I didn't know how long I'd been out. The smell of antiseptic and the faint hum of machines brought me back slowly, like my body wanted to return to sleep but my soul refused. My eyes cracked open against the sterile light above, a dull ache blooming from my forehead as reality trickled back in, piece by piece.
But then I saw it.
The small, bone-white urn sitting beside my hospital bed.
No label. No flowers. Just... him.
My chest seized so hard I couldn't breathe. My hand trembled as it reached for the urn, as if touching it would make the truth less real. They cremated him. Nico. Without even asking me. Without giving me the chance to say goodbye properly.
"Why…?" I whispered, my voice cracked and dry.
Why didn't they wait?
Why didn't anyone tell me?
My pulse spiked, grief clashing with anger. I barely noticed the wires taped to my skin tugging as I tried to sit up. The IV stand wobbled. The monitor beeped frantically. But I didn't care. My body could break apart for all I cared, nothing hurt worse than seeing that.
The door was slightly ajar, and I could hear hushed voices just outside.
"She's awake," a deep voice murmured, Mr. Francoise.
"She was screaming in her sleep again," another voice said. A woman, concerned, unfamiliar.
"She needs rest. And we need to talk about containment protocols," came another, colder, official.
Through the narrow crack of the door, I could make out shadows shifting. My family was there. I could hear my sister's voice, choked, muffled. My mother. My brother. All of them talking to Francoise.
And two others.
Two men in black suits.
Government?
Lab higher-ups?
Their voices cut through the hallway like razors.
"She was exposed to a traumatic incident involving a high-level prototype. We need to assess her mental state before any further decisions are made."
"Decisions?" I muttered under my breath.
They thought they could make decisions for me? About him? About what comes next?
A knot twisted deep in my gut. Nico's ashes sat beside me like a final insult, beautiful, cold, silent. And everyone else was already talking about next steps, about protocols and containment.
Not about Nico.
Not about what we lost.
I clenched the blanket in my fists, biting down a scream. Not now. Not yet.
I needed answers. I needed space to grieve.
But most of all, I needed to protect what Nico died for.
A sharp clatter shattered the sterile silence.
The tray beside me crashed to the floor, metal clanging and bouncing across the tile. IV lines yanked taut and monitors blared as I lunged forward, ignoring the fire in my skull, ignoring the resistance in my limbs, reaching, desperate, for the urn they left beside my bed like a cruel placeholder for a man who gave everything.
My fingers gripped it tight, my nails digging into the cold ceramic as I curled around it. The pain hit me a second later, splitting through my bandaged forehead and right into my ribs, but I didn't stop. Couldn't stop.
"Nico…" I whimpered, the name barely a breath, my body trembling as I pulled the urn to my chest. "I didn't even get to say goodbye…"
The door burst open.
"Nyx!"
Voices. Footsteps thundering in.
My family rushed in like a wave, Mr. Francoise right behind them. My sister gasped, my mother's hand flew to her mouth. Two unfamiliar men in suits pushed in too, shouting for a nurse, calling for calm, but everything was already spiraling.
They saw me.
Disheveled. Bleeding through a fresh bandage. Holding Nico's urn like a lifeline as I crouched on the hospital bed, surrounded by upturned trays and shattered equipment.
But I didn't care how I looked.
Not when they burned him without me. Not when they made decisions behind closed doors like his death was just a footnote.
"You bastards!" I screamed, my voice raw and rising. "You didn't even ask! You didn't wait for me to wake up! You cremated him like he was, like he was nothing!"
"Nyx, please," Francoise said, stepping forward, but I flinched back with a snarl. My arms tightened protectively around the urn.
"Don't! Don't you dare pretend this is okay!" I hissed. "He died saving me! He died because of all of this! And you thought it was fine to toss him into a furnace while I was unconscious?!"
One of the men in suits cleared his throat. "Miss Blake, we understand this is an emotionally turbulent moment---"
"Emotionally turbulent?!" I cut him off, eyes blazing. "You think this is about emotions? This is about respect. About the fact that you stripped me of my right to grieve him properly!"
Tears blurred my vision, but I didn't stop. I wouldn't let them see me break.
I would rage.
I would scream.
I would burn the world if I had to, just to make sure Nico wasn't erased like he was just another casualty on a spreadsheet.
"I wasn't done…" I whispered. "I wasn't done holding him. Telling him he mattered. And now, he's in this thing and all of you are already talking in the halls about containment and mental assessments?!"
They stood frozen. My family. Francoise. The suited strangers. Caught in the eye of my grief and fury.
But I didn't want their comfort.
I wanted the truth.
And I wanted to make damn sure they knew that Nico's death was not going to be swept under some cold, clinical rug.
The silence that followed my outburst was thick, unbreathable. Even the machines had stopped their usual rhythm, like the entire world was holding its breath around me.
The man in the black suit stepped forward. Tall. Unyielding. A perfectly pressed emblem stitched on his lapel like it meant something. "Miss Blake," he said, voice still neutral, professional to a fault. "We understand your grief. But the situation with the prototype has escalated beyond personal involvement. You're a primary subject now. Everything you do or say is being evaluated."
"Evaluated?" I spat the word, the taste of it rancid on my tongue. "You think you can assess me like I'm one of your damn machines?"
"You were injured in a high-stress environment. You experienced a traumatic loss. And you share a cognitive link with an experimental A.I. That puts you at the center of an unstable variable----"
"I am the variable," I snapped. "You want to talk containment? You want to strip her of autonomy because you're afraid? Nico died protecting something he believed in. I believed in. And now you want to bury that too? Over my dead body."
The other suit, shorter, broader, shifted his stance. "Our objective is to prevent further casualties. The prototype is advanced. Unpredictable. She responded violently under emotional pressure."
"She responded to me being beaten half to death!" I shouted. "She didn't lose control. She made a choice. She protected me when no one else could."
My mother tried to touch my arm. "Nyx… honey----"
I recoiled. "Don't. You stood outside that door and let them do this without even waking me up. You knew I wouldn't have agreed to it. You knew I would've wanted to be there."
"We didn't want you to see him like that," my sister whispered, guilt etched into every syllable.
"I saw worse when he died in my arms!"
That shut them up. The sting landed. Good.
I turned back to the suits, my eyes bloodshot, breath ragged. "You're not taking her."
"She's not yours to claim," the taller one said coolly.
"No?" I stepped off the bed. My knees trembled, IV still tethered to my arm, the bandage soaked red from strain. I didn't care. "She was built from my code. She was formed from my beliefs. She looked at me and chose trust over violence. She is mine in the way no scientist or boardroom could ever replicate."
"We have authorization to remove her from the facility. If necessary, by force."
The words hit like ice.
And just like that, the rage inside me sharpened into something lethal.
I moved forward, slow and shaking, still holding Nico's urn against my chest. "Then I hope you came with more than suits and protocols," I said, voice low and venomous, "because the next person who tries to take her away… will follow Nico to the grave."
They didn't answer right away. But the way they shifted? The hesitation? That told me everything.
Good.
Let them fear what they can't control.
Because I wasn't going to break.
Not for them.
Not for containment.
Not even for grief.
Only one thing mattered now-
Making sure Nico didn't die for nothing.
And protecting the girl who still waited for me to come back.
My pulse pounded in my ears, a war drum wrapped in skin. They didn't expect me to fight back, not like this. Not while I was still bleeding. Still shaking. Still holding onto death like it was the only thing tethering me to the ground.
But when I looked into their eyes and saw that flicker, that hesitation, I knew.
They weren't in control.
Not fully.
And they were scared.
Good.
I tilted my head, slow and deliberate, my gaze sharpening like a blade. "Where's Elias?" I asked, tone deceptively casual.
The shorter man flinched before his jaw tightened. "Receiving treatment. He sustained considerable injuries from the prototype's response."
"So he's alive." My lips twisted, not into a smile, a challenge. "And still not in cuffs?"
"That isn't your concern."
I let out a small, humorless laugh. "He broke into a classified facility, assaulted multiple staff, attempted to abduct government property, and got someone killed---" My arms curled tighter around the urn. "---and yet you're standing here interrogating me while he lounges in a hospital suite with a lawyer at his bedside?"
"Elias Camden's connections run deep. Political. Financial. There are… complications."
There it was.
The system cracking at the seams.
He was too powerful to fall.
Too useful to discard.
And that's when the idea hit me, sudden, clean, and cold.
I drew in a shaky breath, then straightened my spine. My voice softened. "Fine."
Both suits blinked.
"I'll cooperate," I said, wiping the remaining tears from my face. "You're right. I'm emotionally compromised. I shouldn't be near the prototype unless it's under proper supervision."
The taller man raised a brow. "You're saying you'll comply with containment protocol?"
I nodded, placing the urn gently on the bedside table like a final, solemn promise. "Let me see her. Let me say goodbye before you lock her behind a thousand doors."
Their eyes flicked to each other. Suspicious. But I saw it in the way their shoulders relaxed, even just a little, they wanted me compliant.
I offered the performance they craved. Broken. Resigned. "You want data? You want cooperation? Then let me do it my way. Let me be the bridge."
The shorter man pulled a sleek communicator from his belt and turned away to murmur into it. The taller one gave me a long, calculating look, then nodded slowly. "We'll arrange a transport. You'll be escorted. No unsupervised interaction."
I gave him a nod that could almost pass for respectful.
But inside?
Inside I was already planning my next move.
I wasn't going there to say goodbye.
I was going there to wake her up.
And when I did, we'd burn every lie they tried to chain us with.
Because Elias wasn't the end of this story.
He was the spark.
And I was the wildfire coming for the rest.
It'd been a few days since I woke up in that hospital bed screaming his name.
They kept me longer than I wanted, doctors citing head trauma, grief shock, stress-induced episodes. But I didn't fight them. Not this time. I let my family hover. Let them feed me, hold me, whisper things meant to soothe.
The bandages were off now. Just a raw pink scar across my forehead and a deeper, invisible one lodged behind my ribs.
I sat in the chair by the window, watching the pale sun skim the skyline, when my sister walked in with a discharge folder clutched to her chest. "They said you're good to go," she murmured, her voice gentle like she was afraid I'd vanish if she spoke too loud.
I nodded, reaching for my bag with slow, steady movements.
Mom entered next, her eyes misting like they had every morning since. "We packed a room at home for you. You don't have to be alone, sweetheart."
I paused.
Not because I didn't appreciate the gesture, but because I knew if I went back to the place they were, I'd never stop hearing the echo of his voice asking me to let him walk me home just one more time.
"No," I said softly, but firmly. "I want to go back… to our place."
The room quieted.
Not out of protest, but understanding.
I could see it in their eyes, that flicker of worry dancing behind their acceptance. But no one tried to stop me.
"He belongs there," I added, my voice almost a whisper now. "That was the only place he ever called home."
The urn sat on the windowsill, catching the morning light like it was made to. I walked over and lifted it carefully into my arms, cradling it like a fragile truth. His ashes… still felt too heavy for something so small.
"I need to put him back," I murmured, more to myself than anyone else. "Where he can rest, not… haunt."
Dad offered to drive me, and I nodded, allowing that much. The rest would be mine to face alone.
As we reached the front door of the house, the one Nico and I shared through lazy mornings, midnight tinkering, laughter over burnt toast, I stood still for a long moment. Key in hand. Breath lodged in my throat.
"I'll be back to check on you," Dad said softly, squeezing my shoulder.
I nodded.
But once the door closed behind me, once I stepped into that quiet, memory-soaked place, I felt it all wash over me again.
I walked straight to the shelf by the window, the one he always said needed dusting but never touched.
And I placed him there.
Right where he could see the light in the morning.
Right where he used to sit with coffee and argue with the radio.
Right where he belonged.
I sank to the floor beside it, back pressed to the wall, arms resting on my knees.
No tears this time.
Just silence.
Just breath.
Just the sound of the home we built trying its best to hold me through the absence.
The silence inside our home wasn't hollow, it was full. Heavy. Every corner still clung to him. His laugh that used to echo off the walls, the way he hummed off-key in the shower, the quiet curses when he couldn't find where he left his screwdriver again. It all lived here.
Even if he didn't anymore.
I walked in slow, like the floor itself might collapse beneath me. My fingers brushed across the table edge where we ate, the armrest where he'd lean when teasing me, the blanket still draped over the couch from the last night he sat there, arms open, waiting for me.
My knees gave out before I reached the shelf.
I sank to the floor, right there in the middle of the room.
The urn, still cradled in my arms, pressed against my chest.
My breathing started to shiver.
And then, everything I'd been holding in unraveled, slow and quiet at first, then deeper. I didn't scream this time. No violent sobs or howls of rage. Just soft, broken tears that slipped down my cheeks like they'd been waiting for permission.
"I'm sorry…" I whispered, curling tighter around the urn. "I should've stopped him. I should've been faster. You didn't deserve this. You didn't deserve to go like that…"
I tilted my head back against the wall, closing my eyes, letting the ache bury itself in every part of me.
"I miss you, idiot."
The words came out with a weak laugh, but even that cracked.
"I don't know how to do this without you… I don't know how to breathe without hearing your voice in the background, annoying the hell out of me."
The urn was warm from my hands. But still too cold to be him.
"I thought you were safe. I thought, for once, we were all safe."
A pause.
A breath.
And then, the kind of silence that follows only after the worst part of grief, that moment when you realize no amount of pain will bring them back, and the world doesn't care that your heart is shattered beyond repair.
I sat like that for what felt like hours.
The sun slipped lower, turning the room gold, and then soft gray. I didn't move.
But something inside me did.
Very slowly, grief stopped screaming and started sharpening.
The pain was still there, yes.
But now it had shape.
Now it had a name.
Elias.
He took Nico from me.
And the ones in suits who watched, who did nothing, who talked about containment and protocol instead of justice, they all helped hold the knife.
I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand, swallowing the last sob that tried to climb out.
No more.
No more screaming.
No more begging.
Just one promise:
I will make them remember him.
And when they do, they'll remember the wrath of the woman he died to protect.