The bus rattled along the narrow country road, its tires humming against damp asphalt as fields rolled past the windows in slow, sleepy waves. Flat land. Low fences. Bare trees reaching upward like thin, crooked fingers against a pale sky.

  Natalie sat by the window, a folded paper map spread across her lap. The edges were worn, soft, creased, and re-creased until the lines almost bled together. Her finger traced the route without thinking.

  “…Here,” she murmured. “We’re close. Near Amsterdam.”

  Her voice was steady, but her eyes weren’t.

  They looked tired in a way sleep didn’t fix. Shadowed. As if she had seen far too much.

  Beside her, Hannah shifted in her seat, her yellow rain boots dangling just above the floor. She leaned closer, peering at the map upside down.

  “Are you okay?” Hannah asked softly.

  Natalie blinked, startled by the question, as if she’d been caught somewhere else.

  “Yes,” she said quickly. Too quickly. “I’m fine.”

  The bus lurched slightly as it took a bend. Natalie’s finger slipped off the page.

  She frowned.

  Something about the map bothered her. A name. A line. A memory she couldn’t quite place.

  Her eyes narrowed.

  And the world tore open.

  Cold.

  So much cold.

  White is swallowing everything.

  Snow packed hard beneath her worn-out boots, biting through fabric, through skin. Her arms burned. Her shoulders screamed. She tried to breathe, but the air came in sharp, useless gasps that tore her throat apart.

  She was hanging.

  A rope cut into her neck, rough and unforgiving, fibers digging into flesh already numb. Each breath came out as a thin white cloud, trembling, fading too fast.

  Her fingers twitched uselessly. They were blue. Stiff. She couldn’t feel them anymore.

  Her vision blurred, edges darkening, the white sky above her spinning slowly, indifferently.

  Footsteps crunched through the snow.

  Someone was coming.

  She tried to lift her head.

  Too heavy.

  A man stepped into view—tall, indistinct, his face obscured by the haze in her eyes. Calm. Unhurried. As if this were routine.

  As if she were already dead.

  She wanted to scream.

  Nothing came out.

  The man knelt in front of her, his shadow stretching long and thin across the snow. She saw the glint of metal in his hand. A syringe.

  “No,” she tried to say. "M-my son?"

  Her lips barely moved.

  The needle slid into her neck.

  Sharp. Cold. Precise.

  She felt something being taken from her, drawn out slowly, carefully. Not blood. Something deeper. Something vital. Something like memories...

  Her vision pulsed.

  The man watched her like a specimen.

  Then—

  —

  Natalie jerked upright with a sharp, broken cry.

  The map fluttered from her hands to the floor of the bus.

  “GAH—!” She yelped, breath hitching violently.

  Heads turned.

  A few passengers glanced back, startled, irritated, confused. The bus driver checked the mirror in confusion.

  Natalie’s hands flew to her arms, her throat. She was shaking. Her heart hammered so hard it hurt.

  “Natalie!” Hannah said, panicked.

  She grabbed Natalie’s sleeve with both hands, small fingers tight, grounding.

  “It’s okay,” Hannah whispered urgently. “It’s okay, you’re here. You’re on the bus. You’re not, you’re not there.”

  Natalie sucked in a breath. Then another. Her vision swam, but the bus slowly came back into focus, the cracked vinyl seats, the fogged windows, the dull gray countryside sliding by.

  She pressed her forehead against Hannah’s hair, trembling.

  “I’m sorry,” Natalie whispered hoarsely. “I’m sorry.”

  "No!" Hannah shook her head hard. “You didn’t do anything.”

  Natalie pulled back just enough to look at her.

  Hannah’s eyes were wide, worried, but still gentle. Still trusting.

  Guilt hit Natalie like a second blow.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “I shouldn’t have scared you,” Natalie said quietly. “You’re just a kid. You shouldn’t have to see that.”

  Hannah frowned, stubborn.

  “But you looked like you were hurting. It's not your fault! Really!”

  Natalie swallowed.

  “I was,” she admitted.

  She forced her breathing to slow, counting silently, anchoring herself to the weight of Hannah’s hand still gripping her sleeve.

  “I’m okay now,” she said, more to herself than anyone else.

  A few passengers turned back to face forward again. The bus continued on, oblivious, steady.

  Natalie leaned back in her seat, eyes fixed on the window this time, not the map.

  The countryside blurred together.

  But the cold lingered.

  And somewhere deep inside her, the name Sasha Bielska echoed like a bruise being pressed.

  Not gone,

  not healed,

  only buried, waiting for the wrong moment to surface again.

  The bus rocked gently as it moved on, the countryside stretching out in long, quiet breaths. Natalie kept her eyes on the window, watching fence posts blur into lines, afraid that if she looked down again, the map would turn into snow.

  Hannah shifted closer.

  After a while, very softly, she asked,

  “Natalie? What did you see?”

  Natalie didn’t answer right away.

  Her jaw tightened. She pressed her thumb into the seam of her coat, grounding herself in the texture, the present. When she finally spoke, her voice was thin, carefully held together.

  “I was thinking about… before,” she said. “Before this life.”

  Hannah frowned slightly.

  “Before you were… you?”

  Natalie let out a shaky breath, almost a laugh, but there was no humor in it.

  “Before I was cloned,” she said.

  Hannah’s eyes widened, but she didn’t interrupt.

  “In my past life,” Natalie continued, words slow, deliberate, as if each one had weight, “I wasn’t Natalie. I was a woman with a different name. A different face. I was older. Tired. And I was a mother.”

  Her voice cracked.

  Hannah’s fingers tightened around the hem of Natalie’s sleeve.

  “I had a son,” Natalie said. “His name was Casimir. Before he was… everything he became. Before he was cloned to be my brother in the lab that Kuroda raised us in.”

  The bus engine hummed, steady and indifferent.

  “He was sent to war,” Natalie whispered. “And he never came back.”

  She swallowed hard, her eyes stinging.

  “I waited,” she said. “Weeks. Months. Years. Every knock at the door felt like a promise or a threat. Every letter… I thought maybe this one would say he was alive.”

  Her breathing faltered.

  “But nothing came.”

  Hannah leaned her head gently against Natalie’s arm.

  “I didn’t know how to live without him,” Natalie said, tears finally spilling over, sliding quietly down her cheeks. “I thought… if I followed him, if I went where he went… maybe I’d see him again.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “So I did the unthinkable.”

  ***

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, my son.” She whispered the words into the snow, “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep your promise. I’m sorry I forgot your name. If I can’t remember you...” She took the birth certificate and set it ablaze, the flames licking the edges of the paper as her name faded into ash. The smoke curled into the winter air. “I won’t be remembered either.”

  Her hands were shaking, her entire body trembling under the weight of her own grief, but still, she held the rope. She glanced at it one more time. Alone in this cold, unforgiving world.

  ***

  Hannah didn’t speak. She just listened.

  “In my final moments,” Natalie went on, eyes unfocused now, staring through the glass, “when everything was cold and quiet… someone came to me. A man. I couldn’t see his face clearly. He didn’t look cruel. He didn’t look kind either.”

  She shuddered.

  “He used a needle,” she said. “And he took something out of me. Not blood. Something… deeper. Like a part of myself. My memory. My grief. My ability to end.”

  Her hand curled into a fist over her chest.

  “And then,” Natalie whispered, “everything stopped.”

  She wiped at her face quickly, ashamed, though she didn’t know why.

  “That’s all I remember,” she said. “After that, there’s nothing. And then… I wake up as someone else. As a little girl named Experiment 0.0.9. With pieces missing. With pieces that hurt... Ten... he was my sibling, there were a few of us, then I ran away after Ten, Casimir killed a man... Then, I became Natalie Chmiel."

  Hannah was quiet for a long time.

  Finally, in a small, careful voice, she asked,

  “Do you still love him? Casimir, I mean?”

  Natalie closed her eyes.

  “Yes,” she said immediately. “I don’t think that ever went away.”

  Hannah nodded, as if that answer made perfect sense.

  “I think,” she said, after a moment, “that means you’re a good person. Even now.”

  Natalie opened her eyes and looked at her.

  Hannah smiled, a little sad but sincere.

  “Even if the world messed everything up.”

  Natalie let out a trembling breath—and for the first time since the flashback, her chest loosened just a little.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  The bus rolled on toward Amsterdam, carrying them forward—two lives stitched together by fear, memory, and a truth too heavy for either of them to carry alone, yet somehow lighter now that it had been spoken aloud.

  Natalie stared ahead as the fields gave way to distant buildings, her reflection faintly visible in the bus window, older than Hannah, younger than the woman she remembered being, fractured between lives.

  “I can’t keep running from it,” she said quietly. "I need to stop trying forget it. Because it happened. And memories stay for a reason."

  Hannah looked up at her.

  “Oh? Yeah! I think if we remember something, even if it's negative, it's there to help us grow!”

  “I agree,” Natalie replied. “I need to stop trying to forget who Casimir was to me."

  The name sat heavily between them.

  “I don’t think he’s killing people just to kill them,” Natalie went on, voice steady now, sharpened by resolve. “There’s a reason. A goal. And whatever it is… it started with me. With what was taken from me.”

  She clenched her hands in her lap.

  “If I can understand why he’s doing this, what he’s trying to finish, maybe I can stop it. Or at least stop more people from dying.”

  Hannah hesitated.

  “What if you don’t like the answer?”

  Natalie’s lips curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile.

  “I don’t think I’m allowed to turn away anymore,” she said. “Not after everything.”

  Outside, the countryside thinned into roads and signs, names growing more frequent, more familiar. The bus slowed slightly, traffic thickening as the city drew closer.

  Hannah shifted uncomfortably.

  “Are you… Scared of him?”

  Natalie considered that.

  “Yes,” she said honestly. “But not in the way you think. I’m scared that I’ll understand him. That his reasons will make sense.”

  Hannah frowned.

  “Is that bad?”

  “It is when the world decides someone is a demon,” Natalie said, eyes darkening, “and you realize you helped make them one. I gave birth to him after all… It’s my fault he existed in the first place. I can’t let Kuroda beat himself up over what I made.”

  The bus jolted as it hit a bump, pulling them forward. Natalie steadied Hannah instinctively, her hand warm and protective on the girl’s shoulder.

  “I need to find the truth,” Natalie said. “Not what the police think. Not what the reports say. I need his truth.”

  “And then what?” Hannah asked.

  Natalie looked down at her, expression fierce and tired and unmistakably maternal.

  “Then I decide whether he can be saved,” she said softly.

  “…or whether I’m the only one who can stop him.”

  Natalie folded the map and held it close, as if it were a promise she intended to keep, no matter the cost.