The motherboard seems to read her every thought. “The baby was my idea,” she says, smiling brightly on the screen. “I thought it best that he moved on from this version of you. You have caused too much trouble for one alpha.”
“...what?”
“Cassian built me and entrusted a beta slave to carry out the synthesis,” she says. “Clearly, he failed. But there was always a plan b.”
Rae turned their oppressive world on its head. She woke people up from their ways. Time and time again, she proved she was stronger than any alpha.
When will they learn? They cannot stop her.
Rae is emboldened to act. “Where is Cassian? The real version,” she asks.
The face on the screen morphs into three mugshots. It’s Killian, Vash, and Lucas.
The face fades back onto the screen, eyes creased with rage. “Oh, honey. My boy is finishing what he started. And once your alphas are dead, he’s going to take you to another universe.”
Rae chokes.
“You’ll see what it’s really like to live forever.”
She pictures herself on a distant prison planet, locked away for all of her existence. If Cassian had his way, he’d make her live a thousand nightmares.
There’s not a moment to spare.
Grabbing the omega by her collar, she runs through the door. Sweat beating down her face and neck, she lets out a burst of tears. The motherboard’s laughter follows them through the caves, growing louder by the second.
“What do we do?” the omega asks.
“We shut the clones off. We kill every last one of the copies,” Rae commands.
The motherboard laughs even louder.
Rae steps down the ladder. Each rung feels cold beneath her palms. Dropping to the floor, she runs for the bunker with the cryo units, but when they get there, the only way down is barricaded off.
“Shit!” Rae hisses.
She looks around. All she can see are the bodies of the villagers that lived here.
This was Cassian’s doing. The whole fucking thing reeks of his artistry.
He was smart enough to know their weaknesses, and like a predator, he stalked in the shadows and waited for the right moments to act. H
e waited for them to come to him.
How could they have been so stupid?
All of a sudden, the accelerator starts to fire up, rotating at a faster speed than ever before. The harsh glow of red and molten orange washes over their bodies, nearly blinding.
The motherboard’s voice echoes across the city. “There’s really no use running,” she says. “Best to give in, dear. It’s almost over.”
Killian
Bullets whizz into the snow near Killian’s head as he dives to take cover behind a small hill. The pack sits by him with Ruby still folded up in a towel, hanging by a thread.
He keeps his children closely nested against his barrel-like chest. Though they are in danger, they don’t cry. They merely hold him, clenching against his wear for dear life.
He never wanted it to get this far. If Rae was truly dead like he assumed, he thought he could continue life by keeping himself occupied. This wasn’t the type of distraction he needed.
Exhaling, he reloads his rifle with trembling hands. He drops one bullet into the show and scrambles to grab it, but it sinks lower and lower, until it finally disappears, out of reach.