It wasn't her real heart.
Hana realized that slowly, through the haze of panic and the pounding in her ears.
The thing floating inside the tube wasn't flesh.
It was a projection. A hologram. But it was so detailed and so grotesquely accurate, that her stomach twisted all the same. Every vein, every twitch, every pulse matched her own heartbeat with horrifying precision.
She tried to turn away.
She couldn't.
Her head was strapped in place, her limbs bound tight against the cold metal wall behind her. She could barely move her fingers. The restraints dug into her skin.
Her chest burned.
A deep, unstable nuclear heat simmered beneath her ribs, threatening to erupt. Her radioactivity pulsed like a second heartbeat, angry, volatile and alive.
The tube in front of her glowed with a faint eerie blue light, clashing violently with the room's sickly red illumination. The colors bled together, painting the space in a nauseating swirl of warning.
Haazi stepped out from behind the tube.
His face was stern. Too stern. His posture was rigid. His eyes were sharp and unrecognizable. He looked nothing like the boy who had once spoken to her gently, who had tried to understand her, who had treated her like she was something more than a weapon.
This was someone else entirely.
But then his body jolted.
A sudden, involuntary shudder ran through him.
His shoulders sagged. His expression cracked. The wild glare in his eyes flickered out like a dying flame. For a moment, he looked exhausted, almost gasping for breath.
Then he straightened, forcing composure back into his frame. He cleared his throat, the sound tight and strained.
Hana stared at him, her breath catching.
There was fear inside him.
Not fear of her, though maybe that too, but fear of something else. Something unseen. Something pressing down on him the way the restraints pressed down on her.
Maybe he wanted to resist.
Maybe he couldn't.
She didn't understand why, and maybe she never would…
Maybe rebellion came easier to her because she had never been welcomed anywhere. Because she had always been an outcast. The freak. The girl who didn't belong, even as she hid her radioactivity.
Haazi stepped closer.
Slowly. Carefully. The same cautiousness he'd shown the first time they met, when he'd approached her like she was a wild animal that might bolt or bite.
"Hana…" he said softly.
She didn't answer. She couldn't. She waited, heart pounding, breath shallow, heat rising beneath her skin.
Haazi swallowed.
"…We're going to have to experiment on you."
…
Something inside her snapped.
A feeling stronger than all the anger she had ever felt against the torment of the tyrants before the start of the apocalypse. This feeling wasn't like before. It wasn't panic, or fear, or grief.
It was something deeper.
Something…
Older.
A spark ignited in her chest.
Hotter than anger, sharper than rage.
It surged through her veins like molten metal, lighting every nerve on fire. Her vision darkened at the edges, not from faintness but from fury so intense it felt like the world itself recoiled.
This…
This was madness.
Her face darkened, shadows hiding her expression as the radioactive glow beneath her skin flared stronger and stronger…