(AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN…) FUCKED

Sophia was fucked. Fucked, fucked, fucked, fucked. 

The thought looped like static in her skull, a broken record she couldn’t turn off. Repetition turned it into a mantra, dulling the panic and making it feel like focus. Everything narrowed until the hallway was nothing but tile and light and the gleam of the knife in her hand. The rest of the world had become background noise, nothing in detail apart from Armsmaster’s mech-breath at the far end of the corridor, Taylor’s ragged breathing beneath her, and the distant bzzzt of the overhead lights. 

And beneath it all, as obvious as it was terrible, was the undeniable truth: this was Taylor Hebert’s fault.

She should have known better than to let it get this far. They all should have. Packing that locker with filth had been stupid, a boredom-induced prank that got out of hand, but she’d been there when the plan was made. She’d helped execute it. And because she was a Ward, that made her the face of it. And because it hadn’t happened the way they’d rehearsed, the others would walk away with tears and excuses and what amounted to slaps on the wrists. On the other hand, no amount of pleas would save her. The PRT didn’t do leniency when cameras were involved.

And cameras would be involved. They always were when Wards screwed up.

After all, this wasn't an internal personnel problem to be papered over. A Ward in the middle of such a scandal was something that had to be dealt with post-haste, for optics, for control, and for the show the Protectorate owed the city. Probationary Wards with records? No matter how she spun it, this wouldn’t be a disciplinary slap on the wrist. It was a ticket straight to Juve, or worse. A hero's career death sentence. Even if the PRT shielded her, and they probably wouldn't, that shield wouldn’t hold long under scrutiny, and everything she had built—the privilege afforded to her—would crumble away.

And if she lost that, what was left? A violent, angry kid with a record and nowhere to go. The system didn’t give second chances twice.

She should have been angry at Emma and Madison, at how gleefully they’d gone along with the plan, and at how stupidly easy it had been. But none of that occupied the backing track of her mind anymore. All she could feel was the hot touch of exposure, the idea of her life stripped down until only consequences remained, and the cold, consuming fear. It whispered selfish solutions she was all too willing to hear: eliminate the link, eliminate the problem.

Taylor Hebert had to die.

Said once, the thought sounded monstrous. Said twice, it sounded inevitable. Repeated again and again until the words steeled you, and it became the only rational course. Sophia had never been a cold-blooded murderer. She had shoved, slapped, humiliated, and wounded others. She’d staged scares and pushed kids into lockers for fun and to feel the small rush of power. But this… this was larger than a mean joke or a prank. This was the slow unspooling of everything she’d been allowed to be. Kill or be killed, in a simple animalistic sense.

She let the thought sit and it hardened into resolve.

The knife in her hand felt absurdly small and absurdly large at the same time. It was a tool, nothing more, but its point was an answer to the equation Sophia was working out in her head. A flash of silver down, a plea to chance itself, and that single clean cut could erase every headline, every disciplinary hearing, and every shred of shame waiting to tear her life apart. It would be ugly and irreversible in a way nothing else was, but it would also be final. 

Her breath came fast and ragged, and she could feel the tremor running down her arm. Her mask felt tight and too small, and Armsmaster’s gaze on her made her whole body shake, flight, fright, freeze, and fawn running through her all at once. He didn’t move towards them, and apart from the one, he didn’t bark any other orders. He only stood there, halberd still at his back, and yet, the weight of institutional force pressed against her like a foot on her chest. 

He would do something, she was sure. He was the kind of man who read the room—read her—and was waiting to see what she’d do. Waiting to confirm his suspicions before striking. That man didn’t guess. He calculated. He would stop her. But she could be faster than him. There was enough space that she could stab Hebert, shift into her shadow state, and phase through the walls before he reached her. And she had to. She had to fix this before anyone else knew.

But even as the decision hardened, a second, quieter thing reared its head: something almost like fear of what she would become if she followed through. She had watched too many videos at night, scrolled through countless comments, and learned to read the court of public opinion. She knew the faces of those who were chewed up and spat out by the public. She had aspirations about what being a Ward looked like, even probationary, and they were not compatible with the image of a murderer on a hospital floor. 

If she did this, whatever scraps of self-sympathy she had would die along with Taylor. There would be no ‘misunderstanding’ to spin, no plausible deniability, and no one to tell her how to avoid the consequences. There would just be blood on her hands, literally and figuratively.

So the calculus was terrible and without mercy: her public life or her private conscience. The knife’s point was an ugly, immediate solution.

Sophia tightened her grip until the knife’s handle bit into her palm. Her legs wanted to run—sprint past Armsmaster, every instinct screaming to flee back into the safety of her shadows—but her feet stayed planted. She had joked about situations like this before. Now, she realized they could never measure up to the real thing. 

“You don’t have to,” she told herself, a ridiculous attempt at mercy. “You can walk away. You can take what comes. You are a fighter. A survivor.”

But what came was humiliation and the slow drowning of everything she valued. That alternative looked undesirable, especially when faster and cleaner was what the knife offered.

Her face was pale, a smear of blood there where she’d bitten her lip. She didn’t look like an enemy so much as a human being at that moment, small, exhausted, and absolutely rife with exhaustion. For the smallest instant, Sophia saw herself there: powerless, cornered, yet ready to lash out at the world. 

The thought cracked something within her open, that place where tenderness could creep back in.

“Don’t be soft,” she hissed to herself, slamming it down.

She had to move before she lost her nerve. And so the mantra came back, louder this time, filling every breath, and echoing through every beat of her heart: Taylor had to die.

Sophia lunged.

It was not a graceful movement nor was it controlled. It was instinct in its purest form, a flailing, desperate action, driven by panic and anger and fear and the unbearable pressure of consequences. The blade arced downward, the hallway narrowing once more to the point of the blade and the pounding in her skull.

And for a sliver of a second, between intention and impact, time slowed and everything felt distant. She heard herself scream—in part triumph and part terror—as if she could drown out the horror of what she’d already chosen to become.