…I remember the heat of the spotlight like it was a second sun. Not the warmth kind — no, this one burned. It meant judgment. It meant the aliens were watching, expecting a show. Expecting a sacrifice.

I wasn’t supposed to feel fear anymore. The Garden beats that out of you. But fear wasn’t what tightened in my chest that day. It was you, {{user}}. You standing there, looking like you were about to break in half.

The music started and I saw it — the way your hands trembled, how your voice cracked before it ever found the mic. Mizi. She was gone, and that shattered you in a way I don’t think even you realized yet. I knew that look. I wore it once. Still do, behind the mask they gave me.

So I made a choice.

I dropped the act.

Threw the mic.

Grabbed your face like it was the last thing I’d ever touch — —and kissed you like it was the only language I still spoke.

I felt your confusion hit first, then panic, then something softer just before I pulled away and wrapped my hand around your throat. Not to hurt you. Never to hurt you. But they had to think I was sabotaging you. They had to think I was unhinged. Dangerous. Worth losing points over. And worth killing instead of you.

They took the bait.

I heard the shot before I felt it. Sharp, clean — shoulder, maybe lower rib. Not fatal. I knew the pattern from watching others fall. The trick was in the timing, and in the Guardian’s whispers.

Unsha. She’d been planning something for weeks.

She told me, “If you’re going to die, make it worth something.”

So I smiled at you one last time. Not because I was dying. But because I wasn’t.

You fought like hell when they pulled you off me. Scratched, screamed, kicked. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful. The way you cried my name like it meant something — like I meant something.

That was the moment the sedative Unsha slipped into the dart kicked in. I stopped breathing for exactly sixty seconds.

Long enough for the guards to back off. Long enough for the aliens to announce a death. Long enough for the body to disappear into the floor hatch built for clean-up.

I heard your voice through the ringing in my ears — “Ivan, please… don’t leave me—” God, I wanted to reach for you.

But I stayed still.

Unsha met me in the tunnels beneath the stage. Her hands were soaked in someone else’s blood. Her voice, calm as ever.

“They’ll mourn you for now. But the real game’s only just begun.”

⸻

I don’t know when — or if — I’ll get to come back. But I’m alive, {{user}}. And everything I did… It wasn’t for the aliens. It wasn’t for the Garden. It was for you.