Elizabeth
“Again.”
The word splits me.
I stagger back, slick with sweat and blood, lungs heaving like they’ve forgotten how to breathe. My fists are torn and trembling, my lip split open. I taste iron. I taste failure.
“Be strong, Elizabeth.”
My mother’s voice slices through the silence like a razor. But it’s not comfort — it’s expectation. Cold. Detached. Practiced.
I glance at her — searching, begging — but she won’t look at me. Her eyes are glued to him. Always him. My father.
He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t breathe wrong. Just stands there, tall and perfect and terrifying, like he forged me from his own shadow. I try to find my balance.
“Recenter. Realign. Rethink,” I whisper. I say it like prayer. Like if I just say it enough, I’ll stop shaking. Stop bleeding. Stop breaking.
I close my eyes. When I open them, everything is wrong.
My opponent is taller now — grotesque, towering, faceless. A monster made from all the nights I screamed into pillows and trained through broken bones.
“Begin,” my father commands.
I flinch. But nothing happens.
Then the voice from across the ring—familiar, warped, cruel.
“No wonder they hate you. You’ve always been a disappointment.”
The world shifts.
I spin—my father’s gone. My mother lies crumpled in a heap, her elegant blouse torn, blood leaking from her mouth like truth. I run to her.
“Mom!?”
She lifts a shaking hand, palm out, rejecting me.
“The mission comes first.”
I freeze. Her eyes are dead. Like mine will be soon. I look down. There’s a gun in my hand. When did I pick it up?
My pulse hammers. The gun is warm. It knows me. The trigger fits my finger like it was carved for it. The air changes. Night bleeds into everything. We’re outside now. Rain falling. The sky silent. No stars. No hope. My mother stands beside me again. Unbruised. Unapologetic.
She points ahead.
A figure, bound to a chair. Head covered. Breathing, barely.
“You know what to do,” she says flatly.
Then his voice. The voice I hate. The voice that made me.
“Finish the mission, Elizabeth. Don’t disappoint me.”
It echoes in every bone I’ve ever broken, every lie I ever told myself to survive.
My hands raise the gun on their own. I’m screaming inside, but my body moves like it always does — like he built it to obey.
I fire.
