Page 123 of Damsel in Disguise

A flicker of something almost human brushes past the words—almost.

“I thought she’d be proud,” another pause. “My mother.”

I swallow down on nothing. “But when I got there… she was on the kitchen floor. Blood everywhere. Too much of that thick red liquid for a body that small.”

Ariella doesn’t interrupt or look at me with that nauseating sympathy people mistake for understanding.

“The bastard didn’t even notice me at first. Was too busy with what he’d done,” my fingers flex inside my pocket, remembering the weight of the grip. “So I fixed that by grabbing an axe to cut his spine clean in one swing. Afterwards, it became practice.”

There’s still no flicker of remorse in me.

“I don’t remember all of it,” I admit, almost casually. “Just pieces. Sound. Texture.”

I let that settle.

“I stayed there with the two corpses,” I add, softer, almost absent. “Didn’t move. Didn’t eat. Didn’t think.”

“Days passed. Maybe more. The smell got worse before it stopped meaning anything. That’s when I realized something important. Rotting alongside the dead felt inefficient. So I decided to be productive instead. Turns out, people are surprisingly easy to discontinue when you stop seeing them as people,” a chilling smile falls on my lips.

“Slowly, I started to get bored with the repetition. I got sloppy. Or maybe I just didn’t care enough to hide it anymore.”

I lean back slightly, the memory settling into something almost comfortable.

“They gave me a choice. Work under them, be useful, and live among the elite class. Or spend the rest of my life rotting in a psychiatric institution. Like you,” my index mockingly points at her.

Ariella’s lips part. “And you chose…”

She doesn’t need to finish because I nod.

“In the same way, you have two options,” I take a step closer—not enough to break the doctor’s pathetic rule, but enough to shift the air between us.

“To qualify as a Synthète, you need to be more than just unstable. You need to be irredeemable,” my gaze doesn’t leave hers. “Deadly. Unfixable. The kind of mind society prays to die. They find people like that. Approach them when they’re desperate enough to listen. Offer a reset. A second life. All they have to do is to survive the process.”

“And they always agree,” a faint, humorless smile touches my lips. “Around seventy to eighty percent of the time, they don’t make it out. Now here’s where it gets interesting.”

I glance away for a fraction of a second, as if the thought itself irritates me. “For reasons I was never given, I didn’t meet their criteria. Didn’t qualify as a subject. But you,” I tilt my head slightly, studying the flicker of confusion in her hazel eyes. “You check every. Single. Box, Ariella,” I say, emphasizing separately on each word.

I gesture lazily around the ward. “This is just the confirmation. The final stamp they needed.”

Her chin lifts instantly, pride snapping back into place. “I’m a Keinston,” she says, weaponizing the name.

I huff out an unimpressed breath.

“They tagged you the moment you took your stalking little scheme too far. The head researcher,” I point toward me. “Until I stepped in and decided to keep you human.”

The jammer vibrates once in my pocket. Ten seconds left.

I don’t react outwardly, but my tone sharpens, time tightening around every word.

“Anyway, the options… One, you sign the Experimental Subject Induction Accord. Hand yourself over. Become their next attempt at perfection,” I straighten fully. “Two, you come with me. Help me dismantle the very organization that took the only human I ever gave a damn about.”

The door beeps right on time. It bursts open.

White coats flood in—five of them, maybe more—tasers already drawn, bodies tense with rehearsed authority.

“On your knees, Ari—” The one in front doesn’t even get to finish.

My fist connects with his jaw before the command leaves his mouth. The crack echoes. He goes down hard, body thrown sideways like he weighs nothing.