The question caught him off guard.

Not because of what it meant—he understood that well enough—but because of how simply it had been asked. No build-up. No warning. Just placed in front of him like it belonged there, like it was something he should already have an answer for.

“I dunno,” he said, the words coming out quieter than he intended, more reflex than thought.

“Yes, you do.”

Her voice didn’t rise. Didn’t press.

It didn’t need to.

“Most accept lethal injection,” she told him, her fingers pressing into his arm to mimic the brief sting of a needle. “It is peaceful. Painless.”

A pause.

“Boring.”

The word lingered.

Ethan frowned slightly, his mind catching on it in a way the others hadn’t.

“Isn’t boring good?” he asked.

“It depends on the Animal,” she replied. “Some chase something else at the end. Intensity. Sensation. A final moment that feels… complete.”

Her fingers lightly traced down his chest past his navel before settling on the tip of his penis. He hadn’t noticed his erection, the intensity of the moment completely stealing his focus. He whimpered at her touch, the way she teased his tip with a light press.

Her voice remained level, detached from the implication of what she was asking.

“Tell me, Meatboy,” she said, her attention fixed fully on him now, “what pulls at you when you think about conversion?”

He shivered, the feeling running through him before he could stop it. It wasn’t just what she was saying, but the way she said it—flat, certain, like none of it was hypothetical. Like it was something real enough to prepare for.

And the name.

Meatboy.

It settled differently now. He’d brushed it off before, treated it like something she said because of where they were, but lying there, with her watching him like that, it felt heavier. Closer to something he wasn’t sure he wanted to understand.

“I really haven’t thought about it,” he admitted, the words quieter now, stripped of the reflex from before. This time it wasn’t dismissal. It was honest.

Her fingers found his chin, guiding his head without force, but with enough certainty that resistance didn’t feel like an option. He let it happen, his gaze pulled back to hers before he could look away.

She leaned in.

Too close.

Close enough that he could feel her breath, steady and measured, as if even that was controlled.

“Either you don’t fear death,” she said softly, her voice low enough to feel more than hear, “or you’re naive enough to believe you’ll survive the Lottery.”

The words settled between them, deliberate, leaving no space to misinterpret them.

“One is useful,” she continued, her eyes holding his without wavering, “the other is pointless.”

“My best friend is a Blue Orphan,” he said, the words coming a little easier now that he’d started. “She’s kind of… numbed me to it, I guess.”

He hesitated, just for a moment.

“She told me she’d be here with me, no matter how I end up.”

Elira held his gaze, studying him in silence for a beat longer than was comfortable.

“Adorable,” she said at last, the word edged with something faintly mocking, as if she were acknowledging it while dismissing it at the same time.

“But this is good.”

Her tone shifted back to that same flat certainty.

“She has made you useful.”

The door opened.

A staff member stepped inside, guiding a young woman in beside him. The red glow of her watch said everything before anything else needed to. It was unmistakable.

This was the Animal.

Ethan felt it settle in him, heavier than anything Elira had said, because now it wasn’t abstract, wasn’t a question or a choice laid out in words. It was standing there, breathing, real.

This was who he was going to watch die.

“Off the table,” Elira said.

He moved immediately, sliding down from the cold metal without hesitation, his feet hitting the floor a little harder than he intended.

“Stand by the sink,” she continued, already turning her attention away from him. “Do not move. Do not speak.”

Ethan did as he was told, crossing the room quickly, taking his place where she had indicated. He didn’t question it, didn’t look back to see if she was watching him.

He didn’t need to.

Elira turned to the Meatgirl, and something in her shifted.

Her voice softened, warmth slipping into it so naturally it was almost jarring after the way she had spoken to Ethan.

“I’m Elira,” she said, measured and calm. “I understand you might be nervous, but I promise your requests will be heard, and your comfort assured.”

She gestured toward the table.

“Come. Sit.”

The invitation was gentle, patient in a way that made it feel like a choice, even when it wasn’t.

As the girl moved, Elira’s eyes flicked briefly toward Ethan, just enough to acknowledge him without breaking the moment.

“Do not mind the rabbit in the corner,” she added, her tone still warm, as if explaining something small and unimportant. “He is here to witness.”

The woman sat, but not easily.

Ethan saw it immediately—the tension held tight across her shoulders, the way her body didn’t quite settle, like it was waiting for something, braced for it before it had even happened. There was a stiffness to her, a readiness that didn’t belong to someone who had accepted anything.

Ready to bolt.

He recognised it.

Alice did that sometimes, when the hands at school lingered too long, when something crossed from allowed into something else. He had learned to see it early, to notice the way her body locked up before anything else gave it away.

This was the same.

“It’s okay,” he said, the words slipping out before he could stop them. “Miss Elira is really nice.”

The moment the sentence left him, he felt it.

Wrong.

Elira’s gaze shifted, cutting toward him from the side, sharp and immediate. Not loud, not explosive—just enough to make it clear he had stepped outside the line he’d been given.

He went still.

But the woman—

She loosened, just slightly.

Not much. Not enough to erase the tension completely, but enough that it changed something. Her shoulders dropped a fraction, the rigid edge of her posture easing just enough to breathe.

Elira moved to him, closing the distance without hurry, her presence enough to still him before she even spoke. She looked down at him, that same steady, assessing gaze, giving him no space to explain himself, no opening to defend what he’d done.

Her hand settled against his back.

“Sit,” she said. “I need to finish my documentation before we proceed.”

Ethan obeyed, moving quickly to the table and taking his place beside the woman. The contact came naturally now, skin against skin, the warmth of it no longer enough to make him tense. It was just… there. Another part of the space he had already begun to accept.

“You’re a Citizen,” the woman whispered, her voice low, careful, as if even speaking carried risk. “What are you doing in here?”

“I got caught somewhere I shouldn’t be,” he said, a small, nervous laugh slipping through before he could stop it. “Miss Elira found me and said I had to follow her.”

He didn’t say the rest.

Didn’t say why he was really here.

“She could have converted me,” he added instead, glancing ahead rather than at her. “But she didn’t. She’s just… keeping me close.”

A brief pause.

“So yeah,” he finished quietly, “she’s nice.”

There was a pause.

Not sharp, not heavy enough to stop the room entirely, but long enough that it settled into something neither of them could ignore. The kind of silence that sat between people when there was nothing comfortable left to say.

“I’m scared,” the woman admitted suddenly.

The words came out plainly, without decoration, like she’d decided not to hide it.

“I chose sticking.”

Ethan frowned slightly, the word unfamiliar.

“What’s that?”

Elira answered without hesitation.

“I will cut her open,” she said. “She refused sedatives.”

Ethan’s eyes widened despite himself, the image forming too quickly in his mind.

“You chose that?”

“I know,” the woman said, a faint, uneven breath slipping out of her. “I know.”

He couldn’t let it go.

“Then why?”

She didn’t answer immediately. Her gaze drifted for a moment, not unfocused, just… somewhere else, like she was measuring something she couldn’t quite put into words.

“Because I want to feel something before the end,” she said at last, pressing her thighs together and Ethan suddenly understood.

She was chasing that last rush.

Ethan swallowed, the thought sitting uncomfortably in his mind as he looked at her, trying to reconcile it with the tension still held in her body.

“Can’t you change your mind?” he asked, the offer coming out softer than he intended, like he already knew the answer.

Elira responded before the woman could.

“Decisions made during Intake are final,” she said, her voice returning to that same measured certainty. “Preparations have been made.”

She gestured toward the counter without looking.

“Alice has already provided the tools.”

Ethan followed the motion of her hand.

Rope.

A knife.

Set out neatly, deliberately, as if they had always belonged there.

Ethan wasn’t sure why he spoke.

There was nothing he could change, nothing he could undo, and he knew that now. The rules here didn’t bend, and neither did the outcomes. But standing there, watching her sit with it, he felt the need to fill the space with something—anything—that wasn’t just silence and waiting.

“I couldn’t die like that,” he said, the honesty of it slipping out before he could dress it up into something better. “You must be braver than you think you are.”

She looked at him, really looked this time, and something in her expression shifted.

A small smile broke through.

“Thanks,” she said, the word carrying more weight than it should have in a place like this. “Too late for regrets though, right?”

For a second, neither of them said anything.

Then Ethan let out a quiet breath that turned into a laugh, and she followed it a moment later. It wasn’t natural, not really, too uneven, too aware of everything surrounding it—but it was shared.

And that made it real.

“How would you like to go?”

The question hit him the same way Elira’s had, sudden and disarming, pulling him out of the moment he’d just managed to settle into. For a second, he didn’t answer. He just looked at her, then past her, catching sight of Elira in his periphery.

The Butcher had turned slightly toward them, her attention only half on her tablet now. One finger tapped idly against its surface, slow and deliberate, as if she were listening without needing to look.

He wanted to say he didn’t know.

It would have been easier. Safer. True, even.

But not entirely.

So he thought.

Really thought, forcing himself to sit with it the way Elira had made him earlier, turning the question over until it stopped feeling abstract and started feeling like something real.

“I’d take the injection,” he said at last.

He glanced toward Elira.

“Nice and boring.”

There was a brief pause.

Then, just barely, Elira smiled.

Faint.

Controlled.

And then it was gone, her attention returning to her tablet as if the moment hadn’t happened at all.

“I think you’d pick something more… fun,” the woman said, watching him with a faint, knowing look.

“I don’t think death is fun,” Ethan replied, the answer coming out more certain than he felt.

“Well, not to a Citizen,” she said, a small shrug following the words. “But when it’s the last thing you’ll ever do… the last thing you’ll ever feel, you kind of have to make the most of it, right?”

He tilted his head slightly, unsure how to answer that, the logic of it sitting strangely in his mind. It wasn’t wrong. That was the problem.

“Sounds like you did just that?” he said instead.

She nodded, the movement slow, almost thoughtful.

“I did, didn’t I?”

It was only then that Ethan really saw it.

The tension was gone.

Her shoulders had dropped, the tightness that had held her together earlier easing out of her frame completely. Her hands rested still now, no longer clenching, no longer bracing for something that hadn’t come yet. Even when her eyes flicked toward Elira, there was no flinch, no instinctive recoil.

Just… acceptance.

Elira noticed the shift immediately.

She didn’t comment on it. Didn’t acknowledge it. Just turned, moving back to the counter with the same measured calm she had held from the beginning. Her hand reached for the rope, lifting it with practiced ease, as if this part mattered no more than any other step that had come before it.

“Move, little rabbit,” she said.

Ethan didn’t hesitate. He stepped back from the table at once, clearing the space without needing to be told twice, his place already reduced to the edge of the room, to watching.

“Lie down, Meatgirl.”

Her tone softened again as she turned back, that same careful warmth returning, steady and controlled.

“Let’s secure your feet,” she continued, as if explaining something routine, something expected. “We’ll have you ready on the hook.”

Ethan watched as Elira worked.

Her movements were precise, economical, every motion practiced to the point of effortlessness. She looped the rope around the woman’s ankles and tied it off with a knot that held firm without digging in, secure without being cruel. There was an intention behind it, a balance between restraint and control that felt deliberate rather than careless.

The woman tested it, flexing her feet, wiggling her toes slightly.

Elira watched.

Then she gave a small nod.

“Good.”

That was all she said, the approval simple, almost quiet.

Then her attention shifted.

“Ethan.”

The use of his name caught him off guard more than anything else had. It landed differently than little rabbit, more direct, more… intentional.

“Lower the hook,” she said. “There’s a pulley by the door.”

Ethan spotted the pulley by the door, the chain wound tight around its mechanism, the hook hanging just out of reach. He moved to it quickly, hands finding the lever without needing to be told how it worked.

He turned it.

The wrong way.

The chain tightened with a metallic clink as the hook rose instead of falling, the movement abrupt enough to make him pause. He frowned, corrected himself, and reversed the motion, the mechanism responding smoothly this time as the hook descended in controlled increments.

He kept going until it was low enough.

Elira stepped in without a word, taking hold of it and fastening it to the rope at the woman’s ankles. Her movements were quick, practiced, leaving no slack, no uncertainty in the connection.

Then she stepped back.

“Raise her slowly,” she said.

Ethan’s hands tightened slightly on the lever.

“Do not damage the Animal.”

The added weight made itself known immediately.

Ethan felt it through the lever, the resistance heavier, more deliberate than before. This wasn’t empty machinery anymore. It was a body. A person. The chain responded slower, each turn demanding more effort as he worked through it, forcing the mechanism to obey.

He didn’t stop.

By the time he reached the height Elira needed, his arms ached and a thin layer of sweat clung to his skin, catching the light of the room. His breathing had deepened without him realising it, the effort pulling him fully into what he was doing.

The woman hung suspended above the drain, her body slack where it could be, her arms hanging loosely, her face flushed from the position. There was a slight sway to her, a slow, pendulum motion that hadn’t quite settled.

Elira stepped in.

She took up the knife from the counter with the same ease she had handled everything else, bringing it close, letting the edge graze lightly along the woman’s thigh—just enough to test, to announce its presence without committing to anything further.

"Would you like you like to feel pleasure before the pain, Meatgirl?"

“Yes,” the woman said, “But I want Ethan to do it, with his mouth.”

The answer came without hesitation, steady in a way that didn’t match how she’d entered the room, like something had settled inside her while she’d been speaking, something final.

Elira didn’t respond immediately.

Instead, she turned her head.

Her gaze found Ethan.

It wasn’t a glance. It lingered, deliberate, measuring, as if this moment mattered just as much as anything that was about to follow. Not checking for permission, not asking—but observing. Noting how he stood, how he held himself, whether anything in him had shifted now that the choice had been made and could no longer be taken back.

The room felt still around it.

Like everything was waiting on what came next.