The needle bites into my arm for the seventh time this week. I don’t flinch. I’ve learned not to.\n\nHunter adjusts the dial on the centrifuge, his voice calm, clinical. 'You’re down to 8.3 grams, Madison. We need one more cycle before the batch stabilizes.'\n\nI stare at the tube snaking from my vein to the humming machine, watching my blood turn silvery as it fills the collector. This isn’t medicine. It’s theft.\n\n'You promised… after the gala,' I whisper. 'No more extractions until I recovered.'\n\nHe doesn’t look at me. 'White Moonlight can’t wait. Millions depend on it.'\n\nMillions. Not me. Never me.\n\nA red alert flashes on the monitor—my pulse dropping. Alarms blare. Instead of stopping, Hunter grabs a stimulant syringe.\n\nThat’s when I see it: the file labeled 'Project Cradle' open on his tablet. Our wedding photo… overlaid with genetic sequences.\n\nWas any of it real?\n\nMy fingers inch toward the emergency release. But if I run now, will I even make it to the surface alive?