Chapter 4

Before I could answer, a new figure stepped out of the shadows.

Maria Blakely.

She was dressed in a sleek, expensive black pantsuit that was completely out of place in the dusty silo. She walked over to Ethan and placed a comforting hand on his arm.

"Ethan, honey, you need to be careful," she said, her voice smooth and concerned. "This device is experimental. Pushing her too hard could be dangerous."

She looked at me, her eyes cold and triumphant. On her finger, she wore a large, ostentatious diamond ring. Not a wedding ring, but an engagement ring.

Ethan didn' t pull away from her touch. He seemed to lean into it, grateful for the support.

"I don' t care what happens to her," Ethan spat out. "I want the next memory."

Maria nodded sympathetically. "Of course. Just... be prepared for what you might see." She gave his arm a final squeeze before stepping back.

Ethan turned the dial on the machine.

The intense pain returned, stronger this time. I clenched my jaw, refusing to scream again. My vision blurred, and a new set of images flooded the screen.

The memory was from a year ago. Ethan was lying in a hospital bed, looking pale and weak. A doctor was talking to his parents, his face grim.

"It' s a degenerative heart condition," the doctor' s voice echoed from the screen. "Very rare. It' s genetic, linked to his specific blood type. Without a transplant from a compatible donor, he doesn' t have much time."

The Lesters were devastated. They threw all their money at the problem, searching for a donor, but his blood type was too unique. There was no one.

The scene changed. I was in a lawyer' s office, signing papers. I was selling a small plot of land, the only thing my parents had left me. It was my last connection to them, a piece of earth that was supposed to be mine forever.

The live stream comments started to show confusion.

CowboyFan: Why is she selling her land?

TruthSeeker99: What does this have to do with anything?

The next scene answered their questions. I was in a sterile, private clinic in Mexico. The money from the land sale was on the table, a thick stack of cash. I was talking to a doctor with a shifty look in his eyes.

"The gene therapy is high-risk," the doctor on the screen said. "We' ll use your biological material. Your genetics are a close enough match to his. It could save him, but it will take a significant toll on you. Your body will be... compromised. You' ll be in constant pain."

"Do it," my memory-self said, without a moment' s hesitation.

The screen showed a montage of the procedure. Needles, machines, bags of blood. It was brutal and painful. The final shot of the memory was of me, months later, practicing my fiddle. My hands were shaking, and a grimace of pain was etched on my face, but I was forcing myself to play, hiding my suffering from everyone.

The screen went dark again.

The silo was quiet. The online comments were a mix of shock and speculation.

Listener22: She sacrificed herself for him?

SkepticOne: Maybe she got tired of the pain and blamed them for it. She grew to resent him.

EthanLover: She' s just trying to make herself look like a victim! Don' t fall for it!

Ethan stared at the screen, his face unreadable. He looked at me, a flicker of something other than hatred in his eyes. It looked like confusion.

"I... I never knew," he stammered.

"You weren' t supposed to," I gasped, the words barely a whisper. The pain from the machine was making it hard to breathe.

Maria stepped forward again. "Ethan, see? She was building resentment. She made this grand sacrifice and felt like you all owed her. When she didn' t get the gratitude she thought she deserved, she snapped."

Her logic was poison, twisting my sacrifice into a motive for murder.

Ethan' s face hardened again, the brief moment of doubt gone. He bought her story completely.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "There' s more. I need to see the rest."