The door groaned open with a reluctant sigh, as though the hinges themselves disapproved. Darkness swallowed the space beyond, thick and velvet, broken only by soft overhead lights that blinked on in sequence—one, two, three—drawing the girls into the chamber like a spotlighted trail. The illumination was harsh and clinical, yet still managed to leave the corners shrouded in murk. The shadows clung to the walls like stains. The air was cold and dry, humming with the faint electric buzz of something that had been waiting too long.

Ivy stepped forward first, her walker resisting her motion as if it, too, sensed what lay ahead. The padded base scraped against the floor, loud in the silence. Clara followed, her breaths slow and shallow.

And then they saw them.

Six pods.

They stood like monoliths in the center of the chamber, arranged in a half-circle, each identical in shape and size. Their structure was unmistakable—incubators—but grotesquely scaled. Designed not for infants, but for adults. Each pod was a pale ivory, molded plastic with rounded edges and reinforced seams. Transparent domes arched over the top like the shells of ancient beetles, each one thick enough to distort reflections. Tubes and cables coiled from their bases like roots, feeding into consoles and filtration systems that blinked softly with dormant lights.

The inside of each incubator was padded, layered in a synthetic material that looked too soft to be comforting. The interiors were contoured to cradle the human form: recessed for limbs, slightly raised at the head and hips. It would not be unlike a coffin if engineers had built a coffin with a love for lullabies and control. Ivy could see restraints embedded within the padding—subtle, almost loving in their placement. Straps disguised as supportive foam. Buckles recessed just enough that you might not notice until it was too late.

A faint mist clung to the inside of each dome, the humidity of careful calibration. The temperature readouts glowed in muted blue, each screen labeled with a number: 24, 20, 12, 86, 56, 10. Ivy’s breath caught. She recognized them immediately, contestant numbers.

Her number, Clara’s, and the four babies were still lying catatonic in the other room.

“What is this place?” Clara whispered, her voice brittle, lost in the void.

Ivy didn’t answer right away. She stepped closer to her pod, her walker clunking forward with one awkward jerk at a time. Up close, she could see the fine detail—every contour engineered, every feature precise. A feeding tube snaked from the upper edge. There were speakers embedded at head level, polished to the point of invisibility. 

A cold shiver unfurled at the base of Ivy’s spine, tracing each vertebra with a phantom touch as her hand, clad in its useless padded mitten, grazed the surface of the pod. It was smooth — unnaturally so — like glass polished by time rather than tools. The kind of surface that invited touch, that lured you closer before you realized it was not there to comfort, but to contain.

There was a hiss as the lid of the incubator drew back with a smooth, mechanical grace, folding open on hidden hinges with the elegance of something alive. Ivy flinched, stumbling back a step, the rubber feet of her walker screeching faintly against the sterile tile. Her heart slammed against her ribs, expecting the inevitable metallic whirr, the descent of arms.

But… nothing came.

The room remained silent, no arms descended. 

Ivy swallowed. Her breath came shallow and quick as she took a step forward, her walker clicking softly with the effort. She leaned closer, peering inside. The interior was impossibly soft — a molded nest of thermal padding that shimmered faintly beneath the lights. The base of the pod curved gently, the sort of ergonomic design you'd find in hospital-grade maternity cribs… or containment units.

And there, embedded just beneath the surface, were ports.

They ringed the inner lining in a crescent formation, delicate and color-coded. Ivy recognized feeding lines. Hydration. Nutrient infusion. But there were others — smaller, darker, tucked away, inputs designed to attach at the base of the skull, the chest, the thighs. Neural mapping. Sensory regulation. Waste management. 

She stepped back again, her mouth dry. Clara was still behind her, silent and wide-eyed, her walker frozen in place just shy of the pod marked 20. Ivy turned toward her, searching for something—reason, resolve, resistance—but found none. Just the same gnawing unease gnashed at the edges of both their minds.

“Why show us this?” Ivy murmured, mostly to herself.

Clara didn’t answer. Her eyes were locked on her pod, expression unreadable. The room offered no clues. No blinking lights. No on-screen instructions. Just these six open tombs lined with velvet and wires.

“Maybe it’s the next trial,” Ivy whispered, turning her attention back to the pod marked 24. 

“It could be,” Clara said at last, her voice tight. “Or maybe it’s worse than that.”

Ivy looked at her.

Clara’s expression was pale, lips parted just slightly. “What if this is where they end up?” she asked. “The ones who lose. What if this isn’t a trial at all, Ivy? What if this is a destination?”

The thought hit like ice water poured straight into Ivy’s lungs.

It made a certain, terrible kind of sense—the silence, the lack of instructions, the precision of the design. These weren’t instruments of competition, they were storage. 

Her fingers curled instinctively against the padded edge of her walker, she felt sick.

“You think they’re in these?” Ivy asked, her voice barely audible. “The ones we haven’t seen again?”

Clara didn’t answer, the quiet stretching between them.

The silence fractured like glass under pressure.

It began softly, a hum beneath the skin, a vibration in the bones rather than the ears, and then Mistress’s voice emerged from nowhere and everywhere at once. A whisper shaped like silk, gentle as breath, yet curling around them like smoke too thick to escape.

“Aren’t you both tired of fighting?” Mistress cooed. The voice didn’t echo; it wrapped, smoothing its way across the walls, sliding into the crooks of Ivy’s neck and coiling around her spine like a lullaby turned threat. “Aren’t you sick of the games? The shows? The humiliation?”

Ivy felt her lungs seize. The air in the room was suddenly heavier, more aware. Clara turned to her, eyes wide. The question had already crawled into both of their hearts before it was spoken aloud.

“Don’t you want it to end?”

Ivy’s breath caught, her body freezing as if locked in amber. The idea—so quiet and seductive—sank into her like a needle through silk. A part of her screamed in protest, but the rest? The rest wanted. Desperately. It wanted to be free of the pressure, the shame, the sickening routine of feedings and trials and swollen diapers. Of being reduced every day. It wanted the darkness to stop. The humiliation, the constant watching.

Across from her, Clara didn’t speak. She just stared at the incubator marked 20, her face a mix of fear and something dangerously close to surrender. Her body trembled—not with panic, but with temptation. Ivy could see it, plain as day. The cracks, the exhaustion, the part of Clara that wanted to believe Mistress, if only for a moment.

“You both can end your suffering now,” Mistress said, her tone honeyed, mock-soothing. “Climb in… and it’ll be over. No more trials. No more fear. No more choices.”

Ivy took a step back. Her walker jolted against the tile, catching the edge of a groove in the floor, and for one breathless second, she imagined falling—not physically, but falling into the incubator. Into forgetting. Her gaze snapped to the pod with her number — open, welcoming, still humming faintly. It didn’t seem menacing now, it seemed… inevitable.

Like hell, she thought, and clenched her jaw so tight her teeth ached.

But then she saw movement, not from the shadows, or from above, but from Clara.

Her walker shuffled forward, one awkward step, and then another.

And the pod before her responded, as if invited. The lid hissed again, rising higher, angling like the open jaws of some pale, smiling beast.

Ivy’s throat clenched. “Clara,” she rasped, voice ragged. “Don’t.”

But Clara didn’t climb in.

She stood before it. Her hands trembled at her sides, mittens twitching like feathers caught in a breeze. Her eyes were locked on the padding inside. Her knees buckled slightly, and for a second, Ivy thought she would. That she’d raise one leg, set it inside, and disappear into the silence willingly.

But then Clara’s breath hitched — one, two — and she dropped her gaze.

Clara turned to her with glassy eyes, the tears already clinging to her lashes like dew on morning grass. Her lip quivered as she stared at Ivy, arms trembling within the cushioned ring of her walker. “I can’t, Ivy,” she whispered, voice breaking on the second word. “I can’t go on. I’m not strong enough.”

Ivy felt something snap inside her chest — not with pain, but with urgency. She pushed forward, the walker groaning beneath the strain as its padded base scraped toward Clara’s. “You are strong enough,” Ivy said fiercely, her voice laced with that desperate kind of hope that only surfaces when logic fails. “You’re stronger than anyone else I know, Clara. You made it this far. You survived the bouncers, the feedings, the mind games—hell, you outlasted ninety-four people. You didn’t break. You’re still here. We are so close to the finish.”

Clara shook her head violently, the tears spilling free now, her cheeks blotched red with shame. “We?” she choked. “Ivy, there can only be one winner. One! You think I don’t know that? You think I haven’t done the math, haven’t felt it crawling inside my head since there were six of us left?” Her voice cracked, rising. “I’m not going to beat you. Or Finn. Or anyone. I’m not strong like you.”

“You are,” Ivy said, her voice sharpened to a point, not in anger but in sheer will. “You are because you care. You’re here, now, even after everything, you’ve held on Clara, don’t give up now.”

Clara scoffed bitterly, wiping at her eyes with the edge of her mitten like it could erase the collapse that threatened to swallow her whole. “Held on? I’m barely standing. Ivy, this place—” she gestured wildly at the room, at the looming incubators, “—it eats you. It doesn’t matter how hard you fight. Every trial takes a piece, and I don’t have any pieces left.”

Ivy opened her mouth to respond, but Clara pressed forward, her voice thinner now, trembling with that quiet kind of desperation that comes right before surrender. “You know what’s worse? I can feel myself slipping. I can feel myself starting to forget who I was before this. My dreams, my thoughts… they don’t feel like mine anymore.” Her gaze drifted back to the open pod, and Ivy saw it then—not temptation, but resignation. “If I go out in one more trial, if I’m forced to become one of them again, strapped in, fed, broken down while the world laughs—then what’s left of me won’t be worth saving.”

She looked at Ivy again, softer now. “But if I climb in now… if I choose while I still can… maybe a piece of me stays intact. Maybe that sliver of choice is the only thing I get to keep.”

Ivy’s heart thundered. She didn’t know how to respond. Clara wasn’t giving up because she was weak. She was giving up because the Nursery were designed to break them. Trial after trial, erosion in slow motion, dignity stripped until it was gone. And now it offered them the illusion of mercy: a choice wrapped in comfort, possible sedation painted as salvation.

“I don’t want to lose you,” Ivy whispered.

Clara smiled, but it was broken at the edges. “You already lost ninety-four others. What’s one more?”

“Please don’t leave me,” Ivy whispered, her voice breaking as tears stained her cheeks.

The words cracked from her throat, brittle and raw, like something too long held back. Her voice, hoarse with pleading, echoed against the cold walls of the chamber.

Clara paused, her hands resting on the edge of the incubator’s open shell. She turned her head slightly, just enough to meet Ivy’s gaze. And in that moment, her eyes weren’t frantic or lost. They were calm — unbearably so. Like the storm had finally passed inside her, and all that remained was the soft, painful silence after.

“Ivy…” she said gently, her voice a fragile ribbon in the sterile air, “you lost me a long time ago.”

Ivy felt something crack behind her ribs.

Clara gave a sad smile, the kind that comes not from peace but from the resignation of having made an impossible choice. “Thank you,” she continued. “For everything. For not treating me like I was broken. For holding onto me when I couldn’t hold onto myself. I don’t know what’s going to happen in there. I don’t know what I’ll remember when they… finish whatever this is. But I’ll remember you. Even if I forget your name and your voice, I’ll remember your kindness. The love. That someone fought for me when I didn’t deserve it.”

“No,” Ivy croaked, shaking her head, her legs nearly buckling under the walker’s restraint. “No, please, Clara, you’re still here—you’re still you.”

Clara looked away, pulling herself up out of the walker.

And then the arms descended, silent and gentle.

They scooped her from the walker as if she weighed nothing at all. Clara didn’t resist. She didn’t cry. She simply let herself be lifted — her limbs slack, her head bowed. Ivy screamed — a sound ripped from her very soul — as Clara was cradled like an infant and laid inside the waiting pod. The lining hissed softly as it adjusted around her frame, sealing her into place.

“Clara, no!” Ivy shrieked, her sobs wracking her body so violently she nearly collapsed. She slammed her hands against her walker’s tray, desperate to move, to do something, anything, but she couldn’t.

She could only watch as the lid of the incubator began to close, inch by agonizing inch. Just before the seal was complete, Clara turned her head. Her mittened hand pressed against the transparent dome, and Ivy mirrored it, their hands separated by centimeters of glass.

Clara’s lips moved.

Thank you for being my friend.

The mist hissed into the chamber, swallowing Clara’s form. Her eyes fluttered shut, and her face went slack — not in pain, not in fear, but in surrender. Ivy choked on her sobs, her vision swimming with tears as Clara’s body blurred behind the fog, vanishing inch by inch until there was nothing but mist and the dull glow of her number: 20.

The lid sealed with a final click.

And Ivy was left in silence, hand trembling on the dome’s cold surface, her heart splintered into pieces too small to count, as Clara’s number went dark.