The smell of blood and gunpowder burned through my nostrils as we moved through the corridors.
None of us ran, or rushed.
We walked.
The building was almost silent now—except for the wet, abrupt sounds of it ending. A scream cut short. A knife dragged free. A single gunshot echoing once, then not again. Our people were thorough. They always were.
I should've felt relief.
We'd won. I was free. The neural lattice hadn't finished chewing through my brain, hadn't turned me into whatever Vivian wanted me to become.
But it was still there.
I could feel it—like a foreign thought lodged behind my eyes, humming softly, waiting. Something inside me had shifted. And I knew, with a certainty that settled deep in my bones, that whatever walked out of this place wearing my face wasn't the same person they'd dragged onto that table.
Vivian stumbled beside us.
