Chapter 169 --169
The transition wasn’t gradual. One moment Elara stood in empty white space. The next, she was somewhere else entirely.
A room. Stone walls. Dim light from a single barred window set too high to reach. The smell hit her first—copper and rot and human waste, thick enough to taste.
She looked down.
A man knelt on the floor, hands bound behind his back, face bruised and swollen. Mid-forties, graying hair, expensive suit torn and stained with blood. His eyes were vacant, shock-glazed, like he’d stopped processing reality hours ago.
Behind him stood another man. Younger. Holding a knife.
Elara recognized the scene type immediately. Execution. Gang violence maybe, or political assassination. She’d seen crime scene photos in her first life, reviewed security footage of corporate espionage gone violent. This wasn’t new information.
She waited for the point of this exercise.
The younger man raised the knife.
The kneeling man didn’t even flinch—too far gone for fear. The blade came down, sinking into the base of his skull with a sound like meat tearing. His body jerked once, twice, then collapsed forward. Blood pooled on the stone floor, spreading in dark fingers toward Elara’s feet.
She stepped back automatically, maintaining clean distance from biohazard contamination.
"Efficient kill," she observed aloud. "Severed the spinal cord. Death would be nearly instantaneous. Minimal suffering for the victim."
"*Is that what you think?*" the voice asked softly.