"It's okay," I murmured, my eyes hollow and unfocused. "I'll manage to die eventually..."
I dragged my feet, pain ground into every bone, stumbling step after step toward Cole's study.
My hands shook as I opened the computer.
I pulled up the security footage from the villa, timestamped to the periods I'd been "unconscious."
And there she was, on the living room feed. The same body as mine, but a completely different person wearing it.
A chill crawled up from the soles of my feet.
My brothers and Miriam.
From outright rejection and disgust, to tenderness and doting.
From snapping "Miriam! Get out of our sister's body!" to "Miri, please don't leave us, okay?"
Tears struck the keyboard one by one. My rigid fingers moved again.
I clicked on the study's camera feed.
"Cole, I feel guilty," Finn said, clutching fistfuls of his own hair, his head bowed in anguish.
"Lorna is our real sister. But now, in my heart, Miri already matters more than she does..."
Malcolm sighed in agreement.
"Yeah. It's not just you. I feel the same way."
"Lorna and I are twins. But I haven't thought about her in a long time. I even hope Miri stays forever."
Cole took a deep drag of his cigarette, his brow knotted tight.
After a long silence, his Adam's apple bobbed, and what came out was hoarse and utterly devoid of warmth.
"You think I'm any different?"
My breath seized.
Something behind my eyes collapsed and fell into a place it would never come back from.
On the footage, Miriam appeared.
Her face was pale and frail.
"Cole, Finn, Malcolm. Lorna might be about to take back control..."
All three shot to their feet, panic flooding their faces.
"What?! How is it happening so fast? Isn't there any way to suppress her?!"
Miriam leaned into Cole's arms.
"The System says if Lorna experiences genuine terror while she's conscious, or something that shatters her mentally, it should work..."
Before she even finished, Miriam collapsed.
"Miri!" All three screamed in unison, scooping her up and sprinting out of the room.
And after that, I supposed, came the moment they found me awake instead. The shock. The irritation. The barely concealed revulsion on their faces.
The footage froze.
I slumped back in the chair and let the despair swallow me whole.
My phone buzzed. I picked it up, and my body jerked upright.
Lorna, save me!
"Marilyn Marsh..." I choked through the agony and bolted for the door, reason gone. "You have to be okay!"
I should have known. Of course. The moment I woke up this time, they'd use my best friend's life to break me.
To bring Miriam back.
My thoughts were a tangled wreck. Grief, fury, and something close to hatred.
I barely made it out the door and into the car before the driver slammed the brakes, then wrenched the steering wheel hard.
The car flipped.
A black van plowed straight into us.
Men poured out and dragged me from the wreckage.
"Beat her!"
My body was already studded with glass shards from the shattered windows, each one buried in my skin.
"Ahhh!"
They snapped my leg while I was barely conscious. The white-hot burst of pain ripped my eyes open and tore a scream from my throat.
When they were done, the van sped off without a backward glance.
I lay on the ground, watching the blood from my own thrashing pool beneath me, spreading and spreading.
The grief stacked higher. Layer upon layer upon layer.
I blacked out.
I didn't know how long I was gone. Voices filtered in, distant and overlapping.
"That should do it, right? When she wakes up this time, it should be Miri."
My eyes stayed shut. My consciousness drifted in and out like a bad signal, but my ears caught every word.
Finn paced back and forth, his anxiety filling the room.
"It has to be Miri! So why isn't she waking up?!"
Malcolm's voice was rough.
"To trigger Lorna's most primal, genuine fear of death, the van wasn't told to hold back."
