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“Only me.”

“Only you.” she nodded weakly. “You’ll always…”

“Be mine.”

“Be my end.”

I pressed my lips to her brow, and she surrendered her eyes to the dark. I dropped to my knees beside her, wrenched a blanket from the nightstand, and dragged it over us both.

We lay there in this sacred mess. Blood, cum, everything tangled together.

Until I die, I want to keep renewing my sins in this filth.

CHAPTER 19 - FINALE

Raymond

Contrary to expectations, the trial had gone remarkably smoothly.

Following Krivan’s suicide, the crew evacuated to Crysa was brought back to Mars under the authority of the white soldiers. The danger was never quite what the public had been led to believe. Still, the toxic air kept people masked and mostly indoors, their homes fitted with purifiers, the streets half-empty unless necessity drove them out.

For the people in the Capital, of course.

The Buzz, and Lesse within it, had become more of a wasteland than ever. Countless deaths, streets full of people fighting yet another side effect of Umbra. It resembled a death trap. Yet, even now, it held a strange flicker of hope.

The trial itself wasn’t really about my personal affairs. It was a sweeping hearing, covering everything tangled up with me.

Public reaction was divided when it came out that the sleeping pills—whose origin had remained a mystery for so long—were a custom medication ordered by Eleanor Kern for her cyborg son, whose body was saturated with Umbra.

Most received the news with compassion.

Except for those who had lost someone. They were still looking for someone to blame. And naturally, that someone had become me.

But thanks to Dr. Aneta, it was established clearly: I had known nothing. Everything had happened when I was still a child. That wasn’t a lie. I hadn’t known I was part of the Dolls Project until I became friends with Johanna. I hadn’t known my mother had deliberately placed me with those families.

Mars still held far too many secrets. But there’s a point where exposure to too much mystery makes you immune to it. Where nothing surprises you anymore, and you find yourself tired of being surprised.

And yet there are always things you never tire of.

Some would call it addiction. Harmful. Something to be left behind.

But was loyalty always addiction? Did every addiction consume you?

For example, when Sand Vein Disease swept through Mars, everyone became addicted to organic tomatoes, and it saved their lives.

The addiction that saved mine was nothing like tomatoes. Even if her hair happened to be exactly the same shade.

It was far more complicated than that.

Alive. Real. Mine.

“Should we put the plates on the other shelf?”

Mina sat on my back and spoke, gazing thoughtfully at the shelves. When she tilted her neck up slightly, I lifted her higher with my extended metal arm.

“Yes!” she said, delighted. “That’s so much better!”

I was handing her the plates with my other arm when Coretta walked in. We both turned at the sound of the door.