Chương 2: Chapter 1: The Feral Little One

The world went dark. A weightless void where even pain had finally gone quiet. No regeneration could mend a severed head; the biological circuit was broken. She was dead. In the facility, death was not a tragedy but an embarrassment, the ultimate admission of weakness—being undone by a superior force or, worse, a flaw in one's own system. But here, in this void, strength and weakness no longer mattered. It felt as though everything she had once clung to had simply dissolved with her. What is D-68 doing now.

We weren't weak. It was Resonance that killed us. If we had it, we would have been unstoppable. Well, at least he was handsome. Everything that had happened to us was because of you. Because of me? They thought I was unstable because of you. I thought we were way past that by now, he literally explained why two minutes before our head got chopped off. All I did was help us. I never needed your help. You are unreliable, unprofessional and unstable. The only flaw in my design.

Had you simply not existed Hephryx wouldn't let me die like this. … Nothing responded. That part of the brain must have died. Good. As the abyss began to claim her as well, a darker shadow flickered within the void. It was not empty. Two green suns ignited in the darkness, staring straight through what remained of her. A presence so vast it seemed to occupy the shape of existence itself pressed against the edges of her fading consciousness.

She could still feel its pulse echoing from every corner that existed, and even more intensely from the corner she had just been killed in. It was weakening, fraying by the moment, as if something immense had finally begun to come apart at the edges. ######## D̴e̴a̴l̴? Deal. That was all she remembered. Making a deal whose terms she couldn't remember. And that the thing she made a deal with had expectations. The green suns flared brighter in a single instant. Light exploded behind her eyes, burning her retina.

She didn't know why she was weeping. The sensation was foreign. Illogical. Yet she couldn't stop it. Air dragged into her lungs like fire, forcing an agonizing cough. She could move, but the body didn't follow the way it should. Her limbs felt too light, responding sluggishly to the neural commands. Her mouth was tight and soft, as if someone had sewn the shape of it differently. This isn't my body. She was small, thin-skinned, absurdly breakable, like something meant to be flattened without effort. She had died.

She remembered the flash. The hollow quiet that swallowed everything after. Everything blurred—the shapes smearing, the colors bleeding and swimming together—until suddenly, they snapped into focus with brutal clarity. The room was painted a soft yellow-white, its surface dulled where candlelight smeared across the walls in uneven halos. Rows of wax flames stood in ordered lines, filling the air with a sweet, unfamiliar scent. Next to her, a table waited.

A white cloth covered it, already marked with dark stains that had begun to settle into the weave. Around it stood women in black and white dresses, still and precise, gathered like attendants at a ritual. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. It was warm, but not too warm. Soft fabric wrapped around her, heat pushing up through whatever lay beneath. She blinked through the unfamiliar tears. A face swam into view.

Silver hair cascaded around it, bright as drawn steel. In its shifting strands, her new small reflection flickered. Blue eyes, unbelievably soft, rimmed with exhaustion and no expectations. A smile trembled on the edge of collapse, carrying something she had never thought was possible.

"Congratulations, my lady," a woman in black and white dress said, her voice receding into the distance. The woman gathered her close, breath uneven, her body still shaking from the immense strain of childbirth.

"Shhh, shhh… my little Elma," she whispered, her voice soft and steady against the cries. Her thumb stroked a damp cheek.

"You're here. It's alright." Elma — The name, spoken by this exhausted, silver-haired woman, landed with the shock of impact. Her tiny, useless fingers curled into the smooth fabric of the woman's robe, clinging as if the new world might disappear if she let go. The woman laughed softly.

"It's alright. Everything is alright." She pressed her cheek gently to Elma's. Warmth. Not the chemical heat of combat stims, not the dull burn of tissue knitting itself back together. Something else. Something that asked nothing of her. Elma had no designation for it. No threat assessment applied. No countermeasure required. She stayed still and let herself receive it, breath held, as though moving might break whatever this was.

A maid stepped closer, smoothing the blanket where it had slipped from Elma's shoulder.

"Shall I send for more linens, my lady?" Her voice was pitched soft and careful, trained to the exact volume a room like this allowed.

"In a moment," Christa said, not looking up. The maid retreated three steps and went still, hands folded, eyes down. Elma tracked the exchange without meaning to. The lowered eyes. The instant compliance to an order that hadn't even finished being spoken. She had seen that shape of deference before. This woman was a noble.

"She's beautiful, Christa." The familiar voice ruined the moment, stopping her tears instantly in their tracks. It was roughened by time, altered by age, yet utterly unmistakable: Nina Kresnik. The recognition hit faster than thought, a cold spike driving straight through the haze of this new body. The auction floor. The line of cages. Buyers parading past flesh they hadn't paid for yet. This woman, draped then in the same slate-grey she wore now, had stopped in front of D-66 just long enough to curl her lip.

She chose D-68 instead. It was a matter of aesthetics; 68 looked more human. D-66 had a wider mouth. Larger teeth. Thicker skin and longer claws. All things that made her better suited for her purpose. And still, that woman had curled her lip in disgust. D-68 had looked back once, just once, as they led her away. D-66 hadn't met her eyes. Christa, cradling Elma, looked up and laughed lightly.

"Thank you, Mother." Mother. The older woman stepped closer.

"Let me take a good look at her," Nina Kresnik said, reaching out a long, impeccably manicured finger to touch Elma's pale cheek. Instinct surged. Elma clamped her toothless gums around the probing fingers with all her newborn strength. Lady Kresnik drew back, a flicker of genuine surprise crossing her harsh features.

"Oh?" she murmured, inspecting the faint, wet pressure mark on her finger.

"Quite the feral little one. Take after her father, I see." Elma's gums ached with the effort. Her mother laughed softly, wiping her chin. Elma watched Lady Kresnik without blinking. Whatever this life demanded of her, one truth remained. She would not be owned again. Nina's gaze lingered on the faint mark on her finger a moment longer than necessary before she let it go.

"Will you stay the week, at least?" Christa asked, her voice still soft with exhaustion, though something tighter had crept into it—hope braced for disappointment.

"I cannot." Nina's tone didn't soften to deliver it.

"I leave within the hour." Christa's face fell, just slightly, before she caught it.

"You only just arrived."

"And I would have stayed longer, if I could afford to. Lucien wanted to come. Begged to, in fact. So did Anastasia." Christa's hands tightened slightly around Elma.

"How many, this time?" Something flickered across Nina's face—exhaustion, maybe, worn down into something colder and more practiced.

"More than last year." She offered nothing further.

"It will be handled. It is always handled." Nina straightened up, smoothing the heavy fabric of her sleeve as though brushing the entire conversation away with it.

"Congratulations on your daughter, Christa. I will return when I am needed here as well." She paused at the threshold, her hand resting against the doorframe. When she spoke again, her voice had dropped, stripped of its usual command.

"Be strong, Christa. For her, if nothing else." The door clicked shut. Nina Kresnik's footsteps receded down the corridor and faded into nothing. Good riddance. Elma let her gaze drift over the room now that there was nothing left worth tracking—the same rows of wax flames that had filled her vision the moment she first opened her eyes, except now she had the stillness to actually look at them. There were no lamps. No channels of captured light, nothing humming with stored charge.

Just open flame, racked in iron holders along the walls. She had just watched that same woman walk out the door—the one who'd stood over her cage at auction, who'd chosen the girl beside her instead. And yet surrounded by nothing but candlelight, it felt as though she'd been born a hundred years before that auction had even happened. Is this how nobles chose to live? A maid leaned down beside them, an unlit candle cupped in both hands.

"My lady." Christa shifted Elma higher against her shoulder and brought her thumb and forefinger together. A small flame bloomed in the gap between them, no larger than a fingernail, steady and quiet. Elma's eyes widened. Christa touched it to the wick. The candle caught at once, its light joining the others already lining the walls. She drew her fingers apart. The flame between them winked out as though it had never existed. Resonance had only ever meant violence. Every memory she carried of it ended the same way.

She hadn't known it could look like this instead. Small and quiet. A candle instead of a kill. Christa was a Resonant. Would she become one too?