Point of View: Sabrina Valerius
"Hold her steady. The boss said we strip everything. I am not losing my bonus because you missed a diamond."
The voice belonged to Miller. I recognized the rasp, the way he chewed his nicotine gum with rhythmic, wet thuds. He had stood guard outside my bedroom for three years. I had paid for his daughter's heart surgery. Now, his thick fingers dug into my collarbone, bruising the skin I once pampered with expensive oils and French silk.
I tried to speak, but the Lethe-9 had turned my throat into a graveyard. My vocal cords refused to vibrate. I could only produce a soft, pathetic wheeze that died before it reached my lips. The interior of the SUV smelled of stale coffee and the clinical, metallic scent of the syringes Julian had used to hollow me out.
"Check her ears," the driver grunted. "She wore those pear-cut emeralds to the gala."
Miller yanked my head to the side. The sudden movement sent a spike of nausea through my gut. He tore the emeralds from my lobes. I felt the skin rip. Warm blood trickled down my neck, staining the silver silk of my ruined gown. He didn't flinch. He tossed the stones into a velvet pouch and moved to my hands.
My fingers felt like lead weights. He stripped the rings off one by one, his movements efficient and cold. When he reached the Valerius signet ring, he paused. The gold was stubborn, clinging to my finger as if it still believed I belonged to the empire. Miller didn't use soap. He simply yanked until the skin broke.
"Look at that," Miller muttered, pointing to the base of my throat.
The Sovereign birthmark flared. It usually looked like a delicate, golden constellation etched into my skin, a mark of the biological elite. Now, fueled by the toxin in my blood and the rising panic in my chest, it throbbed with a sickly, iridescent light. It felt heavy. It felt like a hot coal pressed against my windpipe.
"That's not a tattoo," the driver said, leaning over the seat as the SUV bounced over a deep pothole. "That's the mark. I heard some of those underground collectors pay six figures for a skin graft of a Primary."
Miller reached into his pocket and pulled out a folding knife. The blade caught the dim light of the dashboard. "She's going to be dead in an hour anyway. Might as well take the trophy."
Panic clawed at my lungs. I tried to lunge forward, to fight, but my limbs were disconnected wires. My mind calculated the trajectory of the knife, the speed of Miller's hand, the weakness in his wrist. I knew how to disarm him. My brain screamed the commands, but my body remained a slack, useless heap of silk and bone.
Miller leaned in, the tip of the steel grazing the edge of the golden mark.
The moment the metal touched my skin, the air in the SUV hissed. A sharp, electric scent—like ozone and scorched earth—filled the cabin.
"Damn it!" Miller screamed.
He dropped the knife. His hand was smoking, the palm blistered as if he had grabbed a live wire. The electronics in the SUV flickered. The digital clock on the dash spun wildly, the radio screeched into white noise, and the engine sputtered before roaring back to life with a violent shudder.
"Leave it!" the driver yelled, his voice cracked with superstitious terror. "Just dump the bitch. The zone is coming up. I'm not dying for a piece of skin."
The SUV slowed. The tires crunched over broken glass and rotted timber. Miller kicked the door open. The scent of the Gray Zone hit me like a physical blow—the rot of stagnant water, the sour stench of burning trash, and the biting chill of a rain that tasted like chemicals.
Miller grabbed the front of my dress. He dragged me across the leather seat and shoved me out into the dark.
I hit the ground hard. The impact jarred my teeth and sent a fresh wave of agony through my shoulder. The silk of my gown caught on a piece of rusted rebar sticking out of the mud, tearing with a sound like a dying breath. I lay there, my face pressed against the cold, slick grime of the slums.
"Happy birthday, Princess," Miller spat.
The door slammed. The SUV peeled away, its tires throwing a spray of oily slush over my hair and shoulders. I watched the red taillights fade into the thick yellow mist of the slums, two glowing eyes retreating into a world that no longer recognized my face.
I tried to remember why I was here. I tried to hold onto the image of the boardroom, the feel of the mahogany table under my palms, the way Julian looked when he smiled before the betrayal. I reached for the memory of Mark. I pictured the way he adjusted his cufflinks, the way he looked at me with what I thought was love.
Mark. The name felt like a phantom limb, an ache for something I could no longer touch. I tried to speak his name, to call him back, to ask why he had stepped away while they held the needle to my neck.
My mouth opened, but only the sound of the wind answered.
I closed my eyes. The Lethe-9 surged again, a final, crushing wave of black ink in my veins. My mind sought patterns in the dark, trying to calculate a way out, but the variables were dissolving. The equations of my life were being erased by a cold, relentless hand.
Sabrina. The name flickered in my mind, a dying candle in a windstorm.
Sabrina Valerius. CEO. Daughter. Diamond.
The syllables shattered. They fell away into the mud, washed clean by the acid rain. I reached for the memory of my father's voice, for the warmth of my library, for the weight of the Sovereign power that once made me a god among men.
But there was only the cold sting of the gutter. The girl who had ruled an empire vanished into the trash.
The darkness claimed me completely. As the last spark of the Valerius legacy guttered out, the lights of the distant city seemed to mock me.
Sabrina was dead. Only the meat remained.
I sank into the filth, and the world went black.