The stadium on the outskirts of the city was now a scene of chaos and pain. Criminal service officers were still milling about, collecting evidence from events that could barely be called a battle. It was a massacre—filled with splattered blood, lifeless bodies, and the pervasive stench of death. Lucy sat on the edge of the field, wrapped in a blanket by one of the paramedics. Her body trembled, but not from the cold—it was shock.

Sarah Serafin tried to approach but was stopped by Adam Karski.

“Not yet,” he said firmly, looking at the woman with cold determination. “We need to ensure everything is under control first.”

Several officers approached Lucy, their faces a mix of compassion and uncertainty. One of them, a young, red-haired man, tried to make eye contact with her.

“We’ll take you to the hospital,” he said gently, leaning in to help her stand.

Lucy looked up at him, but her eyes still reflected the horrors of the massacre. She didn’t protest, allowing herself to be led. As she approached the ambulance, she took one last look at the stadium where the nightmare had just unfolded. She saw dead children, she saw Isaac in a state difficult to comprehend, and the words of “Mother” still echoed in her mind.

The ambulance doors closed with a loud thud, and the vehicle headed toward the hospital.

The hospital room was clinically clean, illuminated by cold fluorescent lights that only heightened the tension in the atmosphere. Lucy sat on the bed, a delicate bandage on her neck. Her face was pale, her gaze empty—still engulfed in the shock of the events at the stadium.

In front of her, sitting on a chair, was Adam Karski, a general in the criminal services. His stern posture and cold gaze made the room’s atmosphere even heavier. Behind him, by the door, stood two armed guards who exchanged glances from time to time.

Every movement in the room seemed deliberate and laden with tension. Lucy stared at the bandages on her hands, as if trying to avoid meeting the general’s gaze.

“Lucy,” Adam began, his voice stern but not devoid of a note of sympathy. “We need to talk.”

The girl looked at him hesitantly, her lips trembling slightly.

“Before we start…” she said quietly, breaking the silence. Her voice was almost a whisper. “I want my mother here.”

Adam raised an eyebrow, his gaze becoming even more stern.

“That’s not necessary,” he replied curtly, as if wanting to end the subject.

“It is,” she interrupted, raising her eyes. “She should know the truth.”

The general took a deep breath, his posture suggesting he already knew what this “truth” was about. After a moment, he nodded.

“Fine,” he replied slowly. “But I warn you: if the situation gets out of control, the guards will act immediately.”

Lucy didn’t respond, only nodded. A few minutes later, the door opened, and Sarah Serafin entered. Her face showed a mixture of concern and anger.

“What’s going on, darling?” she asked softly, looking at Lucy.

The girl looked at her, tears welling up in her eyes.

“Mom… you need to know something,” she said, grabbing her hand.

Adam cleared his throat, interrupting their moment.

“Let’s begin,” he said firmly.

Lucy took a deep breath, as if trying to muster her strength. Her hands, clasped on her knees, trembled slightly, and her eyes stared into nothingness.

“I don’t remember my parents,” she began quietly, her voice almost inaudible in the sterile hospital room. “My first memories are from the House of Roses.”

Sarah looked at her daughter with surprise, then horror. She swallowed hard but said nothing, letting the girl continue.

“It wasn’t a place for children,” Lucy continued, still staring into the distance. “We were trained… conditioned to survive. Every day, we had to prove our worth. The weak were eliminated.”

Adam frowned, his stern gaze piercing the girl.

“Eliminated?” he repeated, though he already knew the answer.

“Killed,” Lucy replied flatly, as if she were talking about something ordinary. “I survived because I was awakened. I don’t know when exactly it happened, but it saved my life.”

The silence in the room was heavy, as if each of her words filled the space with the weight of unspoken emotions. Lucy lowered her gaze, looking at her clasped hands.

“There were trials,” she began after a moment. “Difficult, brutal ones… They took children who couldn’t endure them. One of them… we had to swim across a rushing river in Siberia. The water was icy, and the temperature above the surface was below freezing. Many didn’t make it.”

Sarah held her breath, hearing these words. Her hands clenched the armrests of her chair as if to stop herself from interrupting.

“But that wasn’t the worst,” Lucy continued. “There was also the Doctor.”

“The Doctor?” Sarah interrupted, tension evident in her voice.

“Yes,” the girl replied, looking up at her. “He never gave his name. He told us to call him Frankenstein. It was his favorite literary character.”

Adam remained silent, but it was clear he was registering every word the girl said with utmost attention.

“He experimented on us, injecting strange substances…” Lucy trailed off, her voice trembling. “Over time, these marks under our eyes began to appear, like rose petals.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Sarah covered her mouth with her hand, as if trying to stifle a scream.

“There was no room for emotions,” Lucy continued. “We were forbidden to make friends, to leave the House of Roses. The punishment for breaking the rules was always the same: torture or death.”

Her voice became increasingly mechanical, as if she were trying to detach herself from these memories, yet couldn’t stop herself from speaking.

“At ten years old, I began training to become an assassin. They taught me how to leave no traces. How to stage an accident or suicide if the client requested it.”

Sarah clenched her fists, her body trembling.

“The training lasted two years,” Lucy continued. “At twelve, I began working as a contract killer.”

Adam raised a hand, interrupting her briefly.

“How many people have you killed?” he asked coldly, his voice like a blade.

Lucy looked at him without blinking.

“Sixty-two,” she replied, then began listing names.

When she reached the name “Serafin,” Sarah stood up abruptly.

“What?” she asked, her voice trembling. “Did you… did you kill my husband and son?”

Lucy looked at her. There were no tears in her eyes—only cold acceptance.

"Yes," she said quietly.

"How... how did it happen?" Sarah asked, her voice filled with pain.

Lucy lowered her gaze but answered:

"I waited for him as he was driving back from work through the forest road. I stopped the car. He got out to check if I was okay. That’s when I attacked him. I dragged him into the car and killed him there."

Sarah looked at her in horror.

"His son was on the back seat. I didn’t plan to kill the child, but he saw everything... I had to."

A deep silence fell over the room, broken only by Sarah's rapid breathing. She jumped up and grabbed one of the guards' guns.

"Why?!" she screamed, pointing the gun at Lucy's head.

Lucy didn’t even flinch. Her gaze remained calm, as if she knew this could be the end.

"Sarah, calm down!" Adam ordered, stepping forward.

"She killed my family!" Sarah shouted, tears streaming down her face.

"I know what she did," Adam said firmly. "But this is not the solution."

Sarah stared at her daughter for a moment, her hand trembling. Finally, she lowered the gun and let it fall to the floor before running out of the room, leaving behind an oppressive silence.

Adam looked at Lucy, who still sat motionless.

"I knew this was a bad idea," he muttered, pulling a cigarette from a pack.

A passing nurse noticed and exclaimed:

"What are you doing!? You can’t smoke here!"

She snatched the cigarette from his hand and threw it in the trash.

"Well, that's just great," Adam muttered under his breath.

For the first two days in the hospital, Lucy barely spoke to anyone. She lay on the sterile white bed, staring at the blank, white wall. Her face was expressionless, and though her eyes were open, they looked lifeless. The guards stationed outside her room occasionally glanced at her with a mix of uncertainty and pity, but no one dared to break the silence that seemed to engulf the entire room.

Meals brought by the nurses went untouched. Glasses of water left on her bedside table soon became coated with condensation but were never lifted to her lips. Lucy remained motionless, as though she was just an empty shell, her mind still haunted by the images of the massacre.

The sight of the children exploding on the stadium field was a nightmare she couldn’t escape. Their faces, filled with trust, morphing into terror and pain in their final moments, replayed in her mind relentlessly. Screams, blood, flashes of energy... every scene was another blow tearing her apart inside.

But it wasn’t the stadium that hurt her the most. She kept going back to the moment she confessed her past. She saw Sarah’s face – her mother, whom she trusted, the only light in her life after escaping the House of Roses.

The memory of the pain and hatred in Sarah’s eyes burned her from the inside. The disbelief that gradually turned into pure despair etched itself permanently into her mind. The quiet whisper of "why?" from the woman she had taken everything from echoed endlessly in her thoughts.

"You killed them..." Sarah's words returned like a mantra she couldn’t silence.

On the third morning, a guard entered the room. A man with sharp features and closely cropped hair paused at the door, holding an envelope.

"This is for you," he said, his voice dry but his gaze showing a flicker of sympathy.

Lucy lifted her head, looking at him as if through a fog. For a moment, she stared at the envelope as if she didn’t understand what she was seeing. Finally, she extended her hand and slowly took it.

"From whom?" she asked quietly, her voice hoarse, as if she hadn’t spoken in days.

"From Sarah Serafin," the guard replied, watching her closely.

Her mother’s name made something inside her stir. She clenched her fingers around the envelope but didn’t open it immediately. Her eyes glistened as her thoughts returned to that gaze – full of pain, hatred, and helplessness. The last look she had seen before Sarah ran out of the room.

Could this letter fix anything? Was there even the smallest chance for forgiveness? Or was it just the final blow, one she wasn’t sure she could withstand?

Without a word, she turned her eyes away from the guard, her fingers slowly beginning to open the envelope.

With trembling hands, she opened the envelope. Inside was a folded piece of paper, its writing slightly smudged, as if written in haste or with difficulty steadying a shaking hand.

**"Lucy,

I don’t know how to start this letter. I don’t know how to express what I feel, but I have to try. After what I’ve heard, I can’t forgive you. You took away everything that mattered to me. My husband. My son. My life.

You were my light. I thought I had found meaning after their loss. But now... now I feel like I’m living in darkness again.

I can’t look at you, Lucy. Every glance reminds me of what I’ve lost. I can’t forgive you, but... I can’t kill you either.

I’ve had enough. I want to see my family again. Maybe where they are now, I’ll finally find peace.

Goodbye, Lucy. Don’t look for me.

Sarah."**

Lucy stared at the letter for long minutes. Her eyes traced over every word as if she wanted to engrave them in her memory. Her heart pounded in her chest, and her hands shook so much that she had to place the letter on her lap.