Nevermore was quiet that morning, the kind of quiet that felt heavy. In Chemistry, Professor Thornwell wrote an equation on the board—something that looked impossible. He called on her first. She solved it like it was nothing. Then he called on me. I finished too, just slower. When she looked at me, I saw it in her eyes: she thought she’d already won.

From then on, we competed at everything. She was sharp, confident, impossible to ignore. I didn’t tell her about my heart. Most people already knew—too weak, too unreliable. When Thornwell assigned us to design a machine to replace a human body part, we got paired up. She asked what we should make. I said, “A heart.”

She didn’t flinch. For weeks we worked—metal, wires, late nights, the hum of machines. She was focused, precise. When we finished, the thing actually worked. A mechanical heart that beat steady and strong, everything mine wasn’t.

A few days later, I felt it—something wrong, deep inside my chest. I tried to ignore it. Then, in the lab, everything went cold. She said my name, but it was fading fast. My heart stopped beating...