Chapter 4

Days bled into weeks.

The new dermal filler was a nightmare. It felt like fire ants crawling under my skin. A constant, low-grade burn that never subsided.

But something else was happening. A side effect they hadn't predicted.

A tingling sensation started in my fingertips. Then my toes. It was faint at first, easily dismissed. But it grew stronger. It was a current of electricity, humming through dormant wires.

The stem cells weren't just "erasing wrinkles." They were regenerating nerves.

I didn't let on. I remained the perfect, still doll. I listened as Emily and Dr. Evans documented the "miraculous" improvement in my skin's texture, completely oblivious to the real miracle happening within me.

One night, they were gone. David had taken Emily to some gala. Dr. Evans had left early. I was alone.

This was my chance.

With an effort that felt monumental, I commanded my right index finger to move. It twitched. Once. Twice.

Tears of triumph-real, conscious tears-welled in my eyes.

I spent the next hour working on my hand. Clenching and unclenching my fist. The muscles were atrophied, weak, but they obeyed. Slowly, painstakingly, I worked my way up my arm. The shoulder joint screamed in protest, a chorus of pops and grinding.

I pushed through the pain.

Swinging my legs over the side of the bed was the hardest thing I had ever done. My body was a dead weight. My head spun. The room tilted violently. I collapsed onto the cold linoleum floor in a heap.

For a moment, I lay there, gasping, my cheek pressed against the sterile tile. The smell of antiseptic filled my nostrils. I wanted to give up. To slide back into the waiting darkness.

No.

I would not let them win.

Using the bed for leverage, I dragged myself up. My legs were jelly, shaking uncontrollably. But I was standing. For the first time in ten years, I was standing.

My eyes fell on Dr. Evans's desk. It was cluttered with papers and files. A binder lay open. The title on the spine read: "Project Chimera - S.M. Subject."

S.M. Sarah Miller.

My hands shook as I reached for it. I flipped through the pages. It was all there. A decade of my life reduced to cold, clinical data.

Injection schedules. Dosage amounts. Weekly photographic logs of the damage they inflicted. Skin reactions rated on a scale of one to ten.

"Subject exhibits severe dermal abrasion and blistering in response to Formula 7B. Recommend discontinuing." That was Dr. Evans's note.

Underneath it, in Emily's sharp, angry handwriting: "Proceed. The discoloration is a potential feature."

Then I found it. The last page of the consent section. A legal document, authorizing Emily Miller as my medical proxy and granting her full control over my assets and care. It gave her the right to approve experimental treatments.

At the bottom was a signature. Not mine.

David Chen.

He had signed my life away. The date was just three months after my accident. Three months. That's all it took for his eternal love to curdle into this monstrous betrayal.

A sound escaped my throat. A raw, guttural sob. The binder slipped from my fingers, scattering papers across the floor.

My eyes landed on one of the photos. It was of my face, taken a few years ago. My skin was raw, red, swollen from one of Emily's failed experiments. My eyes, even in their comatose state, looked hollow, lost.

And I saw the date on another document. A refusal. Dr. Evans had, at one point, refused to administer a particularly dangerous neuro-cosmetic. He had written "Risk of permanent nerve damage too high. Unethical."

But the experiments had continued. Because David had overruled him. He had found another, more compliant doctor for a time. He had actively, knowingly, pushed me further into this hell.

The memory of his voice echoed in my ears. "If it weren't for that accident, Emily would have been my fiancée."

It wasn't just weakness. It wasn't just greed. He had wanted this. He had wanted me out of the way.

A blind, white-hot rage consumed me.

My gaze fell on a tray of medical instruments. I grabbed a heavy metal canister and hurled it at a glass cabinet filled with vials of Emily's precious formulas. The glass shattered, a satisfying explosion of sound.

I swept my arm across a table, sending beakers and test tubes crashing to the floor. Colorful liquids pooled and mixed, their chemical stench acrid in the air. I kicked over a cart of supplies. I tore the photos from the walls. I ripped the pages from the binder, shredding the evidence of my torture.

This was her life's work. Her "art." I would destroy it.

I remembered a promise David made to me, long ago, under a starry sky. "I'll always protect you, Sarah. Always."

The bitter irony was a physical blow. I stumbled backward, my foot slipping on a shard of glass. A sharp, searing pain shot up my leg.

I looked down. Blood was welling from a deep gash in my calf, staining the white floor a brilliant crimson.

But I barely felt it. The physical pain was nothing compared to the inferno in my soul.

I sank to the floor amidst the wreckage of Emily's ambition. I wrapped my arms around my shaking knees and finally let the sobs come. They were ragged, ugly sounds torn from a decade of silence.

My body, weakened by the exertion, began to tremble. A wave of dizziness washed over me. The room started to spin again, the sharp edges of the broken glass blurring into a kaleidoscope of pain.

The darkness I knew so well was creeping back in, pulling me under. My last conscious thought was of the blood on the floor.

My blood. Proof that I was still alive.

And that I would have my revenge.