Hadley woke up with a gasp!

She was in a reclining metal chair with a hard cushion for the back rest and seat. Her hands and feet were bound by metallic clasps. The chair was in a grey room, lit with fluorescent lights and smelling strongly of antiseptic cleaning products. It was the large laboratory that Barret had shown Hadley that first time after she'd arrived at The Hotel, the one that she'd loved exploring, filled with chrome and a ton of experimental glassware and machinery that spoke to the Medic in her.

That felt like a lifetime ago!

Her presence here didn't make sense. Hadley had passed out on her cot in the cage in Anette's small laboratory after Anette's surgery had gone through successfully. The last thing she remembered is smashing her shoulder against the cage door, screaming Anette's name because she wouldn't wake up! Tristan and Cruto had walked out of the corner, and Hadley watched a single blood tear fall down Tristan's cheek as they walked in sync out of the room to where Anette lay motionless in the operating room she'd prepared.

All the while, Hadley kept screaming for Anette to wake up, bashing into her cage door hard enough to shatter her right shoulder. But the pain meant nothing. Tristan and Cruto were in the operation room, stoic as they stood next to her body, gazing forward into nothing.

Still, Anette wouldn't wake!

Hadley's desperate cries broke into incoherent pleas.

She watched the vampires turn away – their kill order confirmed by silence. Hadley went silent as she watched the monitors. Then the vampires stopped moving. It was only for a few seconds, but Hadley saw it. She saw Tristan holding them back, one of his hands tightly gripping the operation bed and the other holding his lover's hand. Hadley watched in awe, relief pouring over her in waves until she saw Tristan's hand slowly let go, finger by finger. There was a miniscule mark of strain on his face. He was fighting the order but losing.

Hadley was on her knees now, whispering Anette's name, begging her to wake up.

"Tomorrow."

It was the faintest, weakest, shakiest of whispers, but the effect was instant. Tristan and Cruto froze, gave a curt nod each and then walked back into the lab holding Hadley's cage. Hadley had passed out from sheer exhaustion before the vampires made it to their corner.

She had succeeded!

Anette was still alive and the recipient of a mashed-up cyborg skeletal frame.

Hadley had kept her side of her bargain!

So, why was she here, tied up once again, at the mercy of her sadomasochistic sister, half sister, who was sitting next to her, with her back to Hadley as she busily worked on something on one of the chrome tables?!

Hadley should have been free! Should have been with Jamila!

Jamila!

Hadley missed her with every breath. She'd already lost Ruq. She couldn't lose Jamila as well. Hadley had proven she could survive more than she'd ever thought possible, but she didn't want to be further tested in that way. Not because she thought she didn't have the ability to get through it, but because she wouldn't let herself.

Hadley pulled at the metallic clasps binding her wrists, making them clang loudly against the chair.

"Ah, you're awake," Anette said. "I was starting to think I'd gone too far this time."

She stayed turned away from Hadley, her attention glued to the items in her hands.

"It's been weeks," Anette continued. "You almost had me worried, Hadley. Almost."

Out of habit, Hadley tried to reach for her belly. The metal clasp clanged again as she pulled her arm up. That's when her eyes fell on her torso. Her belly.

Something wasn't right.

She wasn't as round anymore.

"Oh, that? Yeah, I took the baby out a couple of days ago," Anette said, nonchalantly, having turned around to find Hadley gawking at her belly. "The space launch window is closing, and we'll be leaving soon. I wasn't going to leave without my little buddy. Don't worry, I'll be a wonderful mother."

Hadley wanted to scream, hurl things, hurt Anette, but she stayed calm. Only her daughter mattered now, and she wasn't going to aggravate Anette until she figured out where the child was.

"Can I," Hadley started. Her voice painfully dragged past a gravelly throat, unused for far too long. She cleared it. "Can I speak to Barret now?"

Anette scoffed.

"Daddy dearest?" she said, condescendingly. "He's still a little tied up."

This time, Anette swung over a collection of monitors secured on a frame and attached to a gimbal arm in front of Hadley's face. In one of the monitors, Barret Fisher was unconscious, tied up in a chair like hers.

"See?" Anette asked. She was gloating. "Sadly, he won't be joining us in the New World. But I'm sure you two will have fun commiserating over cold pizza, brain-dead sitcoms, and childish board games."

She cackled like that was the most entertaining joke she'd ever heard!

Then she stood up and stretched. She reached her hands to the ceiling, then bent backwards and kept going, bending completely in half, the back of her head hitting the back of her knees. She fluidly contorted her body into shape after shape, sometimes making it difficult to know what body parts were moving. She eventually paused in the handstand position, her eyes glued to Hadley, her legs in a split that bent her back into an impossible inside arch. Then she slowly drew her legs in from the split and carefully dropped them over her shoulders and to the floor. Her hands and torso were still in the handstand position as she looked at Hadley. She then took her last pose, where she moved her head between her legs and her chest on the floor, her arms forced out to the side in a surreal display of flexibility.

She was fully recovered – with help from a steady IV of vampire blood over a few days. The metallic skeleton Hadley had instructed a team of vampire drones to surgically transplant was properly fused with her and spectacularly functional.

Hadley was both proud and revulsed.

What had she done?

"Pretty cool, huh?" Anette said, unravelling her body to stand back up on her two splayed feet. "You did great!"

But Hadley didn't care much for the display. She demanded to be told where her baby was.

"I'm going to be frank with you, Hadley," Anette replied, turning back to the lab table to swirl a test tube with a lurid orange liquid in it. "Despite our last two months of bonding, I hate you. I hate everything about you. I hate that you're prettier than me, I hate that both of your eyes are the perfect blue, I hate that everything comes so easily to you! That you somehow got an Ageless vampire hybrid to fall in love with you and that golden eyed beauty too. Hate that you got our father to play games with you, make pizza with you, offer you the keys to the New World! And I hate that my fiancé, Kade, likes you and your baby better than me. I hate it all."

How was any of that Hadley's fault?!

"What do you want me to say to that?" Hadley spat, frustrated. "I just want my baby back!"

Anette chuckled. "I must admit, the gift of this new skeleton made me consider not hating you, but it's not nearly enough! Not yet."

Hadley watched as Anette pulled the orange liquid from the test tube she'd been swirling into a syringe. Hadley's eyes went wide, fearing the worst as she looked at the orange liquid. If Anette injected her with this liquid, who knew what it would mean for her. Especially after that lovely little speech she'd just given.

"Don't, please," Hadley pleaded.

Anette turned to face her, then looked back at the liquid.

"This? You think this is for you?" Anette scoffed. "How greedy can you be? This is all mine! You're already way too special."

Anette gazed longingly at the orange liquid. Then she turned to look back at Hadley, her gaze transformed into a glare by pure, unadulterated spite.

"Do you know I told our father that you were in love with a vampire? An Ageless one. A hybrid, no less! He didn't even bat an eyelid. But when I sneak into his pet hybrid vampire's cage for a little bit of fun in this boring, tedious hellhole, daddy decides to punish me! To stop talking to me for months! To start giving me tasks a mindless imbecile could complete! So, what do I do to get back at him? I set his stupid hybrid vampire pet free, obviously! And what do you know? My little act of rebellion accidentally created vampire dogs! Dad was not happy about that!"

Anette cackled maniacally, almost falling into hysterics. It was difficult to know if it was a mirthful sound or one of anguish. She looked back at the orange liquid in the syringe.

"It's fucked up, isn't it? But that was just the beginning of the fuckery!" She continued, her voice dripping in acid. "You see, I needed some way to make it up to daddy dearest. To remind him of the value he once saw in me. And I was quickly losing faith that I ever would, until you came into the picture."

Anette placed the syringe on the table, swivelled in her chair and pulled it right up to Hadley, close enough that her ranting showered Hadley in a spray of spittle.

"At first, I was angry! Here you were, the golden child. Perfect in every way. Child of his one true love, Aadya." Anette said, her voice getting angrier and angrier with each passing second. "The woman whose dead memory my mother uselessly competed with for decades until the day she couldn't take it anymore and decided to join her in death if it would mean a place in father's mind. Only, Aadya wasn't dead, was she? She'd beautifully faked her death and hidden herself in the one place father would never think to look – a fucking Barn!"

Anette got up, balled her right fist, and punched the wall behind Hadley. She continued punching until bits of concrete were raining over Hadley. Breathing heavily, Anette walked back to her chair a few minutes later.

"But in a wonderful twist of fate, I didn't have to worry about you ever causing me any trouble with father," Anette said. "You see, when they brought you to me, you were dying. They asked me to save you. Me! The Universe has a fucked-up sense of humour, I'll tell you that. I did the least I could do and told your friends to say their goodbyes, because there was no way you were going to survive that vampire's attack. It was the sweetest moment. I'd never been that happy! Your slow, painful death was going to be the memory I would pull up whenever daddy dearest was angry at me. It was perfect."

Anette stood and grabbed Hadley by the folds of her T-shirt, pulling her uncomfortably close.

"But you didn't die, did you?" Anette said, her voice dark and menacing, made more uncomfortable by that irritating spray of spittle. "And not only were you alive, you were also healing. You were healing faster than was humanly possible, and yet, you were still human in every sense of the word. I couldn't believe it! Why you? Then I had to watch those stupid friends of yours worshipping you like you were some kind of... fuck! You had the allegiance of a vampire! A hybrid Ageless One!"

Anette shoved Hadley back into the uncomfortable metallic chair hard enough to break skin at the back of Hadley's head. For a moment, the pain blinded Hadley and she could barely focus on what was happening. However, the wound began to heal, and her blurry vision cleared. Anette was swiping and smashing items from one of the lab tables. She finally calmed down and took a moment to slow her breathing with her palms resting on the empty table. There were streaks of blood on everything from the cuts and bruises she was sustaining in her fits of rage.

"I couldn't leave you with the Wildlings. Word would get back to father about the presence of Aadya Fisher's daughter – his daughter! He has spies everywhere. He would blame me for not telling him about you!" Anette continued, her palms still on the empty table and her eyes glued to its surface. "So, I got the Scavengers to attack Kade's tribe. Of course, there was a risk I would expose myself as a Scavenger, but it was a calculated risk. And it worked! I had you. I studied your blood. I found the missing link and created a stasis serum that would actually work! I was going to win father's approval. Finally. I told him about you and showed him the serum and I was right. He'd never been prouder. Until I brought him to the clinic..."

Anette turned to face Hadley.

"...and you were gone!" Anette's face was contorted in a malevolent stare. Chills ran down Hadley's spine. "I couldn't believe it! How did you...? You know what? Forget it. He blamed me for your escape. Told me I was careless. Hopeless. Useless! I thought I had lost him forever this time, but then the universe gave me a second chance. I saw you at The Caves. All I had to do was get you banished by the Council and then capture you in another Scavenger raid. It was a simple plan."

Anette walked up to Hadley again.

"But they didn't banish you, did they, Hadley? They imprisoned you! You were more protected than I could have ever imagined." Anette narrowed her eyes at Hadley. "I didn't think I could ever hate anyone as much as I do you. Yet, here we are."

She suddenly laughed.

"Then you escaped The Caves! I'll never know how you do it, but I am in awe of your slipperiness, more than anything else, Hadley." She said with a chuckle.

She got serious again.

"I thought recovering you after your escape would be enough to win back his approval," Anette said, standing up and cracking her neck in disgustingly off angles. "And it worked! I was sure The Architects would put up a better fight for you, but they didn't, and I finally had you. Things were looking up for me. Father immediately took me under his wing again. It was the first time he and I worked together in ages, making the stasis serum using your blood. But you slowly wormed your way into his cold, cold heart, something I have been trying to do from the day I was born and failing miserably. I would have let it go – you're my older sister and you had brought him and I together again – but him offering you my promised position as Queen of the New Planet by his side was the last straw."

Anette sat back at the lab table and picked up the syringe with orange liquid in it. She looked at it for a long time.

"Hadley, I'm not going to let myself continue to be the unlucky sibling in this duo. It's time we switched roles, don't you think? It's time I became the special one. Became the miracle for my father. The one he deems worthy to govern the New Planet beside him."

Anette turned to Hadley and raised the orange syringe. With her gaze never leaving Hadley's, she stabbed the needle into her right deltoid and slowly pressed the plunger, tilting her head back in pleasure. Hadley watched as orange lines drew themselves from Anette's shoulder, up her neck and down her arm. Anette flexed her fingers when the lines reached the tips.

"It's partly made from your blood, of course," Anette explained, her eyes still closed in a scene of nirvana. "Daddy dearest insistes on exclusively using your blood to create as much of the new stasis serum for the travel pods as possible, but your blood can do so much more! I've used it in so many ways that would curl your toes in fear. Ways that our father will never get to know!"

Anette winced as she placed the empty syringe on a tray on the table next to her, swivelled her chair and went back to the monitor that she had swung to show Hadley their imprisoned father.

"Lately, he's has been hesitant to experiment the way we always have for decades," Anette continued. "Something about already possessing enough of what we need and there being no reason to kill or harm any more living beings. Silly, really. The experiments are the best part of it all, especially the ones that show us our limits. That's how we got to where we are. How we'll get even farther."

She tapped on the monitor for a few minutes then showed it to Hadley.

"Josal," Hadley whispered with a gasp. The vampire was in a blank, grey room with a white tiled floor, devoid of any furniture. He was chained to the wall.

"Oh, so you do know him. He's the one who told me about your Ageless vampire lover being a hybrid. He thought it would help buy his freedom." Anette said with a chuckle. "Then he tried to betray me. Tried to corrupt my guards to save his fledgling and a bunch of useless drones. What an idiot! Those drones are brain-dead husks! What did he honestly think he would do with them outside of The Hotel? Anyway, to pay for his betrayal, which cost me precious time and resources, I let him volunteer for this little experiment."

Anette changed the scope of one of the four cameras on the monitor to show another person in the room with Josal.

"Teroi!" Hadley gasped, pulling at her bindings. He was also chained to the wall, looking miserable and defeated. Even from the monitor, Hadley recognised that he'd changed.

Teroi was a vampire!

"You know Josal's freshly made fledgling as well? Interesting," Anette remarked. She smiled. "I really hope that you're all close friends."

"Don't hurt him, please," Hadley whispered. Teroi was the father of her child. After everything Kade had told her about fathers, and her own experience with Barret Fisher, Hadley didn't want to see Teroi get hurt!

"Just so you know, the fact that this is rattling you makes it much so more satisfying," Anette announced giddily. Then she pushed on a few more buttons on the monitor. "Now, watch this. Watch what your blood made possible."

That grey room was suddenly flooded in white light. The instant the light hit Teroi, he screamed bloody murder. Hadley watched as Teroi slowly burned, then turned to ash – just as the vampire who'd disintegrated when he'd jumped of that cliff! Instant death by ultraviolet radiation. A painful sob crushed Hadley's chest as she struggled to keep it from tearing itself from her. She couldn't let Anette witness the pain of her loss.

"Do you see that!" Anette was hollering.

It was only then that Hadley noticed Josal struggling to get out of his chains.

He was still alive?

A vampire who could survive a blast of ultraviolet rays!

Why would Anette make that possible?

"I injected him with a little of that orange serum you saw before," Annete said, all smug. "You have blood that kills vampires. And now, I have blood that will grant them power over the sun. The Shield is falling. The sun is coming back in all its glory. Soon, I will be as sought after as you are by every faction out there, from the vampires to the Wildlings and the Architects! And with my new skeleton, I am more combat-ready than you could ever dream of. I'm better than you in every way, Hadley! Daddy dearest won't be able to ignore that!"

As Anette kept congratulating herself, dancing in victory, moving in ways she wouldn't have been able to without an other-worldly skeletal frame, Hadley kept watching that monitor showing cameras of the grey room – mourning her lover's death. But she noticed something happening to Josal that pulled her away from her grief. The vampire was acting erratic. Becoming frantic. Manic. Out of control. Breaking his own bones while pulling against the chains. Before long, one of his hands was free after he ripped himself apart from the wrist, his bloody stump flailing wildly, painting the grey room in streaky swathes of blood!

Ruqwik's words from a lifetime ago played through Hadley's mind.

"If anything happens to you that is bad enough to sever the link, my mind will snap back to that moment when the link was established. I'd be drowning again. Alone this time. And I'd most certainly lose my mind. This is how a ghoul, or zombie, is created. An undead creature with the sole purpose of imposing its madness onto others in an attempt to find peace again. Because a body and mind that's evolved to be immortal isn't equipped to deal with having walked through death's door and then walked back out somehow."

It wasn't long before Josal was completely free, but he was different. Off. Feral. Hadley watched in horror as the savage creature that was once Josal broke out of the room. Anette missed it all in her revelry, but Hadley kept watching the monitor. She was torn between telling Anette about Josal or not. On the one hand, Anette might spread the warning to Jamila and the others Hadley saw months ago in that screen, and they'd have a chance to get to safety. On the other hand, Anette would reap the fruit from the destructive seeds sown by her unrestrained ego, adding to the list of disasters she'd already caused, further angering their father, and there was a satisfaction in that last choice that seduced Hadley.

However, the decision was made before Hadley got a chance to sit with it for more than a few seconds.

A symphony of sirens came alive around them.

Then the ground rumbled.

"No! No!" Anette screamed.

She rushed to the monitor and scrolled the screens back to the cameras that were monitoring the room where their father was being held.

The room was empty!

"He's Leaving?!" she screamed. "Without me?!"

Hadley took the opportunity to break her left thumb and slip her hand out of its metal clasp. Her thumb was healing even as she freed her other hand, although the pain was blinding.

"This is your fault!" Anette was saying as she turned to face Hadley. Anette's eyes went wide at seeing Hadley's hands free and armed.

"I really hope you're right." Hadley said as she smashed Anette in the face with a tray from the table that had been sitting next to her.

Anette's head snapped against the hit, swivelling an inhuman one hundred and eighty degrees, then slowly, eerily turned back to Hadley, her smashed-in cheek healing as Hadley watched. Hadley didn't think about the anomaly for too long. She'd already surmised that Anette was healing faster than usual after her raw knuckle wounds healed following her wall bashing, glass breaking tirades. Hadley had just needed a distraction. She slammed her hand on Anette's right shoulder, her fingers pinching against a solid node.

Anette froze.

She tried to move her limbs but couldn't.

"Here's your lesson for the day, Anette. A little class of my own," Hadley said, as Anette's paralysed, stiff body twitched in a strenuous effort to move. "Don't let someone you've had the pleasure of torturing for months build your metallic skeleton. Fear and pain is an amazing motivation for them to include vulnerabilities."

Hadley pressed harder at the node under her fingers, effectively disconnecting every junction of Anette's skeleton. In a liquid-like wave, Anette crashed to the ground, smacking her head on the corner of a desk on the way down with a satisfying thunk.

She lay motionless on the ground, blood seeping from her already healing head wound, her eyes swirling around madly. The head wound would heal, but the concussion would take a while to dissipate, which was all the time Hadley would need to free herself and leave this place. Hadley wasn't worried Annete would be able to put herself together – that was impossible. But if Tristan, Cruto or any other drone walked in, that would be a different story altogether, especially if Annete's concussion was resolved far enough for her to speak.

Hadley freed her legs and jumped off the metal chair. She stumbled, trying to walk on jelly legs that hadn't been used for weeks. She caught herself just before she hit the ground, knocking off items from the lab table that crashed with a large tinkling, including the empty syringe that had held the orange liquid. It rolled toward Anette's motionless body.

"...And now, I have blood that will grant them power over the sun..."

Hadley turned away from the syringe. She had something a lot more important to focus on.

Her baby!

Nothing mattered but that.

This whole journey started because of her daughter.

Hadley had already lost too much. Too many people. Too much innocence. Too much of herself. Just, too much. Without her daughter, all that loss would be in vain, and Hadley couldn't bear the thought. She pulled herself onto her feet and forced them to move her forward.

The ground shook again, much stronger this time. Strong enough to crack and break the walls and ceiling. And this time, when she fell and tried to cover her head from the debris, she opened her eyes to find herself staring at Anette's, which were glazing over. Hadley scrambled away, horrified that she'd accidentally killed the woman. Even though Anette deserved worse than death, Hadley had wanted to make sure the kill-order on Jamila's and her daughter's life was rescinded before the woman died! But she quickly realised the death wasn't her fault. A thick, steel rebar was sticking out of Anette's skull having dropped from the crumbling ceiling.

Hadley got back to her bare feet, coughing up concrete dust as she stumbled through shards of laboratory glass shattered on the ground all around her. The ground rumbled again, destroying more of the room over Hadley's head. When it stopped, Hadley looked back, past her dust covered bloody footprints, to her sister's lifeless body. Anette's words suddenly made sense, painfully rattling around Hadley's mind, replaying cruelly in the background sound of more rumbling.

"He's Leaving?! Without me?!"

Anette was talking about their father! The tremors could mean only one thing: Barret had activated the space craft!

A horrible thought hit Hadley then. More of Anette's words.

...I took the baby out a couple of days ago. The space launch window is closing, and we'll be leaving soon. I wasn't going to leave without my little buddy. Don't worry, I'll be a wonderful mother.

Her baby!

Her daughter was inside a pod, floating in stasis serum, on board the spacecraft!

The same craft that Barret was now leaving in!

Hadley pushed, twisted, crawled, and stumbled out of the lab then raced down the debris laden hallway to where the spacecraft and the containment pods with her people and other Scavenger abductees were the first time she was here. She stopped when she reached the edge of the large room, gasped and fell to her knees, tears streaming down her face.

There were no containment pods on the ground like before, just the space craft in the middle of a gigantic, empty room. And it was no longer the colour of midnight. It was lit up, white and bright, purring as it lifted higher, towards the ceiling. The ceiling that was coming apart, continuing to cause fervent tremors in the earth surrounding it. A crack formed through the middle of the ceiling.

The crack suddenly widened with a forceful rip that shattered Hadley's eardrums, and not figuratively!

The world came crashing down around her.