"Ingrid?" I was lost in a blurry haze, but this sweet voice called me home. "Can you hear me?" The air felt heavy in my lungs. "Useless." The voice grew jagged edges that cut my heart though I didn't know why. "She's lost, we're not getting her back. Start the incinerator."
A new voice, low and warm. "But in Health 1."
"She held the lowest scores before then, and now they're rapidly declining. She's a liability."
I didn't understand most of the words, but "incinerator" and "liability" tore open my heart.
"Wait." An alarm began pounding in my head. "She's awake."
"What?" A prick in my neck and the soft blue focused into sharp images that burned my eyes. I tried to close them, but they were being stretched wide an peered into.
"It's gone."
"The treatment worked."
"It worked."
"Ingrid?"
"Yes?" Another pain in my neck and the world I'd only just been born to vanished.
