The alarms didn't stop.
They wailed through the building in uneven pulses, like a panicked heartbeat that couldn't find a rhythm. Red light washed over everything over Sienna's pale face, over the fractures in the glass, over the people who had once believed themselves untouchable.
Rain poured in through the broken windows now, soaking the polished floor, turning reflections into something warped and unsteady.
The city below looked distant. Insignificant.
Sienna didn't move.
She stood perfectly still in the centre of the room, shoulders squared, spine straight, eyes locked on the two people who had stolen her life and worn it like a costume.
Her "parents" whispered urgently to each other. Not arguments calculations. I recognized that tone. They were already trying to pivot, to regain control, to rewrite the narrative in whatever way still benefited them.
Survivors. Parasites.
Her father took a cautious step forward. "Sienna," he said, voice carefully measured, "this doesn't have to end badly."
I felt her breath hitch beside me.
Then she laughed again.
This time, it wasn't soft.
It was hollow.
"End badly?" she repeated. "You mean badly for you."
Her mother tried a different tactic tears. Her eyes glistened, her lips trembled just enough to look convincing.
"We loved you," she said. "In our own way."
That did it.
Sienna's head snapped toward her so fast it felt like the air cracked.
"Don't," she said.
One word. Flat. Absolute.
"Don't you dare use that word."
Her hands unclenched slowly, fingers flexing as if she were testing their strength. I could see the tremor running through her arms, not weakness, but restraint.
Every instinct in her was screaming to strike, to scream, to destroy.
And she was choosing not to.
Yet.
"You don't get to say you loved me when you taught me pain before kindness," she continued. "When every hug had conditions. When every mistake was punished.
When I learned very early, that affection was something I had to earn."
Her voice cracked for half a second.
Then hardened.
"You didn't raise me," she said. "You used me."
Her father's mask finally slipped. "We made you strong."
I stepped forward before I could stop myself.
"No," I said quietly. "You made her hurt. You made her hate herself. You made her question every goodwill that came to her for fear that they might be something attached"
They looked at me, really looked at me for the first time.
Not as background. Not as an inconvenience.
As a threat.
Sienna didn't stop me. That alone told me everything.
"You taught her to survive," I continued, my voice steady despite the fury burning through my chest.
"But you never taught her how to live. And now you're standing here wondering why she doesn't see you as family."
Sienna glanced at me, just briefly. Something unreadable passed between us.
Then she turned back to them.
"You want to know the cruelest part?" she asked. "I tried to love you. I did love you. Even when something in me screamed that it was wrong."
Her eyes burned.
"And you still killed my parents. You brother"
Silence fell like a guillotine.
Her mother's breath hitched. "We didn't have a choice."
Sienna stepped forward.
One step.
The floor creaked beneath her.
"You always have a choice," she said. "You just chose yourselves."
Another step.
Her father backed away instinctively, bumping into the desk behind him. The sound echoed too loudly in the room.
"You took everything from me," Sienna whispered. "My family. My name. My memories. You even tried to take my anger turned it inward so I'd never point it at you."
She stopped an arm's length away from them.
"But you failed."
"I remember my mother's voice," she said softly. "I remember how my father laughed. I remember the way they said my name."
Her parents' faces drained of colour.
"And I remember you standing over me," she continued. "Talking like I wasn't even there."
Her mother collapsed into the chair behind her, shaking.
"Please," she whispered. "Sienna… we can fix this."
Sienna tilted her head.
"No," she said. "We can't."
She turned slightly, then not away from them, but toward me. Her eyes searched mine, just for a second. Not for permission.
For grounding.
I nodded once.
That was all she needed.
She faced them again.
"You don't get forgiveness," she said. "You don't get redemption. And you don't get to die thinking you were right."
Her father swallowed hard. "Then what happens to us?"
Sienna's lips curved not into a smile but something colder.
"You live," she said. "Long enough to watch everything you built collapse. Long enough to be exposed. Long enough to be remembered for what you really are."
She stepped back, finally breaking the circle.
"And when the world comes for you," she added, "I won't stop it."
I moved to her side fully now, my hand settling at the small of her back solid, present, unyielding.
She leaned into it just slightly.
And I knew.
This wasn't revenge.
This was justice, sharpened by memory and carried out by a woman who had finally reclaimed herself.
As we turned toward the exit, leaving the two of them frozen in fear and ruin, Sienna spoke one last time without looking back.
"My parents didn't die for nothing," she said. "You did."
The doors slammed shut behind us.
The alarms screamed.
The storm raged on.
And for the first time since the night her world ended, Sienna walked forward not as a victim, not as a weapon, but as herself.
And I followed. Always.