Привет, товарищ

Selene stared in numb shock at the poster in front of her. It was her face. Or… someone that looked like her? But the resemblance was uncanny.

Was someone messing with her? Was it just a coincidence? Maybe she was just being vain.

Vain… I don’t think it's vain when a murderer shares your face. But… I don’t know…

What if she was the murderer?

What did she sign up for?

She blinks hard, a slow panic seeping in that makes her ears ring and her chest squeeze. Had she killed anybody? She couldn’t remember. Grabbing the army green comforter that always reminded her of Him, she wraps it around herself and just sits there in her room, trying to think.

The trials were always a blur afterwards. Once the adrenaline and fear finally left her too drained to stay awake—or she woke up in the infirmary—the memory of what she’d done were fragments. Still, she kept a sort of muscle memory—turn the valve, flip the switch—and knowledge of who the Primes were. Who Sova was.

Sova—

Did he ever think about her?

Probably not. He’d probably forget I even existed, find someone else to call мышь…

The first surge of something besides fear or sorrow churns in her gut and it literally chokes her. Anger? Jealousy? Her grip tightens on the blanket, white-knuckled. She hated this, she hated who she was. It was a fucking joke to think any of this was making people “better”.

The release valve to her Heal rig hisses softly as she loosens it just enough to inhale a tiny bit of the crimson ether, the vapor easing the raw ache in her chest like dousing out a fire with fresh snow. She felt better.

Cold. That’s what she needed. That’s what she needed to be.

Selene doesn’t remember pressing the button. The new gas has her reeling, floating way above Sinyala. Too much. They’d given her too much, and now she was going to escape by flying out of here. How stupid.

She barely feels attached to her own body as she flies through the halls, chasing something red-wet and screaming. The hands that grab them don’t feel like hers, so it isn’t her fault, right?

A knife plunges into them and she doesn’t know where it came from. It looks like she’s holding it, but that can’t be true. She’d never do such a thing.

All she does is run. Hide. Мышь.

Everything goes quiet until the alarm starts. Pipes hissing in the maintenance tunnels of the Police Station. The whole world tilts all at once and she vomits. They gave her too much.