I try to shake her off.
Not because I want her gone.
Because I don’t trust what my hands are about to do.
“Don’t,” I snarl. “Kimberly, don’t?—”
“No,” she snaps. “You don’t get to spiral into self-destruction without me today. Absolutely not.”
Her grip tightens.
Her voice drops.
“You’re not alone in this. Not anymore.”
Something in my chest fractures open with a sound I feel more than hear.
“I was bait,” I choke. “They put me here as bait. A leash and a lie and a fucking kill switch in my spine.”
Her arms don’t loosen.
They get tighter.
“Talk to me,” she orders. “All of it. Now. No editing.”
I close my eyes.
The words come out raw and shaking and unstoppable.
“Reaper oversight. Containment theory. Behavioral compliance monitoring. They never decommissioned me. They just… moved me into a civilian shell and told themselves it was mercy.”
She doesn’t interrupt.
I keep going.
“They punish mercy. They reward violence. They condition obedience into muscle memory and then act shocked when we become what they built.”
Her hands tremble against my ribs.
“They were watching me this whole time,” I whisper. “Every choice. Every attempt to leave. Every deviation from baseline aggression.”
She exhales hard against my back.
“You were never free,” she says quietly.
“No.”
Silence swells.
Not empty.
Not fragile.
Dense with the weight of something that finally has a name.
“I found my placement file,” I continue. “They parked me here because of the buried transit node. I wasn’t here by accident. I was infrastructure security.”
Her breath stutters.
