I used to think fragility was a curse.
The doctors called me a miracle — a child who shouldn't have survived past ten, and yet somehow kept breathing. Every morning felt like a gamble with death. Every cough rattled my ribs, every fever could've been my last. My bones were brittle, my muscles thin, and my heart — weak, they said. A fragile engine that could sputter out at any moment.
But I was alive.
Not because of strength… but because my parents could afford to buy me more time.
They were titans in the world of steel and fire — weapons contractors for the U.S. military. The kind of people who built machines that could split cities in half, then smiled at the contracts that followed. But for all their power, they were never home. Their empire was their child. I was just another project… the one they couldn't quite fix.
Still, they loved me — in their own way. I had the best medical care money could buy: private doctors, nanotherapy trials, whole hospital wings reserved just for me. When I couldn't walk, they built me exoskeletal braces. When my lungs failed, they replaced half of them with polymer grafts. My body was a patchwork of desperation and innovation.
I remember the view from my room — a skyline of gleaming towers and hovering transports, glass and light stretching into the clouds. My world was sterile, perfect, and painfully lonely. Every beep of the monitor was a lullaby. Every nurse that smiled at me was another reminder that my parents couldn't.
I used to stare at the prototypes my father left behind — blueprints, microchips, servo schematics — and wonder if machines could dream. Could they feel envy? Could they know weakness?
Because I did. I envied everything that moved without pain.
I wasn't born to run, fight, or build empires. I was born to watch.
But deep down, even as my body betrayed me, there was something that refused to die.
A hunger.
A question.
What would it feel like to be unbreakable?
I didn't know it then, but that question would destroy everything I knew — and rebuild me into something the world was never meant to see.
The air smelled like antiseptic and cold metal.
Same white room. Same humming monitors. Same bored doctor tapping away at his tablet while pretending I was more data than person.
Routine A.
Blood test. Reflex test. Lung calibration.
I could've done this blindfolded.
Then—
The door slammed open.
"Master Karl!"
It was Reginald, our head butler. A man who never raised his voice in the fifteen years I'd known him.
He looked pale. His gloves were shaking.
The doctor frowned. "Excuse me, sir, we're in the middle of—"
"Your parents have been taken!"
The words didn't make sense at first.
It was like he'd spoken another language.
"Taken…?" I echoed. My voice cracked. "What do you mean taken?"
Reginald took a breath, trying to compose himself — but his voice trembled anyway.
"The rebel faction — the opposition forces in Africa. They… they ambushed your father's transport. The security team was wiped out. They're forcing him and Lady Ayaka to construct a nuclear device."
My heart skipped. Then another.
I laughed — a dry, broken laugh. "You're lying. Dad doesn't even go to war zones anymore. They said he'd be in D.C. for the summit."
Reginald's eyes lowered. "That was the cover, sir."
The room started to spin. I felt my lungs tighten, my chest lock.
Not again. Not now.
"Call the military—" I wheezed. "Call anyone—"
"They already have," Reginald said. "But the rebels moved them to the Sahara. No satellite visuals. No way to track them."
The monitors beside me started screaming. My vitals were crashing.
I ripped the IV from my arm, blood splattering the sheets.
"Get me a line to them. I can talk to my father— I can—"
Reginald froze, eyes wide. A phone buzzed in his trembling hand.
Incoming message.
He turned the screen toward me.
It was a single image.
A grainy, sun‑bleached photo — the desert horizon, endless and empty.
In the center, two figures stood beside a crude metallic sphere, wires spilling from its seams like veins.
My parents.
And beneath the photo — a single timestamp.
13:00 hours.
The message had been sent three minutes ago.
And then, before I could even process it—
The feed glitched.
Static. White noise. Then… light.
The monitor beside me turned white. The entire room flickered. The windows filled with a glare so bright it burned through the tint.
I knew that light.
Even through the distance, even through the screens and clouds and walls — I knew what it was.
A nuclear bloom.
The kind my parents used to design.
The kind they swore they'd never make again.
The explosion swallowed the sky. The feed cut to black.
All I could do was sit there, shaking, lungs collapsing, as the alarms screamed and the world outside my hospital window turned orange.
Reginald was saying something — I don't remember what.
All I heard was the sound of my own heart breaking, slow and deliberate, like metal tearing apart.
My parents hadn't been taken.
They had chosen.
They'd built their final weapon… and stood beside it when it went off.
I remember whispering through the oxygen mask they forced on me—
"Why didn't you take me with you?"
And that was the first time I realized that love… wasn't always meant to protect.
Sometimes, it was meant to destroy everything that could've hurt you instead.