!" Leonora hissed, teeth gritted. Her obsidian eyes burned with fury, heartbreak, and disbelief all at once, a storm of emotion no words could contain.
"You really don't remember me, huh?" Youri's voice was calm, almost unnervingly so, but every word was laced with accusation, piercing her like a blade.
"I've never met you in my life until three weeks ago," Leonora said, voice tight, controlled—but a tremor ran through her, betraying her fury and shock.
"Yeah… you did. Sixteen years ago, to be exact," Youri spat, his words sharp and cutting, each syllable a strike against her composure.
Leonora froze, her bosidian eyes widening, a storm of confusion and disbelief swirling in their depths. Her fists clenched at her sides, nails digging into her palms.
"Oh… you probably don't remember your early childhood. You were sick all the time, right?" Youri's voice was steady, unflinching, carrying the weight of truth like a hammer striking stone.
Leonora's chest tightened, her breath hitching. "How do you—?" Her voice trembled, soft but deadly, loaded with hurt, fury, and disbelief. Her whole body quivered, caught between rage and the painful crack of realization that the past had finally caught up with her.
"Leonora Kaelthorn," he said, voice low, measured, and razor-sharp, yet threaded with memory-fueled pain, "I didn't recognize you at first. But now—seeing you, hearing you—I know. Sixteen years ago, you were at a space institute… Altex. A place for human alteration… experimentation." His gaze bore into hers, cold yet haunted. "You were a patient there. And I… I was too."
Leonora's hands shook violently, fingers curling into her palms. The cabin of the ship seemed to shrink around her, the low hum of the engines pressing against her temples. "Altex… they experimented on humans?" she whispered, barely believing it.
Altex hovered silently in the void of space, a sprawling complex of steel and glass that gleamed cold under distant starlight. From the outside, it looked more like a fortress than a hospital, a jagged lattice of corridors and towers stretching into the black. Docking bays opened like cavernous maws, disgorging shuttlecraft and supply ships, while observation decks revealed vast interiors lit with harsh white light.
Inside, the complex was a labyrinth of sterile corridors, each one humming with the low, mechanical heartbeat of ventilation systems and distant machinery. The walls were pristine white, smooth and impersonal, lined with antiseptic panels and blinking monitors. Doors slid open automatically, revealing specialized rooms that felt simultaneously clinical and menacing.
Some chambers were clearly operating theaters, outfitted with gleaming surgical tables, suspended robotic arms, and arrays of medical instruments that reflected light like jagged stars. Others were laboratories, glass-walled sanctuaries filled with strange machines—cryogenic chambers, genetic analyzers, and vats holding specimens suspended in luminescent fluid. Each room smelled faintly of antiseptic and ozone, a cold, clinical perfume that left no room for warmth or comfort.
"Yes," Youri said, his voice deepening, shadows of old trauma flickering across his face. "I was sold there as a child. Sliced apart, reconstructed, broken down twice a day… fed scraps that barely kept me alive. And then… you arrived. Gray hair, radiant, alive—the only light in that endless hell."
He exhaled sharply, and his chest heaved as if each word weighed a ton. "I'd never seen anyone like you. Love… I didn't know it existed, not for someone like me. But when I saw you, something stirred inside… something I didn't even know was there."
Leonora froze. Her heart thudded violently against her ribcage, a drum of fear, anger, and long-suppressed memories.
"One night," he continued, voice tight with recollection, "I snuck into your room. I had to see you… to speak to you. I opened your door… and there you were."
A bitter laugh escaped him, harsh and hollow. "You jumped me, pinned me to the ground. 'Who are you?' you demanded. 'Are you here to steal from me?' And then… one glance at my frail, skinny frame, and you let me go. 'Nah, you're too weak to steal anything,' you said. Proud. Defiant. Always."
Leonora's throat constricted; memories of that instant felt like fire against her chest.
"Then you asked… 'So, who are you?' Back then, I was EH36. I told you, 'I'm EH36. Nice to meet you.' And you—" He softened, a faint, pained smile ghosting his lips—"you said, 'What's that weird name? Didn't your parents name you?' That laugh… that curiosity… it was brighter than anything in that place. Brighter than the sterile lights, brighter than the despair all around us."
His voice dropped, intimate and trembling, as if confessing a secret kept for sixteen years. "You caught me off guard. I hadn't thought of my real name in years… and yet you didn't care. You told me yours. 'I'm Leonora. Nice to meet you.' And I said, 'Your name… it means light. Do you know that?' And you laughed—bright, unbroken, impossible to forget. 'Who told you that?' you asked. 'I read it in a book,' I said. And your eyes—oh, your eyes—lit up. 'Wow! You can read!?' And we laughed… as if laughter could push back the darkness, as if it could hold the shadows at bay."
He leaned back, gaze distant, voice soft, almost a whisper. "You told me your mother read to you… promised you'd learn. I said, 'I'll teach you.' And you… your eyes—Leonora, they shone with hope. 'Really? I can surprise Mama when I get back home!' you said."
A crack in his voice broke the hard edge: "I promised you, Leonora… 'I'll make you the best reader in the world.' And you… you laughed. That bright, impossible laugh, and said, 'Thank you. I'm looking forward to it.' That moment… that one little moment… it stayed with me through all the cuts, the pain, the experiments."
Leonora's fists clenched, knuckles whitening, her nails digging into her palms. Her chest heaved, lungs burning. Rage, sorrow, and a deep, almost suffocating ache coiled through her. She had survived Altex, survived the world, and yet… hearing his words, the memories she thought buried clawed their way up like wildfire. These weren't just memories. They were chains—chained hearts, bound souls, innocence stolen, and a life spent surviving nightmares.
Tears threatened to spill, but she swallowed hard, her throat tight. The ship's engines hummed beneath them, an almost oppressive weight pressing in from all sides. Every breath she took felt heavy with the gravity of what they had lost…