As two uniformed police officers stepped into the room from the shadows of the hallway, Lilith finally broke. She collapsed onto the floor, a screaming, sobbing mess of greed and thwarted ambition.
Mrs. Fairchild looked down at the girl she had raised, her eyes filled not with pity, but with a heartbreaking, final clarity. “I loved you,” she whispered, the words like shards of glass. “I loved you as my own. And I never knew you at all.”
Lilith was arrested. Her accomplice, Julian, was taken into custody at the same time. Their perfect, venomous world had crumbled to dust.”
- 12
A week later, the Fairchilds hosted a lavish gala, not to welcome a lost daughter, but duce a victorious one. My
real parents stood beside me, their eyes full of remorse and a dawning, fragile love that felt both foreign and deeply welcome.
“We’re so proud of you, Rowan,” my mother whispered, squeezing my hand.
The moment she said my
from this hard–won victory.
name, a familiar, dizzying sensation washed over us, a powerful current pulling thirty souls away
11:49 PM P P.
572
A week later, the Fairchilds hosted a lavish gala, not to welcome a lost daughter, but to reintroduce a victorious one. My real parents stood beside me, their eyes full of remorse and a dawning, fragile love that felt both foreign and deeply
welcome.
“We’re so proud of you, Rowan, my mother whispered, squeezing my hand..
The moment she said my name, a familiar, dizzying sensation washed over us, a powerful current pulling thirty souls away from this hard–won victory.
We came to, blinking in the harsh fluorescent light of our school’s library. The Genesis Grant National Finals were scheduled to begin in one hour.
In our world, only a week had passed. But in that other, gilded world, we had lived and fought for nearly four months.
We walked into the vast examination hall not as thirty individuals, but as one perfectly coordinated unit. We were a legion.
The questions that would have once stumped us now seemed elementary. A complex physics problem was dissected by five minds at once; a historical essay was constructed with the eloquence of our best writers; a logic puzzle was solved before the proctor had even finished reading the instructions.
We moved through the exam with a calm, surgical precision, the collective knowledge and sharpened intellect of thirty minds working in perfect, silent harmony.
We didn’t just pass. We dominated.
- 13
On the day the Genesis Grant results were announced, our class had made history. We secured a group victory, a feat so unprecedented that Veridian Preparatory Academy would talk about it for decades. We were legends.
