Page 187 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

“I was at home,” I say. “Is everyone okay? Where’s the fire?”

“Oh, it’s all sorted, I think! But I thought you’d want to see the damage. Come on, I’ll show you.” She’s already moving, leading me down the corridor toward a part of the building I’ve never been in.

I follow her through a set of security doors, down a stairwell where the air turns cool and dry. The corridor at the bottom is silent, lit with the harsh artificial light of a place with no windows. Lucy swipes her card at a glass door and holds it open, and I step through into a room I recognize from the documentation—floor-to-ceiling shelving and sealed storage units.

The Equinox samples.

“Lucy?” I ask. “Where’s the fire?”

But when I turn around, she’s already on the other side of the glass door, pulling it shut.

What the⁠—?

“Lucy? What’s going on?”

She doesn’t answer. Instead, she slowly locks it.

I stare at her through the glass. She reaches for the speaker panel on the wall and switches it on, and when she looks at me her expression has changed so completely that for a moment I don’t recognize her face.

“Sorry about this,” she says. Her voice comes through the speaker flat and calm. “I need someone to take the fall. It has to be you.”

Lucy. Cheerful, warm, bring-you-coffee-without-being-asked Lucy. Lucy who knew everyone’s name and made the office feel like somewhere you actually wanted to be. I think about our lunches, the corridor gossip, the times she’d leaned over and whispered something that made me laugh before I could stop myself, the quarterly presentation just days ago where she fanned herself and called the alphas delicious—and try to reconcile it with the woman standing on the other side of this glass with her hand on a panel and her face completely, utterly still.

“You,” I say. The word comes out almost disbelieving. “It was you. This whole time, it was you.”

She doesn’t deny it.

“Why me?”

“Because I’ve seen the way they look at you.” Her face twists with resentment. “Once their little pet has been found in here with everything destroyed—it’ll be even more devastating. For all of them.”

“Lucy.” I keep my voice level. “Think about what you’re doing.”

“I know exactly what I’m doing.” She tilts her head slightly, studying me through the glass with an expression that makes my skin crawl. “Do you know what Equinox actually does, Sophie?”

“Yes.”

“Then you understand why it has to be stopped.” Her voice hardens. “They want to erase omega designation. To reach into someone’s biology and remove it like it’s a flaw to be corrected. It’s an abomination.”

“It’s not, Lucy,” I say. “It gives omegas a choice they’ve never had.”

“A choice.” The word comes out bitter. “Do you know what I would give to have that designation?”

I stare at her.

“I’ve been a beta every day of my life, and I would give anything to know what it feels like to have a scent that means something. A heat. A body capable of forming that kind of bond.” Her eyes flick over me. “You were born with all of it.”

“You think that’s a gift?”

“I think you have no idea how lucky you are.”

A laugh escapes me, sharp and disbelieving. “Lucky?”

“And now Synthera wants to give people the power to change what someone is.” Her jaw tightens. “To reach into a body and cut it out. And I won’t allow it. So I’m going to switch off the temperature control. Everything in that room will be destroyed. And when they find you in here, they’ll know exactly who did it.” A thin smile. “I’m glad you came, Sophie. I was counting on it.”

She reaches for the panel.

“Lucy—wait,” I say, wanting to keep her talking.