Chương 31: Chapter 30: The Right to Exist

Sister. Elma staggered, her small shoulder slamming hard against the cold stone wall as her knees briefly betrayed her. Lucien immediately reached out, grabbing her arm.

"Hey! Are you okay?" Elma pulled her arm back from his grip.

"I am fine," she managed, her eyes locked firmly on D-68 as the woman calmly retrieved the metal guard from the floor and snapped it back over the lower half of her face.

"Are you sure?" Lucien asked, leaning in closer.

"You look like you've seen a ghost." He noticed the unwavering direction of her stare and let out a nervous chuckle, attempting to salvage the situation.

"Are you scared of her? Don't be. She's not scary at all." D-68 stepped forward, her heavy silver armor making almost no sound against the stone. She knelt smoothly beside Elma, bringing herself down to eye level.

"I am Silk," she stated. Her tone was cold and perfectly controlled.

"There is no need to be scared." Silk. That is her name now. Elma swallowed the dry lump in her throat, forcing her heart rate to stabilize.

"I am not scared," she said, her voice steady.

"I… I am just sleepy." Without another word, she turned her back to her sister and began walking away down the dim corridor. Lucien and Silk exchanged a rapid, silent glance before Lucien hurried after her. He caught up quickly, matching her slow pace with his frantic, uneven steps.

"Are you really good?"

"I am," Elma said, keeping her gaze fixed straight ahead.

"I knew it. You're a tough one," Lucien rambled, nervously adjusting the collar of his tunic.

"But you shouldn't underestimate me either, you know. I might be Unawakened, but I am training with Silk to strengthen my body. The human body is remarkably good at adapting. Put it through enough stress and woop."

"Right," Elma said flatly.

"Yeah," Lucien continued, his voice picking up a desperate, conversational speed as he tried to build his alibi.

"We were just in the middle of some very intense training before you cut us off. I was just about to learn how to throw someone using your hip. Trust me you do not want to be thrown like that."

"I understand," Elma said, cutting through his rambling.

"I wish to be left alone now."

"Of course, of course," Lucien insisted, still awkwardly trailing behind her.

"I'm just telling you that you really disturbed our training when you butted in like that. I probably won't get the chance to learn that specific move ever again. Honestly, it was the toughest training session I've ever had—" Elma stopped dead in her tracks. She slowly turned her head and looked up at him. Lucien's awkward laughter died in his throat.

"Sorry. I pushed it," he muttered, shrinking back a step.

"I'll just... get back to my training. The training that you saw." He turned on his heel and practically jogged back down the hall, desperate to escape her gaze. Elma stood frozen in the dim corridor, watching Lucien reconvene with D-68. They turned down an intersecting hall, disappearing into the shadows of the estate. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. Elma forced herself to continue onward. But the physical toll of the panic was rapidly compounding.

Each step felt heavier than the last, her small lungs refusing to pull enough air. Finally, her knees gave out. She collapsed hard against the cold stone wall, sliding down to the floor as she clutched her painfully heavy chest. Silk. They always gave her soft names. They were always easy on her. Elma closed her eyes, but the darkness only brought back the sterile, blinding glare of the white rooms. She remembered the observation decks. The systematic subjection to every conceivable biological trauma.

The researchers had never enjoyed D-68's sessions. They would actively cut them short, averting their eyes from the drowning tanks, the isolation cells, and the amputation chambers. But they smiled when it was D-66's turn on the table. They had actively enjoyed breaking her. Just because she didn't look like them, the researchers couldn't resonate with her pain. She was an 'other.' A monster. It didn't matter that she was the strongest asset they had ever produced; her suffering was a spectacle.

Even now, D-68 probably didn't have to earn the right to exist. Her throat turned as raw as desert sand. A sharp, unfamiliar tingling began to burn fiercely at the corners of her eyes. Desperate to ground her spiraling nervous system, Elma shoved her forearm into her mouth and bit down hard on the heavy fabric of her sleeve, muffling the jagged, pathetic sound that tried to claw its way out of her throat. Why did she keep the scar?

She could have simply excised the damaged flesh and allowed her cheek to synthesize anew. Did she want me to see it? A sudden, heavy click of an iron latch shattered the quiet hallway. The door directly beside Elma creaked open. Christa stood on the threshold, her pale face illuminated by the warm light of her room. Elma immediately scrambled to her feet, her heart spiking. Her spatial awareness had completely failed her.

She had been so far inside the white rooms that she hadn't registered where her body had taken her. Stupid. Careless. Christa looked down at her, her eyes softening.

"Are you okay?" she asked quietly. She knelt slightly, extending an open hand.

"Come here." Elma immediately took a step back, putting a rigid distance between them.

"I am fine," Elma stated. Christa's hand lingered in the air for a moment before slowly lowering. A faint sadness settled across her features.

"Elma..." Elma hesitated. For a brief, dangerous moment, she remained where she was. Then the pendant shifted beneath her clothes, its familiar weight settling against her chest like a leash. Her fingers tightened around the fabric covering it.

"I need to sleep." She turned her face away into the shadows. Without waiting for Christa to speak again, Elma walked quickly into the darkness. Elma walked, her mind oscillating between Beitelham and the Altheris estate. Hephryx was coming tomorrow. And Silk's sudden appearance was compressing everything else, shrinking her cognitive bandwidth down to a single, useless loop. She stopped at a servant's corridor. Pressed her forehead against the cold stone wall. She hated herself. Not for seeing Silk.

For what seeing Silk had done to her—that shriveled, twisting thing in her gut that had activated the moment she recognized the scars. Silk hadn't done anything. Silk had simply existed, had simply been given a name and a life without needing to pretend she was something else. And some corroded, ugly part of D-66 had looked at that and gone sideways. She stayed against the wall for too long. The thought arrived quietly, the way the most certain things do. She didn't deserve to exist.

Something this resentful, this corroded at the core—it was a liability. It was the kind of thing that got people killed, that compromised operations, that wept into sleeves over scars on someone else's face. The answer felt clean. Logical. Final in a way that nothing else tonight had been. She lifted her head. Extended one hand. A water drill manifested in the center of the corridor, spinning tight and fast, angled toward her. Sable had said there were no other chances.

This was the only exit that was entirely hers. No deals. No shepherds. No one else's terms. The drill spun faster. They could all choke and die. D-66 could care less. Die, wretch.

"Elma." Jorm's voice. Quiet. Elma didn't drop her hand. She turned her unblinking gaze down the hall. Jorm was standing in the dark of the servant's corridor, eyes wide, her chest heaving like she'd been running.

"What are you doing." Elma looked at her. Unblinking. The drill still spinning.

"You can take the pendant. They can't search for it publicly."

"What? What are you doing?!" Jorm cried out, taking a panicked step forward. Elma released the drill toward her own head.