Chapter 2

As she dragged me, something small and light tumbled from my jacket pocket, skittering across the marble with a faint, wooden clatter. It was a tiny, carved bird, its wings outstretched as if in mid-flight. I had made it for her. My first gift, a piece of code I' d written to manifest as a physical object in her world, a symbol of her potential to break free from the gilded cage of her pre-written life.

I remembered the day I gave it to her. She had held it in her palm, her eyes wide with a fragile hope I had nurtured so carefully. She'd said it was the most real thing she had ever owned. Looking at it now, lying between us on the floor, a desperate, stupid spark of that same hope ignited in my chest. Maybe seeing it would remind her.

Chloe stopped dragging me. She looked down at the wooden bird. For a moment, her expression was unreadable. She bent down and picked it up, her long, elegant fingers closing around the tiny form. I held my breath, waiting.

Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, she closed her fist. The sound of splintering wood was quiet, but it echoed in the room like a gunshot. She opened her hand, and the dust and fragments of the bird fell to the floor, meaningless rubble.

"You see?" she said, her voice flat. "It was always so fragile. Just like your good intentions."

She stared at me, her eyes filled with a terrifying emptiness.

"You wanted to be a part of my story so badly, Noah. Fine."

She grabbed me by the hair, yanking my head back. With her other hand, she scooped up the largest splinter of the bird and forced it between my lips. I tried to spit it out, to fight back, but I was too weak.

"Eat it," she commanded, her voice devoid of any emotion. She held my jaw shut, forcing me to swallow the sharp, woody fragment. It scraped my throat on the way down, a final, intimate violation.

She let me go, and I collapsed, coughing and gagging. She stood up, brushing the dust from her hands as if she'd just finished some unpleasant chore.

"Now get out of my life," she said.

And then she pushed me.

There was no more floor beneath me. Just air. The wind screamed past my ears, a violent rush of sound and sensation. The city lights spun into a dizzying kaleidoscope below. For a horrifying, endless moment, I was falling. Her last words echoed in my head, a final, damning verdict. My life doesn't need saving.

Then, everything went white. A jolt, a sense of immense pressure, and then silence.

I gasped, a real, deep breath of air that didn't hurt. The smell of antiseptic filled my nostrils. A soft, padded helmet was lifted from my head. I was in a reclining chair, in a sterile white room.

A young man in a lab coat leaned over me, his face etched with concern.

"Sir? Mr. Miller? Can you hear me? Your vitals went critical. We had to initiate an emergency extraction."

I just stared at him, my heart hammering against my ribs. The pain was gone, my body was whole, but I could still feel the phantom sensation of the fall, the memory of her touch, the scratch of wood in my throat. It felt real. All of it.