Bonus Chapter Betrayal
Abuse Me - Ex Habit
Snow
Itravel light.
No burner. No extra clothes. No talismans I can pretend matter. The Director didn’t ask for preparedness – he asked for precision. Everything else is noise.
The road into the facility hasn’t changed. Same narrow stretch of tarmac, same bend that hides the gates until the last possible second. The place still knows how to make an entrance. It always did. I slow without thinking, not because I’m cautious, but because memory has weight.
Fire scorched the outer fence. Someone tried to make good on that promise at least. Blackened metal curls inward like it buckled under heat, then thought better of it. Temporary barriers stand where the breach should be, clean and new and already bored of pretending this was ever a real threat.
They repaired faster than I expected.
Figures.
I don’t check in. I don’t need to. The guard at the gate looks at me once, then away. Recognition passes between us without acknowledgement. Whatever name I’m wearing today, it’s on the list that matters.
Inside, the air smells wrong. Not smoke anymore – that’s been scrubbed out – but something chemical underneath, like sterilisation layered over damage.
The corridors hum with restored power, lights too bright, too even.
Emergency fixes replaced with permanent solutions. Someone signed off on the expense.
This place doesn’t burn. It adapts.
I keep walking. Boots quiet on polished concrete. Every step measured, unhurried. I’m not here to confront the system. I’m here to finish a task it no longer considers worth attention.
That alone should worry me.
I didn’t disappear.
I stepped sideways.
There’s a difference, even if it looks the same from the outside.
I left because there was no version of the truth Kayla would have accepted – not without trying to stop me, not without demanding context I wasn’t authorised to give. She would’ve called it what it was.
Betrayal.
She wouldn’t have been wrong.
I didn’t tell her because if I had, she would’ve come with me. And that would have ruined everything.
The contact came through Valentine first. Brief.
Precise. No warmth, no threats. An invitation framed as inevitability.
By the time the Director and I spoke directly, the decision had already been made.
I recognised the shape of the move. I’ve seen it before – offer someone just enough access to convince them they’re still choosing.
He didn’t need leverage. He didn’t need to mention Kayla at all. He knew I’d take it the moment he made it clear this was a closing door, not an opening one.
I told myself I was buying her time.
I told myself this would make things safer.
The truth is simpler and uglier.
I chose the mission over her because I believed – arrogantly – that I could absorb the fallout later. That if I did this right, there would still be a version of us left to salvage.
I don’t kid myself that she’ll see it that way anymore.
The further I walk into the facility, the clearer that becomes. This place strips intentions down to outcomes. It doesn’t care why you came – only what you remove before you leave.
Kayla would have tried to talk me out of it. She would have asked who authorised it. She would have demanded to know what the Director promised in return.
He promised nothing.
That’s how I knew it was real.
I reach the internal checkpoint and pause just long enough for the scanner to read me. Green light. No alarm. No escort. They’re confident enough to let me move unobserved.
That’s the second thing that should worry me.
Calloway is still alive somewhere in this building. Still convinced her relevance buys her immunity. The Director didn’t correct that assumption.
He never does.
I exhale slowly and keep moving, already cataloguing exits, distances, blind spots. Whatever I thought I was paying when I left the others behind, I’m about to find out the real cost.
And I already know it won’t be small.
The lower levels smell different now.
Not smoke. Not fire. Antiseptic layered over something older – blood that soaked in before anyone decided it was worth cleaning.
The lights flicker in places they shouldn’t, emergency systems patched into permanence.
Walls that were once pristine carry faint scorching, like the building remembers being hurt.
They didn’t shut this wing down.
They repurposed it.
I pass rooms stripped of equipment, cables cut rather than removed. Someone left in a hurry. Someone important enough that the system didn’t bother to erase the mess they made.
Calloway’s mess.
Her name still appears on directories she no longer has access to. A quiet administrative lag. The sort that happens when someone falls out of favour too quickly for the bureaucracy to catch up.
I follow the signs deeper, past where evidence of past staff traffic thins out entirely. No guards here. No cameras that aren’t obvious. This isn’t a secure area anymore.
It’s a holding pattern.
I stop outside a room that used to be an observation suite. The glass is gone, replaced by reinforced panelling. The door is sealed, but not locked. No biometric scan. No clearance required.
They’re not protecting her.
They’re containing her.
She doesn’t look up when I enter.
Calloway is slumped in a chair that was never meant to be comfortable, one arm strapped loosely to the side where a medical monitor hums with lazy disinterest. Her other hand trembles slightly in her lap.
Bandages wrap her ribs, her shoulder, her thigh, one side of her face. Poorly applied. Functional, not kind.
She smells like disinfectant and old sweat.
So Kayla did leave her alive, somehow ensuring she would survive the blast and the ensuing fire.
Good.
“Don’t bother,” Calloway says hoarsely, eyes still fixed on the floor. “If you’re here to ask questions, I’ve already answered all of them.”
I close the door behind me.
The sound makes her flinch.
She looks up then, slow and careful, as if sudden movement might cost her something else. Recognition takes longer this time. When it hits, it doesn’t bring relief.
“…Snow,” she says. Her voice cracks around my name. “I wondered which one of you they’d send.”
“They didn’t,” I reply.
Her brow furrows. Confusion first. Then calculation, brittle and desperate. “Then you’re here for her,” she says quickly. “I can still help with Kayla. I know things. The pregnancy, the projections—”
“The Director sent me,” I say.
That stops her.
Whatever fight she had left drains out of her posture. Her shoulders sag, chin dipping toward her chest like gravity finally remembered her.
I step closer, slow enough not to startle her. I want her lucid for this part.
“You’re here to end it.”
“Yes.”
She stares at me, breath shallow, eyes glassy with pain and dawning understanding. “You can’t,” she says faintly. “You don’t understand what I built. What I kept stable. Without me—”
“Without you,” I say quietly, “the system proceeds.”
Her gaze flicks to the door. Then back to me. There’s no anger left now. Only fear, stripped clean of ego.
She starts to cry. “Son, please—”
“You were my egg donor, nothing more,” I cut her off harshly. If she thinks tugging on my heartstrings, on our shared DNA will save her, she’s very much mistaken.
If anything it makes me even more determined to kill her, and not just because this is another test from the Director.
No, that woman is no more my mother than Seytan is Kayla’s. Egg donors and sperm donors. They’re not the ones who raised us. We have no loyalties or ties to them.
She’s shaking now. Not violently. Not enough to trip the monitors. Just a fine tremor running through her hands, through the parts of her that still expect reprieve if she explains herself correctly.
I don’t rush her.
The Director never does.
Her breath stutters. She swallows, throat working around something sour. “The Director understands,” she says, grasping now. “What we were trying to do. What I was trying to do.”
I don’t answer.
She nods to herself instead, as if silence can still be interpreted favourably. “Good,” she murmurs. “Good. Then this – this is just a pause. A correction. I can still be useful.”
She’s delusional. Desperate to keep breathing whatever the cost.
Silly woman.
She leans forward as far as the restraints allow. “I know Kayla. I know how she thinks. I know what she’ll do when she comes back.”
I step closer.
Close enough now that she has to tilt her head to look at me.
“That’s exactly why he listened, Mother,” I say.
Understanding flickers across her face too late to matter.
“Your assistance with Project Marrow,” I tell her, “is now complete.”
She stiffens.
“And your involvement in Project Chrysalis,” I continue, “has been reviewed.”
Her mouth opens. She doesn’t interrupt this time.
“Your help is no longer required. Your clearance has been rescinded.”
The phrasing is deliberate. Clean. Impersonal. It leaves no room for appeal.
“No,” she whispers. “No, you don’t understand. Chrysalis isn’t stable yet. It needs oversight. It needs—”
“It needs to proceed,” I correct. “Without interference. Without you.”
Her gaze darts again to the door. There’s nowhere left to run, but habit dies slowly.
“You can’t erase me,” she says, voice cracking. “I’m in the data. In the protocols. In the conditioning matrices.”
“Yes,” I agree. “You are.”
I reach into my jacket and remove the device the Director authorised for this purpose. Compact. Unremarkable. The kind of thing designed not to leave a mess.
Calloway sees it and finally understands what relevance looks like when it expires.
“This wasn’t the plan,” she breathes.
“It is now.”
Her shoulders slump. She’s run out of arguments that the system values.
I don’t tell her she deserved this.
I don’t tell her Kayla spared her.
I don’t tell her anything at all.
Because this isn’t punishment.
It’s housekeeping.
There’s no warning, no escalation, no attempt to make it mean something more than it is. I step into her space and end it quickly, efficiently, with the kind of precision the Director prefers – no spectacle, no chance for error.
Calloway jerks once. A sharp intake of breath, more surprise than pain. Her eyes meet mine for a fraction of a second, wide and disbelieving, like she’s still trying to reconcile her importance with the reality of the moment.
Then she’s still.
“Goodbye, Mother.”
The monitor protests briefly. A thin, irritated sound. It flatlines a second later and falls silent.
I stand there long enough to confirm it. Not out of sentiment. Out of habit.
Calloway was never the point.
She was the loose end.
Her terminal unlocks without resistance.
No security challenge. No final insult. Whatever access she once had was never truly hers. It was lent. Now it reverts.
I scroll.
Files cascade down the screen – iterations, projections, contingency trees branching outward in directions that make my jaw tighten. Project Marrow is there, archived, tagged as complete. Useful. Informative. Obsolete.
Chrysalis isn’t.
Chrysalis is broader. Cleaner. More patient.
Kayla’s name appears more times than I expect. Not as a subject. Not as an asset.
As a variable.
As a proof of concept.
She’s the first. Well, the first to get this far. The original experiment, Patient Zero, but she won’t be the last. If Kayla can bring the Chrysalis to term, she’ll be the first in a long line of unwilling incubators.
They’ll breed her until she’s broken, and then they’ll find others to take her place, long enough for her offspring to be of breeding age.
Because if you breed monsters with monsters for enough generations, you can strip out every ounce of humanity and create the perfect army of psychotic soldiers.
Project Marrow failed because they introduced Kayla. They didn’t bank on six psychopaths falling for her, being willing to give up everything for someone else. Being prepared to burn the world down for a child that may never come to fruition.
They won’t make the same mistake twice.
Kayla’s return isn’t a complication. It’s a data point already accounted for, folded neatly into outcome models that extend well past the island, past the facility, past anything we thought we were burning down.
The Director isn’t reacting anymore.
He’s waiting.
I lock the terminal and step back, the room suddenly too small, too quiet.
Calloway’s body slumps in the chair like a discarded shell. She looks smaller now. Insignificant. Exactly as the system always intended.
Killing her didn’t stop anything.
It just cleared the board.
Kayla is already moving. Already committed. Already walking straight into a structure that anticipated her defiance before she ever named it.
For the first time since I left, something like urgency cuts through the calm.
“Fuck,” I mutter, turning for the door.
I don’t slow.
“I have to go back.”