Haazi's question hung in the air like a blade suspended by a thread.
What… are you?
Hana froze. The words hit her harder than the shock collar, harder than any explosion she'd ever caused. She felt something inside her twist. Fear, shame, memory, like an old wound tearing open.
She wanted to answer. She felt compelled to answer.
But the moment she opened her mouth, the past surged up like a tidal wave.
The dark cell.
The cold floor.
The endless days where time didn't move.
The guards who never looked her in the eye.
The way she'd broken out, again and again, only to stop herself at the last second because she was terrified of what she might do if she didn't hold back.
Terrified of killing someone.
Terrified of becoming the monster they already believed she was.
Her throat tightened.
"What am I?" she whispered, then louder, "I don't know."
The honesty slipped out before she could stop it.
"A murderer? A monster?" Her voice cracked. "Maybe someone who should never have existed in the first place? All of the above?"
A single tear slid down her cheek, hot, trembling, the last one she had left. She wiped it away with the back of her hand, forcing her breathing to steady. She pushed the radioactive heat
Down,
Down,
Down,
Burying it beneath layers of willpower until her skin dimmed from molten gold to a faint ember.
She hardened herself like stone.
But the truth was already rising.
"I was born with this radioactivity," she said, voice trembling with something deeper than anger. "I killed my mother from the inside of her womb."
The words exploded out of her. Raw, jagged, impossible to contain.
The hallway shook.
For the first time, Haazi flinched.
A flare of radioactive light burst around Hana's head, crackling like the sun's corona. The air warped. The lights flickered. For a split second, the world seemed to glitch, like reality itself couldn't decide whether to hold together or fall apart around her.
Her voice echoed unnaturally, repeating itself in fading whispers.
…inside of her womb.
…her womb.
…womb.
…
Then silence.
A heavy, suffocating silence.
Hana stood there, chest heaving, eyes burning, the glow around her slowly dimming as she forced herself back under control. The air settled. The lights steadied. The world stitched itself back together.
Haazi stared at her. Not with fear, not with disgust, but with something far more complicated.
And Hana, for the first time in her life, didn't know whether she wanted him to speak…
Or to run.