The folder slipped from numb fingers. I'd been marked a failure. Not for breaking, not for being insufficient to his needs, but for the sin of continuing to exist after he was done with me.
"The successful ones kill themselves." The words came out strange, detached. "That's the measure of success. Creating something so dependent that it self-destructs when abandoned."
Nathan looked up from his own box of horrors. "What?"
I held up the ledger with hands that wouldn't stop trembling. "Look at the patterns. The ones marked successful all have the same note—'Achieved optimal conclusion within expected timeframe.' The timeframe is always 3-6 months after 'separation.'"
He took the book, face darkening as he read. "Jesus Christ."
"I failed." A laugh bubbled up, bright and sharp as broken glass. "I failed his experiment by not killing myself when he left. I was supposed to be so broken, so unable to exist without him, that I'd choose death over independence."
The room tilted. My knees hit industrial carpet, but I barely felt it through the static filling my head. Failed experiment. Defective product. Marked for disposal but too stubborn to dispose of myself properly.
"Bunny—" Nathan's hands on my shoulders, warm and real.
"He's going to be so disappointed when he finds out I'm still alive." The words came out sing-song, that little girl voice I hated. "His broken doll learned how to wind her own key. That's not in the design specs."
"Stop. Look at me."
But I couldn't stop the spiral, couldn't stop seeing all those numbers. All those women who'd done what they were programmed to do—love so completely that separation meant death. "I wonder if he got refunds on the failed experiments. Money back guarantee if your victim doesn't self-destruct?"
My body betrayed me then. Stomach clenching, throat closing, heart hammering irregular rhythms against ribs that felt too tight. The panic attack hit like drowning in reverse, all the air leaving at once. Nathan's voice faded to distant thunder as I folded in on myself, forehead to carpet, fighting for breath that wouldn't come.
"Count with me." His voice, closer now. Body curled around mine on the floor. "Five things you can see."
"Can't—" Breathing hurt. Existing hurt.
"Five things. Come on, baby. Stay with me."
Carpet fibers. His shoe. Banker's box. Fluorescent light reflection. My hand, clenched white.
"Four things you can hear."
His breathing. The ventilation system. Distant traffic. My own ragged gasps.
"Three things you can feel."
His warmth at my back. Carpet texture under palms. The edge of panic receding just enough to think past it.
"Two things you can smell."
"Old paper." My voice cracked. "Your cologne."
"One thing you can taste."
"Fear." But I was breathing again, shallow but steady. "God, I can taste fear."
He pulled me up, into his lap right there on the storage facility floor. I let him arrange me like a doll—appropriate, considering—and focused on the solid reality of his presence.
"I was supposed to die," I whispered against his neck. "That was the point. Create perfect devotion, then remove the object. Watch the subject self-destruct. He probably has notes somewhere, tracking how long each one lasted."
"But you didn't die."
"Because I'm broken wrong. Even my damage is damaged." I pulled back to meet his eyes, knowing mine were too bright, too wild. "Do you know what I want to do when I find him?"
"Tell me."
"I want to put a collar on him. Not explosive. Just tight. Tight enough that he feels it with every breath, every swallow." My fingers traced the ghost of metal around my own throat. "Then I want to use his own tools. The conditioning chair. The sensory deprivation. But wrong. All wrong."
