The apartment felt smaller than ever. Every shadow seemed alive, every creak of the floorboards a warning. Lucky had rehearsed what she would do a hundred times in her head. She hadn't wanted this, but she knew she couldn't stay silent any longer.
Adrian was there, smiling like he always did, but the warmth was gone. Lucky's chest tightened, her stomach churned with panic and anger, a mixture she had never felt before. The man she had trusted, the first person who had shown her anything like care, had shattered her completely.
When he reached for her, the fear that had been coiled inside her snapped. Her hands shook as they gripped the small knife she had hidden—once a gift for enduring his twisted tests of obedience, now a tool of survival.
The struggle was brief. Lucky acted without thought, her mind a storm of panic, betrayal, and desperate instinct. Adrian fell, and the weight of what had just happened pressed down on her like an ocean.
She didn't rejoice. There was no triumph, only a hollow, suffocating emptiness. She pressed her hands to her face, rocking back and forth, unable to breathe through the tears that streamed unbidden.
The sirens came before she could even process the enormity of her actions. She had done what she had needed to do to survive, but in a world that had already betrayed her, survival felt meaningless.
The first humans she had trusted had failed her utterly. And now, the world outside was waiting to punish her, without ever understanding.
Lucky realized, in that chilling moment, that innocence could not survive in a place like this—and maybe, neither could she.