Chapter 28: The Perfect Poison
The air in the Zurich lab smelled of sterile frost and ozone, a false, processed chill that seeped into the bones. Pedro paced the observation corridor, a narrow sleeve of glass overlooking a sealed clean room. His reflection ghosted over the scene below: Amara, encased in a blue biohazard suit, moving with a slow, deliberate grace between gleaming bioreactors.
On the other side of the glass, Cynna lay on a gurney, wires snaking from her temples to a bank of monitors that painted her brain’s distress in jagged, colourful lines. The lucid moment in Stanford had evaporated. Now, she drifted in a twitching, murmuring half-sleep, her fingers occasionally plucking at the air as if catching invisible strands of logic.
“She’s still compiling,” Amara’s voice crackled through the intercom. She didn’t look up from the console where she was programming the synthesis sequence. “Her theta waves are off the charts. It’s like she’s running simulations in her sleep.”
Pedro pressed a hand against the cold glass. “How much longer on the compound?”
“The initial suspension is stabilizing. Twelve-hour countdown started forty minutes ago.” Amara’s voice was tight, focused. “If her instructions are wrong, or if my translation is off by a decimal point, this becomes a very expensive, very deadly soup.”
“It’s not wrong.” He said it with more conviction than he felt. “She saw the map. She always sees the map.”
Amara finally glanced up at him, her face obscured by the suit’s visor but her posture skeptical. “The map might be correct, Pedro. The destination might be the problem.” She returned to her work. “I’ve got a contact at Interpol Zurich. They’re running Lena Therapeutics through every database they have. So far, it’s a ghost. A brilliant, well-funded ghost.”
Pedro’s phone buzzed in his pocket. An unknown number with a Los Angeles area code. His stomach twisted. He answered, putting it on speaker. “Yeah.”
“Pedro.” Maya’s voice was a shock of warmth, familiar and utterly wrong in the sterile chill. It sounded like she was smiling. “You’re in Switzerland. Lovely this time of year, if you ignore the guilt.”
“What do you want?”
“A progress report. My dashboard shows a data-pull from a Level-4 biosafety lab in Zurich. Impressive initiative. You found Cynna’s marginalia, I assume.”
He closed his eyes. The lemon juice. Of course she knew. It was all part of the script. “You gave her the journal.”
“I gave her the pieces. She’s the one who put them together. She always was the smartest person in any room. It’s what I loved about her. What I needed from her.” A soft sigh. “Is she lucid?”
“No.”
“Pity. The lucid periods are… fascinating. A conscious mind observing its own fragmentation. It’s the closest a human being gets to watching their own soul decompose in real-time.”
The casual cruelty of it stole his breath. “Why are you doing this?”
“You still think this is about you? About us?” She laughed, a light, musical sound. “This was never about winning you back, Pedro. You were the delivery mechanism. A familiar, trusted vector. This is about proving a hypothesis. Cynna’s mind is a unique architecture. A beautiful, chaotic, pattern-recognition machine. My compound doesn’t destroy it. It… refactors it. It burns out the inefficient, emotional scaffolding. What’s left will be pure, uncorrupted logic. The next step.”
Below, Cynna’s body gave a sudden, violent jerk on the gurney. One of the monitors emitted a sharp, urgent ping.
Amara’s head snapped up. “She’s seizing.”
“You hear that, Maya?” Pedro spat into the phone, his face hot. “That’s your next step.”
“The process isn’t gentle,” Maya said, her voice devoid of remorse. “But the sequence she gave you will halt the degradation. It will stabilize her at whatever point the intervention occurs. The rebuild, however… that’s the interesting part. Tell me, Pedro, when you save her, who exactly will you be saving?”
The line went dead.
He smashed the phone against the steel doorframe. The screen spiderwebbed, then went black. He stood there, heaving, the silence of the corridor roaring in his ears.
Amara was beside Cynna, holding her shoulders as the tremors subsided. The monitor’s alarm quieted to a steady, beeping rhythm. Cynna’s eyes were open. They were vacant, clouded with a chemical fog, but her lips were moving.
Pedro burst through the airlock, ignoring the protocol alarms. He knelt by the gurney.
Cynna was whispering, a frantic, rhythmic stream. “The shears are the shape. The binding site is a cleft.A negative space. You don’t fill it. You mirror it. Reverse the chirality. You have to give her back her own reflection.”
Amara looked at Pedro over Cynna’s head. “She’s not talking about the cure for herself.”
“No,” Pedro said, the understanding dawning like a cold, clear dawn. “She’s talking about a countermeasure. For Maya.”
Cynna’s hand shot out, grabbing Pedro’s wrist with surprising strength. Her gaze swam, trying to lock onto his. “She’ll have a lawyer.A guardian. Someone to manage her… legacy. He’ll be the next vector. He’ll come for you. For the IP.” Her words were slurred but precise, each one pushed out with tremendous effort. “He’s the lock. The compound… the mirror… is the key.”
She went limp, her hand slipping from his wrist, her eyes rolling back. The monitors settled into an uneasy rhythm.
Amara straightened, her suit rustling. “She’s been designing a retaliatory compound this whole time. In her head. While it’s being eaten alive.”
“She said it herself,” Pedro whispered, staring at Cynna’s pale face. “She saw the pattern. She didn’t just memorize the journal. She reverse-engineered the entire project. She found the weakness.”
The hum of the lab equipment filled the silence. Amara walked slowly back to the synthesis console. She called up a new file, her fingers flying. “The base formula from the journal. The one Maya gave us. The wrong isomer.” She began manipulating a 3D molecular model on the screen. “But if we take Cynna’s corrected sequence… and apply the chiral inversion she’s describing…” She typed in commands, her breath fogging the inside of her visor.
A new structure blossomed on the holodisplay. It was a mirror image of the first, similar yet profoundly different in its spatial orientation.
“It’s not an antidote,” Amara said softly, awe and horror mingling in her voice.
Pedro moved to her side, looking at the rotating, glittering model. “What is it?”
Amara zoomed in on a specific protein binding site, the visualization showing the molecule slotting into place like a key. A perfect, antagonistic fit. “It’s a neurotoxin. Hyper-specific.” She turned to him, her eyes wide behind the plastic. “Tailored. It would only bind to neural tissue already exposed to the original compound. It’s a targeted kill switch. For anyone Maya has already… inoculated.”
“Her lawyer,” Pedro finished, the chill from the glass finally reaching his core.
On the gurney, Cynna stirred. Her head turned toward them. A slow, terrifyingly lucid smile touched her bloodless lips. Her eyes, clearer now, found Pedro’s. The predator’s focus was back, blazing through the fog.
“Not an antidote, darling,” she whispered, her voice a dry rustle of leaves. “A tailored neurotoxin.” She took a ragged breath, the smile sharpening. “For her next lawyer.”
The silence in the lab wasn’t silence at all. It was the low hum of servers, the hiss of purified air, the frantic beat of Pedro’s own heart punching against his ribs. Cynna’s words hung between them, a viper coiling on the sterile floor.
“A tailored neurotoxin,” Amara repeated, her voice flat with disbelief. She stared at the holographic model, the maliciously elegant structure rotating slowly. “You designed a targeted assassination in your head while your cerebral cortex was dissolving.”
Cynna’s gaze was unnervingly steady. “Designed is generous.Recognized. The binding site motif was obvious. A vanity signature.” She winced, a shiver of pain cutting through the lucidity. “The delivery system will be legal. A modification of her own patent. Her lawyer will have taken it weeks ago as a… prophylactic.”
Pedro moved to the gurney, placing his hands on the cold rail. “We’re not murderers, Cyn.”
“We’re not anything yet,” she whispered, the effort of speech leaching the color from her face. “We’re out of time. The cascade is in the basal ganglia now. The rebuild sequence… it’s ready?” Her eyes flicked to Amara.
Amara gave a tight, professional nod. “Twelve-hour synthesis complete. We have one sterile vial of LN7-Alpha protocol. As per the mad scientist’s scrawled instructions.” She tried for levity, but it fell like a stone.
“Then stop talking about theoretical lawyers and administer it,” Cynna said, closing her eyes. A sheen of sweat glossed her temples. “The neurotoxin blueprint is in the journal. Page eighty-eight.Heat gradient. But first… you have to save the original material.”
Pedro looked at Amara. Her jaw was set. In her eyes was the cold calculus of triage. Save the patient in front of them. Fight the war later. She gave a single, sharp nod.
“Alright,” Pedro said, his voice rough. “How?”
“Intrathecal injection,” Amara said, already moving to a sealed refrigeration unit. She withdrew a small, clear vial of amber liquid. “Directly into her cerebrospinal fluid. It’s the only way to bypass the blood-brain barrier now. The degradation is too widespread.” She held the vial up to the light. “This is it.Her map. Her pattern. Bottled.”
Pedro watched as Amara, with gloved hands, prepared the lumbar puncture kit. The clinical precision of it was somehow more terrifying than any violence. This was it. They were injecting Cynna’s own dying genius back into her, hoping it would rebuild what Maya had shattered.
“Cyn,” he said, leaning close. “This is going to hurt.”
Her lips quirked. “Everything hurts.” Her hand found his, her grip weak but present. “If this goes sideways… the toxin formula is yours. Use it or don’t. But don’t let her… don’t let her get away with the architecture.”
Amara swabbed a spot on Cynna’s lower back with antiseptic. “Deep breath in,” she instructed, her voice softly monotone. “And out.”
Pedro held Cynna’s gaze, seeing the fear beneath the fierce, analytical gleam. He saw the young woman who’d memorized an enemy’s journal just in case, who’d written herself love notes in lemon juice. He saw the pattern-maker, fighting to hold her own design together.
On the exhale, Amara inserted the needle.
Cynna’s body went rigid, a silent gasp caught in her throat. Her fingers crushed Pedro’s. The monitors screamed a protest, then settled into a frantic, new rhythm.
“Injecting now,” Amara murmured, depressing the plunger on the syringe attached to the vial. The amber fluid disappeared into the port. “Full dose administered.”
She withdrew the needle, placed a bandage over the site. The entire process had taken less than thirty seconds.
They administered the cure.
The three of them froze, locked in a breathless tableau. The only movement was the frantic dance of lines on the cardiac monitor. The cure was in. Now, they waited.
Now, they waited.
The hum of the refrigerators seemed louder. The flicker of the holodisplay, still showing the mirrored toxin structure, cast shifting blue shadows across Cynna’s still face. Pedro counted her breaths, each one a shallow, mechanical event. The seconds pooled into minutes, thick and syrupy.
Amara finally broke the silence, peeling off her gloves with a sharp snap. “If the cascade doesn’t slow in the next twenty minutes, we’ve just accelerated the process.” She didn’t look at him. “We should get the other blueprint. Page eighty-eight.”
“I thought it was lemon juice,” Pedro said, his voice scraped raw.
“Heat gradient,” Cynna whispered, her eyes still closed. Her voice was a thin thread. “Different inks reveal at different temperatures. She taught me that. For the fun puzzles.”
Pedro found the journal and placed page eighty-eight under a spectral analyzer. He ramped the thermal setting slowly. First, Cynna’s familiar cursive appeared in brown: Binding affinity is emotional. The vector requires trust. Then, as the heat increased, a second, neater script emerged beneath it in a faint violet: a complete, annotated chemical formula titled ‘VECTOR LOCK’.
“It’s here,” he said.
The main lab door hissed open with a sound like a sigh.
A man stood in the corridor. He was impeccably dressed in a charcoal suit that looked tailored within the hour, his salt-and-pepper hair precisely cut. He carried a slim, platinum briefcase. He didn’t enter the clean room, merely observed them through the observation glass with the calm detachment of a tourist at an aquarium.
Amara was instantly in front of Cynna’s gurney, a human shield. “This is a restricted biosafety level four facility. You are not authorized.”
“Authorization is a fluid concept, Dr. Joshi,” the man said. His voice was mellifluous, with a polished British accent that wrapped around each word. “My name is Alistair Thorne. I represent the interests of Lena Therapeutics.”
Pedro felt a cold clarity wash over him. He’s the lock. He walked to the intercom. “You’re the lawyer.”
“I am a lawyer,” Thorne corrected with a mild smile. He set the briefcase on a corridor ledge. “I’ve been monitoring the data stream from your synthesis reactor. Impressive work, under the circumstances. You produced LN7-Alpha. My client will be pleased.”
“Your client tried to murder my fiancée,” Pedro said.
“My client initiated a controlled cognitive recalibration,” Thorne replied, his tone never wavering. “The subject’s unique neurology presented a rare testing opportunity. The fact that you are here, that you succeeded, validates the entire experiment. The data is invaluable.”
Amara’s laugh was a sharp, bitter thing. “You’re here to collect the data. And the IP.”
“The intellectual property resides with Lena,” Thorne said, nodding slightly. “As does any derivative work produced using its proprietary templates.” His eyes flicked to the spectral analyzer, to the revealed formula on the screen. “Including that rather novel inverse structure you’ve modeled. A fascinating retaliatory design. Instinctual, even.”
He knew. He’d seen it.
“She inoculated you,” Pedro stated, the pieces slotting together. “You took the base compound. As a prophylactic. To make you immune to her tools, loyal to her cause.”
“Protection from hostile actors is a standard clause in my contract,” Thorne acknowledged. He tapped a code into his briefcase. It opened with a click. Inside, nestled in foam, were two more vials of a clear liquid and a digital contract pad. “This is not a hostile encounter. This is a transaction. You will transfer all physical samples, all research data, and the journal. In return, I will provide you with this.”
He held up one vial. “The second-stage stabilizer for Ms. Mercer. The rebuild phase of the protocol is more complex than a single injection. It requires a regulated drip, over forty-eight hours, to prevent synaptic collapse. You don’t have it. We do.”
Pedro’s gaze cut to Cynna. Her vitals were stable, but her face was terrifyingly placid. The rebuild. The reformatting. Maya had kept the final piece.
“And the other vial?” Amara asked coldly.
“A courtesy,” Thorne said. “The original compound. A token of goodwill. You may wish to study it.” His smile was benign. “Or, given the blueprint you’ve devised, you may wish to engineer a key for it. A pointless, but perhaps satisfying, academic exercise.”
The offer hung in the frozen air. Trade everything for the chance to complete the cure. A cure that might rebuild Cynna into someone unfamiliar. Or let her die, unchanged but unfinished.
Pedro looked at the violet formula on the screen—the tailored neurotoxin. The key for the lock standing in the corridor. Thorne was the vector. He was also the antidote.
“The briefcase also contains a non-disclosure and settlement agreement,” Thorne continued. “Seven figures. Enough to make this… personal tragedy… financially painless. A clean, quiet conclusion.”
Cynna’s hand twitched on the gurney. Her lips moved, forming a silent, looping word. Pattern.
She was still in there, fighting to see the shape of the trap.
Pedro walked slowly to the intercom, his mind clicking through scenarios like a film editor cutting sequences. He met Thorne’s patiently waiting eyes.
“We need a minute,” Pedro said, his voice low. “To discuss your… offer.”
“Of course,” Thorne said, checking his watch. “I am a reasonable man. You have five.”
The airlock door sealed with a definitive hiss, leaving them in the silent, sterile bubble of the lab. The only sounds were the whir of machines and Cynna’s ragged breathing. Five minutes.
Amara stared at the vial in Thorne’s hand through the glass. “The stabilizer could be anything. It could be the final trigger.”
“Or it could be the only thing that stops her from becoming someone we don’t recognize,” Pedro said, his voice low. He looked at Cynna’s still form. “Maya said the rebuild rewrites neural pathways. What if that’s what the second vial does? Finishes the job her way?”
“We don’t have the leverage to find out.” Amara’s knuckles were white where she gripped the gurney rail. “He has the formula. He has the legal backing. We have a theory and a woman who’s currently parsing reality through a chemical sieve.”
A soft, dry sound came from the bed. A cough that sounded almost like a laugh.
Cynna’s eyelids fluttered open. Her green eyes were fogged with pain, but behind the haze was a sharp, familiar light, cutting through like a beacon in a chemical sea. It wasn't the eerie, detached lucidity from before. This was weary, pissed-off awareness.
“He’s lying,” she whispered. Each word was an effort, pushed through gritted teeth. “The rebuild… it’s not in a vial.”
Pedro was at her side in an instant. “Cyn?”
“It’s iterative.” She swallowed, her throat clicking. “The compound she gave you… it’s a primer. My own neuroplasticity… does the work. The ‘cure’ is just my brain… fighting the poison with the blueprint I memorized.” She turned her head slightly, her gaze finding Thorne through the observation window. He watched, expressionless. “A second vial would just be… more poison. To guide the rebuild… her way.”
Amara leaned in. “How can you be sure?”
“Because I read the journal, Amara. All of it.” Cynna’s breath hitched. “The lemon juice notes were mine. The heat-gradient notes… were hers. A collaborative puzzle. She showed me the lock. I figured out the key. The inverse.” Her eyes drifted shut for a second, then snapped open, locking onto Pedro. “She never wanted to erase me. She wanted to… collaborate. From inside my head. The ultimate partnership.”
The horror of it settled over them, cold and greasy. Maya hadn’t just wanted to destroy Cynna’s mind. She’d wanted to move in.
“The lawyer,” Cynna breathed, her voice gaining a shred of strength. “He’s not just a vector. He’s the control group. Inoculated with the base compound. Stable.Sane. The proof it works without… artistic input.” Her lips curled in a weak, vicious smirk. “He thinks he’s protected. He’s pre-loaded.”
Pedro understood. He looked from Cynna’s determined face to the violet formula on the analyzer screen—the ‘VECTOR LOCK’. The tailored neurotoxin. It wasn’t for a future, unknown lawyer. It was for the man in the corridor right now.
Thorne checked his watch. A subtle, patronizing gesture. He held up two fingers.Two minutes left.
“We can’t synthesize that inverse compound in five minutes, let alone two,” Amara said, despair cracking her clinical tone. “It would take days, even with the blueprint.”
Cynna’s hand moved weakly, pointing towards the synthesis reactor where the amber vial of LN7-Alpha—her cure—now sat in its dispensing port. “Don’t need to synthesize,” she rasped. “Just… modify.”
Pedro followed her gaze. “The cure. You want to modify the cure?”
“It’s the inverse of the weapon she gave you,” Cynna said, her mind clearly racing ahead of her battered body. “The one in his briefcase.Same base. Different chiral form.” Her eyes met Pedro’s. “You have the weapon. In his case. And you have my cure. In the reactor.”
Amara’s head shot up. “You want to combine them?”
“Not combine.” Cynna shook her head minutely. “Use the cure as a… template. A catalyst. To force a chiral inversion in his sample.Here. Now.” She looked at Pedro, a fierce, painful clarity in her gaze. “You need to get his vial.”
Pedro stared at her. “You want me to negotiate for it?”
“No.” She swallowed with difficulty. “I want you to trade him the journal. And when he opens that case… I want you to switch the vials.”
The audacity of it left them speechless. It was a shell game. A con.
“He’ll test it,” Amara stated. “A man like that, he has a field kit. He’ll scan it before he leaves.”
Cynna’s smile was all sharp edges.“Let him. The base chemical signature will match. The chirality… won’t show up on a standard field scan. You’d need the spectrometer.” She nodded weakly toward the larger machine in the corner. “The one in here.”
Thorne held up a single finger.One minute.
“Pedro,” Cynna whispered, her voice straining with urgency. “The red shears. In my bag. The shape of the binding site.”
He didn’t understand, but he moved. He found her canvas bag, plunged his hand in, and his fingers closed around the cold, heavy metal of the shears. He pulled them out. They felt alive in his hand, charged with intention.
“Not a weapon,” Cynna breathed. “A key. For the briefcase locks. Magnetic. Undetectable.” She was gasping now, the effort of so much speech taking its toll. “It will open. Switch the vials. Give him the journal. Get his.”
Amara was already moving to the synthesis reactor, calling up the program. “I can prep a catalytic aliquot from the cure in forty-five seconds. A micro-dose. Enough to contaminate his sample and initiate the inversion reaction in a carrier solution.”
“Do it,” Pedro said.
He turned to face the observation window. Thorne was placing the briefcase flat on the ledge, his hands resting on either side. Waiting. Pedro held up a single finger back at him. Wait.
He walked to the airlock, the red shears cold in his sweaty palm. He placed his other hand on the release. He looked back at Cynna. Her eyes were on him, clear and trusting. She gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod.
He hit the release. The door hissed open.
Thorne didn’t move, but his posture shifted minutely, ready. “Your time is up, Mr.Pascal. Your decision?”
Pedro stepped into the corridor, letting the door sigh shut behind him. He held up the red leather journal. “We’ll trade. The journal, and our silence, for the stabilizer.”
“A wise choice,” Thorne said, his smile not reaching his eyes. He gestured to the briefcase. “Place it inside, if you would.”
“Open it first. I want to see it.”
Thorne studied him for a beat, then gave a curt nod. He pressed his thumbs to two discreet latches on the sides. There was a soft magnetic click. The lid lifted a fraction. He opened it fully, revealing the two vials nestled in their foam beds and the contract pad. The LN7 weapon vial was on the left. The supposed ‘stabilizer’ was on the right.
“Satisfied?” Thorne asked.
Pedro’s heart hammered against his ribs.This was the moment. He had to get the shears into the lock mechanism without Thorne seeing. He needed a distraction.
“I need to see her take the first dose,” Pedro said, injecting a layer of desperate plea into his voice. “Before I hand this over. She needs it now.” He took a half-step forward, his body angled to block Thorne’s direct view of the briefcase for a crucial second.
“The agreement is for the vial, not for its administration,” Thorne said smoothly, his hand moving to close the case.Now.
Pedro let the journal drop from his hand. It thudded to the floor. Thorne’s eyes flicked down instinctively.
In that split second, Pedro plunged the pointed tip of the red shears into the barely-visible magnetic lock on the case’s hinge.He twisted. There was a muffled snick.
Thorne’s head came up, his eyes sharp. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” Pedro said, bending to retrieve the journal, using his body to shield his other hand. With his fingers, he pried the foam bed holding the weapon vial.It came up smoothly. He slipped it into his palm, the cold glass against his skin. From his pocket, with his other hand, he slid out the nearly identical vial Amara had prepared—the cure, now laced with its own catalytic inverse.
He made the switch in the dark space beneath the briefcase lid, his movements hidden by his crouch and the journal. He slotted the new vial into the foam. He placed the real weapon vial into his jacket pocket. It took three seconds.
He stood up, journal in hand, the shears now tucked behind his back in his waistband. “Just clumsy,” he said, offering a tight smile. He held out the journal.
Thorne took it, his gaze scrutinizing. He didn’t look at the briefcase. He placed the journal inside, next to the vials, and closed the lid. The magnetic locks re-engaged with a solid thunk.
“A pleasure doing business,” Thorne said. He picked up the case. “I trust this concludes our affairs.” He turned and walked down the corridor, his steps echoing on the polished concrete.
Pedro stood frozen, watching him go. He didn’t breathe until Thorne turned a corner and disappeared from sight. Then he stumbled back into the lab, the airlock closing behind him.
“Did it work?” Amara demanded, her hands still on the reactor console.
Pedro pulled the real weapon vial from his pocket. It glinted under the lab lights. “He has the modified one. He took the journal.”
A weak, genuine laugh bubbled from the gurney. It was a raw, painful sound, but it was Cynna’s. They both turned to her.
She was more present, her eyes tracking them clearly, though exhaustion was etched into every line of her face. “He’ll test it,” she said, her voice a threadbare version of its usual strength, but laced with grim satisfaction. “The scan will show the base compound. He’ll think he’s safe. He’ll take it as a booster. Or administer it to someone else he wants to control.”
“What will it do?” Pedro asked, coming to her side.
“The inverse compound will bind to the original in his system,” she explained, each word measured. “It won’t neutralize it. It will… re-calcify it. Turn the neural pathways it built into stone.” She met his gaze. “He’ll become rigid.Literally. Cognitively.Physically. A frozen control group.”
The clinical horror of it settled in the room. It was a punishment perfectly fitted to the crime.
“And you?” Pedro asked, taking her hand. It was warmer now.
Cynna looked toward the reactor, where the bulk of the cure, her cure, remained. “You administer the rest. As planned. My brain… does the rest of the work.” She squeezed his fingers with a faint pressure. “It will be messy. I might not be… exactly the same.”
“I don’t need exactly the same,” he said, his voice thick. “I just need you.”
Amara was already preparing the IV drip, connecting the main reservoir of LN7-Alpha to a line. “Forty-eight-hour infusion,” she said. “We should move her to a proper room. We’re not doing that here.”
As Amara called for a medical transfer, Pedro stayed beside Cynna, not letting go of her hand. The terrifying vacantness was gone. In its place was a profound, battered awareness. She was back, piecing herself together from the fragments.
She looked at him, her green eyes deep with a hard-won understanding. “You switched the vials,” she stated.
“You gave me the key.”
“You used it.” She closed her eyes for a long moment. When she opened them, they were shining. “Maya wanted a collaboration. A forced partnership.” A tear tracked down her temple into her hairline. “She forgot the most important variable in any equation.”
“What’s that?”
“Free will.” Cynna’s voice was barely a whisper, but it filled the room.“You chose. You chose me.”.