Fading Umbilicus

The air tasted of burnt placenta. Ayla clawed through the nursery's collapsing ventilation shaft, the severed writhing in her fist like a live wire. Six feet below, Lucas' wolf form tore through Selena's remaining guards, his golden eyes flickering human whenever debris crushed bone.

"Get clear!" he roared as the ceiling rained asbestos and calcified breastmilk.

She spat blood onto the sparking. "Fuck your martyr complex!"

The line snapped with the sound of a newborn's first cry.

(In the drowning laboratory, Lila pressed the swaddling blanket against a steam valve. The embroidered ducts pulsed as they drank her blood, revealing a hidden hatch stamped TWIN MODIFICATION CHAMBER.)

Ayla's boots skidded on liquefying floor tiles. Lucas shoved her toward an air duct, taking a falling beam through his shoulder.

"Go!" His human voice surfaced through the growl. "She rigged the core to—"

The explosion cut him off. Fire rolled through the nursery in Technicolor waves—Selena's childhood chemical stockpile igniting. Pink phosphorus. Cobalt napalm. Ayla's retinas burned with the afterimage of Lucas' silhouette against the blast.

"Not... today..." She crawled toward where he'd stood, fingers closing around a molten dog tag: Subject 7A - Disposal Approved

Lila's scream echoed through the vents above.

The modification chamber reeked of failure. Lila's flashlight trembled over:

Glass cribs with tandem IV portsWall carvings of conjoined fetusesA ledger titled "Twin Resonance Dampening Trials"

Page 23: Subject 7B (Lila) demonstrates 89% neural receptivity. Recommend emotional transference via—

The entry dissolved into bloodstains. Lila's own scar pulsed where Selena had carved 7B into her hip at age six.

"Lies," she whispered, tearing the page. The chamber lights flared crimson.

A child's voice piped through corroded speakers: "Wrong sister broke first."

Ayla found Lucas in the reactor core, his human half wrestling control from the wolf. Molten alloy dripped around them like hellish lactation.

"Contract's gone," she shouted over the roar. "You're free!"

He laughed, blood foaming at his lips. "Freedom's the cage you carry." His claws gripped her arms, pinioning her between salvation and the magma river below. "She designed you to love broken things."

The choice crystallized:

His claws retractingHis eyes clearingHis final shove sending her flying backward

She caught a steam pipe, dangling over the abyss. Lucas' silhouette dissolved into the glow, his choked laugh echoing:

"Tell Selena... her lullabies still suck."

The laboratory's death throes birthed macabre miracles:

Emergency lights flickered in nursery rhyme cadenceBreastmilk storage tanks hemorrhaged acidic curdsLila's stolen ledger pages rearranged into a confession:

I made her weaker so she'd need me I made me stronger so she'd hate me Now we rot together

Ayla hauled Lila from the corpse of Selena's cradle. The disintegrated, its threads forming a final map in midair—two pulsing dots converging on the mansion's panic room.

Somewhere, a wolf's howl dissolved into static. Somewhere, a crib mobile spun with dog tags instead of stars.

Postscript: First Feeding

That night, Ayla dreamt of the modification chamber.

Two infants under glass.

Selena reaching through the partition to grasp Lila's hand.

A scalpel severing the connection.

She woke with reactor coolant burning her sinuses and Lucas' dog tag welded to her palm.

Always welded.