For a second, a moment stretched thin as wireI didn't move.Didn't breathe.Didn't think coherently, my mind suddenly blank and full simultaneously.Because the figure stepping into the dim light wasn't supposed to exist anymore.Wasn't supposed to be alive, much less here, walking toward me out of darkness like a ghost made flesh.The facility lights caught the side of her face first, pale skin that looked like it hadn't seen proper sunlight in years, maybe decades.Too still, her expression frozen in that particular way that comes from psychological conditioning, from learning to show nothing because showing anything invited pain.Then the rest of her form followed as she moved forward.Measured steps, careful and deliberate.Uncertain in her movements, but not weak, caution rather than fear.Alive in ways that defied everything I'd been told, everything I'd believed about what happened to children who failed the Nursery's protocols.My voice, when it finally came, was barely there
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