I huddled in a corner, my back pressed against the cold concrete wall, my mangled leg propped up on a pile of debris. The unnatural healing was a slow, agonizing fire, knitting my shattered bones back together with an itch that felt like it was coming from the center of my soul. But the physical pain was a distant echo, a background hum to the vast, screaming emptiness where my life used to be.
My plan, my clever, desperate plan, had been a catastrophic failure. Ravage was still out there, not just a monster, but a wounded, enraged monster, his last connection to humanity severed by my own clumsy hands. I hadn't saved Hark Hale. I had murdered him, leaving only the beast behind.
And Tessa and Cody. The memory of their faces, of the absolute terror and betrayal in their eyes, was a fresh wound that wouldn't close. I had protected them, yes, but I had done it by becoming the very thing they feared. I had confirmed my monstrousness in their eyes, and in my own. I had alienated the only two people who anchored me to the girl I used to be. Now, there was no one left to anchor me at all.
I picked up a shard of broken glass from the floor, its edges sharp and dangerous. I turned it over in my palm, the cool surface a strange comfort. In its dark, reflective surface, I saw a stranger. A ghost with my face, her eyes two hollow pits, her cheek marred by a scar that was a permanent reminder of my first failure. I looked like a weapon. A broken one. A weapon that only ever seemed to hurt the people it was trying to protect.
What was the difference between me and Ravage, really?
Pandora cursed us both with a power we couldn’t control, both doomed to leave a trail of destruction in our wake. He was just further down the same dark road I was now walking. Sooner or later, I would become just as feral, just as lost.
A cold, quiet certainty settled in my bones. I had to stop it. I had to stop me. Before I hurt anyone else. Before I put Jackie in danger. Before I broke the whole world.
I was done fighting it. I was done fighting him. I was just… done.
I looked at the dark, silent wristband. Handy. The last piece of my uncle. His last, desperate hope. A hope I had failed.
“Handy,” I said. My voice was a dead, flat thing, a stranger’s voice in the suffocating silence.
The wristband flickered to life, a single blue pixel blooming on its screen. “I’m here, Nikki,” his voice was subdued, as if sensing the shift in the room, the finality in my tone. “Bio-scans indicate your leg is… well, it’s a mess, but the cellular regeneration seems to be kicking in. At this rate, you’ll be back to… whatever it is we’re calling this, in no time.”
“Not anymore. Initiate Protocol Zero,” I said, the words feeling like stones in my mouth.
There was a moment of silence from the AI. The blue light on the screen wavered. “I’m sorry,” Handy said, his voice stripped of all its usual snark, a flat, robotic monotone. “Are you sure? That command requires verbal confirmation. Protocol Zero is irreversible.”
“I know what it is,” I said, my voice as empty as my chest. “And it is my choice. Erase everything. The research. My uncle’s files. Yourself. All of it. Then self-destruct the hardware.”
“Confirmation received,” the AI droned. The blue light on the screen blinked out, replaced by a single, pulsing red dot, like a drop of blood. “Protocol Zero: Total Data Purge and Hardware Self-Destruct, now in progress. All Pandora research data, all personal logs, all evidence of Project Lycaon will be permanently erased.”
A progress bar appeared on the screen, a thin red line that began to slowly crawl from left to right. “Purging encrypted data caches… Wiping primary memory banks… Erasing all traces of Finch Nova.”
I let my head fall back against the cold concrete wall, a long, slow breath shuddering out of me. It was done. I was letting Pandora win. I was erasing my uncle’s entire reason for dying. But it was the only way. The only way to stop the chain reaction of pain I had started. Soon, the data would be gone. Then Handy would be gone. And then, I would let the beast out one last time, and I wouldn’t fight it. I would allow it to consume me, freeing it to roam the city until, hopefully, another person puts an end to it. It was the only merciful thing left to do.
The red light on my wrist pulsed faster, a frantic, dying heartbeat. “Data purge at fifty percent. Self-destruct sequence will initiate in sixty seconds.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
A single, hot tear escaped and traced a clean path through the grime on my cheek. It wasn't a tear of sadness. It was a tear of resignation. I’m sorry, Jackie. Sorry mom, dad, Cody, and Tessa. Uncle…
“Data purge at seventy percent,” the monotone voice continued. “WARNING: A tertiary, deep-storage file has been detected. It is protected by a fail-safe encryption that predates Protocol Zero. Abort purge to access?”
My eyes, which had been closed, snapped open. I stared at the wristband. A fail-safe. My uncle, the paranoid, brilliant, sad man. He had built a secret room inside his own panic room.
“What is it?” I rasped.
“Unknown. The file is labeled only with a single alphanumeric character: ‘N’.”
-
For Nikki.
It was a hook. A single, tiny hook, catching on the edge of the vast, smooth, empty cliff of my despair. A flicker of something that wasn’t numbness. Curiosity.
“Abort the purge,” I croaked, the words tasting like a betrayal of my own surrender.
“Open the file.”
“Protocol Zero aborted,” Handy’s voice confirmed. The angry red dot vanished, replaced by the steady, comforting blue glow. His personality subroutines seemed to reboot, the snark flooding back in like a tide. “Phew! That was a close one. For a second there, I thought you were actually going to turn me into a very expensive, very short-lived firecracker. Did you reconsider your sudden and dramatic embrace of nihilism?”
“Just open the file, Handy,” I whispered, my voice trembling.
A hologram flickered to life in the dusty air. It wasn’t data. It wasn't a schematic. It was my uncle.
He looked older than I remembered, his kind eyes shadowed with a weariness that seemed to seep into the very air of the lab. But behind the exhaustion, there was a familiar, stubborn spark. He was looking right at me. Not at a camera. At me.
“Nikki,” he began, his voice rough with an emotion I couldn't name. “If you’re seeing this, it means two things. One, the worst has happened. I’m gone. And two, my little fail-safe actually worked. Handy found you.”
He managed a small, sad smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry for the world I’ve left you and our family. For the monsters I helped create. I know, better than anyone, the darkness that Pandora has unleashed on this city. I tried to stop it. I failed.”
He leaned closer, his image wavering slightly, his eyes boring into mine. “I created Handy to fight back. To be the weapon I never could be. But a weapon is useless without someone to wield it. Someone with the strength, the courage, the stubborn, pig-headed resilience to see it through.”
His expression softened, his weary eyes filling with a fierce, unwavering belief that I had done nothing to earn.
“I chosen you because you are stronger than your mother and father. And I know you’re scared. You have every right to be. But I also know you. You’re a Nova. We don’t break. We don’t quit.”
His voice dropped to a whisper, a single truth that shattered the cold, hard rock at the bottom of my soul.
“It’s not the power that makes you a monster, Nikki. It’s what you choose to do with it. Remember that.”
The video ended. His face, full of a faith I couldn’t comprehend, faded into the dust motes dancing in the faint light. The silence returned, but it was different now. It wasn’t empty. It was full of his words. Full of his choice. He had chosen me.
I looked at my reflection in the dark shard of glass. The same hollow-eyed, feral stranger was staring back. But this time, I saw something else. A flicker of a spark in the back of her eyes. A spark my uncle had just flown across two years of death to reignite.
He was right. I was a monster. I had this power, this curse, this rage boiling in my blood. That was a fact. It wasn't a choice. But what I did next… that was. I could lie down and die in the dust. I could let the beast win. Or I could stand up and fight. I could choose.
A single, shuddering breath rattled in my chest. Then another. The ice in my gut, the cold certainty of my own damnation, began to crack.
“Handy,” I said, my voice still shaky, but no longer dead. “Cancel the self-destruct sequence.”
“Consider it canceled,” Handy replied, his voice back to its usual chipper self. “Welcome back from the abyss. Did you bring any souvenirs?”
I pushed myself up, my mangled leg screaming in protest. I ignored it. I limped over to the whiteboard, the one where I had planned my catastrophic failure.
I picked up the eraser and, with a single, deliberate motion, wiped it clean.
The fight wasn't over. I had lost a battle, yes. I had failed, spectacularly. But it wasn’t the end. It was just the beginning. I wasn't fighting for revenge anymore. I wasn't even fighting to save myself.
I was fighting to honor my uncle’s legacy. To prove that his last, desperate act of faith was not in vain.
I picked up a marker, my hand steady now. A new plan began to form in my mind. Not a trap. Not a trick. A confrontation.
I looked at my monstrous reflection one last time. The girl in the glass was still broken.
Still scarred. Still a monster.
But now, she was a monster with a choice. And she was choosing to fight.