Hana gasped, sharply.
It felt as though something had reached inside her and yanked her soul out by force. Her chest burned. Her pulse hammered so hard, she felt her ribs shaking. For a moment, she wasn't sure she was even breathing.
Everything was black.
It wasn't darkness, it was absence. A void swallowing sight, sound, and sense.
Then she felt it…
Something heavy. Something foreign. Something attached to her head, weighing her down like a metal crown. She tried to move, but her body refused. Her arms were pinned behind her, wrists bound. Her back was pressed against something cold and solid, with straps digging into her shoulders, her waist, her legs.
She was restrained.
Strapped upright against a wall.
Her breath hitched.
What's going on?
A voice cut through the darkness.
"Director."
Hana flinched violently. The word alone made her stomach twist.
But the voice…
It was Haazi's.
"It looks like she has woken up," he said calmly. "Should I carry your orders out now?"
Silence followed.
Thick. Heavy. Wrong.
Hana's pulse spiked. Panic clawed up her throat. She tried to speak, but her voice caught. She tried to see, but the darkness clung to her like tar.
Am I blind? What happened? Where am I?
Her heart pounded faster. Louder. It thumped in her ears like a drum. Each beat felt too strong, too sharp, too real.
-
A flash.
Red‑tinged light exploded across her vision, blinding her. She gasped, squeezing her eyes shut, then forced them open again.
Shapes swam into view. A room. Dim, metallic, humming with machinery.
And directly in front of her was a massive transparent tube.
Inside it, something floated.
Something moving.
Something pulsing.
Hana blinked hard, her breath catching in her throat.
The pulsing matched her heartbeat.
Perfectly.
No.
No, that wasn't possible.
But the more she stared, the more the truth clawed its way into her mind.
It was a heart.
A human heart.
Suspended, glowing with each rhythmic thump.
Her heartbeat.
Her pulse.
Her rhythm.
Her… heart…
IT WAS HER OWN HEART?!