“I’ll raise you,” she says to her twin.
“I won’t remember you,” Ruby said. “All of this will be erased from consciousness.”
Rae swallows. “You’ll get a second shot. Like you wanted. You’ll be raised with love and care. You won’t go through the torment ever again.”
Ruby grips the edge of the open tank in front of her. The liquid’s inner glow shines across her face. She curls her palm around the valve. “That sounds nice,” she says.
Rae takes shallow breaths.
Ruby closes her eyes. “I want to be hooked up now,” Ruby says. “I’m ready.”
Rae nods, opening the tank. She helps her sister inside.
“I’ll tell you about her,” Rae says, in an attempt to gain more time with her sister.
“We were born in tragedy,” Ruby says, shaking but strong.
“As we are born, so we die,” Rae says, stepping back.
“Tell her the good parts.” Ruby sinks into the tank. “Teach her to love.”
Her head submerges, and the tank closes. Bio-mechanical tubes coil around her body, sliding into her throat. Panic fills her eyes.
“No!” Rae screams and latches onto the glass.
It ends.
A look of calm falls on Ruby’s face. Her red hair waves in the golden water, peaceful. She stops fighting.
It’s over. She has fallen into stasis. In a moment, she will die.
Rae cries. She drops to the floor and holds onto the bottom edge of the tank, too weak to do anything except weep with sorrow.
When the stasis is complete, she drains the tank and opens it up. Rae’s chest pounds and swells with a deep pain. A pain that won’t go away. Her throat is tight. She can’t bear to speak to the alphas, not like this.
She stares at the synthesis tank. At her sister, dead. Floating like a lost soul. This feeling won’t go away. This will linger and eat at her every single day.
She holds her dead sister in her arms and makes the march back to the tank baby.
This life has been a pilgrimage. This is the last ascent.
Almost there...
The tank’s glow is so bright it hurts. Rae unlatches the valve and takes the tank in her free hand. She squints her eyes, eventually forced to look away.
The network of caverns is brightly illuminated. All paths can now be seen.
A loud hum vibrates the caves.
And then it stops. The glow from the tank subsides.
Rae’s first instinct is to panic, but when stops and actually looks at the baby, she knows it’s her. And she’s ready to come out.
She unlatches the side valve and carefully opens it up. The water spills out, and the baby coughs before a shrill cry rips out of her.
She holds the small baby close to her breast. “There, there. It’s hard being reborn, isn’t it?” she asks.
Her sister stops crying.