Bound Before Birth
1128 Words
The silence inside the hospital room became unbearable.
Sophia stared at the medical file while her pulse roared in her ears.
Subject Aurora Marrow successfully bonded with Subject D-17.
And beneath it:
Subject D-17 — Thompson Greg.
Her hands trembled violently.
“What does bond mean?”
Nobody answered immediately.
Thompson looked frozen beside her, shock and horror battling across his face.
Isabella closed her eyes briefly like someone finally cornered by the truth.
“Sophia…” she whispered.
“No,” Sophia said sharply. “No more half-truths. Tell me everything.”
Luna slowly placed the snacks down on the table.
“Yeah, I’d also like to know why you two sound like escaped science experiments.”
Isabella sat carefully in the chair near the bed, exhaustion weighing heavily on her expression.
“Years ago, Blackwood became obsessed with control,” she began quietly. “Not just political control. Human control.”
Sophia felt sick already.
“They funded illegal psychological studies through Saint Marrow Hospital.”
Thompson’s jaw tightened dangerously.
“And my father knew?”
“Yes. He discovered it after volunteering money to the hospital’s research program. By then it was too late.”
Sophia looked down at the file again.
“What did they do to us?”
Isabella hesitated.
Then finally:
“They paired children together from infancy.”
Fear settled like ice in Sophia’s chest.
“Why?”
“To study emotional dependency.”
Luna stared in disbelief.
“That is deeply insane.”
Isabella nodded faintly.
“They believed emotional attachment could increase obedience, loyalty, and psychological endurance.”
Thompson’s face darkened with disgust.
“So they experimented on children to create emotional conditioning.”
“Yes.”
Sophia suddenly remembered something.
The strange familiarity she felt around Thompson from the beginning.
The pull toward him.
The feeling that she knew him long before memories returned.
Her breathing became uneven.
“That’s impossible.”
Isabella looked heartbroken.
“You and Thompson were placed together constantly during your first year.”
Thompson looked physically sick hearing it.
“No…”
“Your biological mother discovered the experiments,” Isabella continued softly. “She tried exposing them.”
“And they killed her.”
“Yes.”
The room blurred around Sophia again.
“So William and Elizabeth took me.”
“They rescued you both.”
Both.
Sophia looked sharply toward Thompson.
“You too?”
Isabella nodded slowly.
“Thompson’s father removed him from the program after discovering what Blackwood was doing.”
Thompson ran a hand shakily through his hair.
“My father never told me any of this.”
“He wanted you free from it.”
Sophia’s chest tightened painfully.
“So everything I feel…” she whispered. “Everything between us…”
Thompson immediately looked at her.
“No.”
The force in his voice surprised everyone.
“Sophia, listen to me.”
Fear lived inside his eyes now.
Real fear.
“They don’t decide what this is.”
“But what if they already did?” she whispered.
The question shattered him completely.
For a moment, Thompson couldn’t speak.
Because somewhere deep inside, the fear already existed.
What if their connection was never truly theirs?
What if even love had been stolen from them before they understood it?
“No,” Thompson said again, softer this time. “I refuse to believe that.”
Tears filled Sophia’s eyes.
“But you said to yourself you felt connected to me even before remembering.”
“Because I knew you as a child.”
“What if that’s not the reason?”
Thompson stepped closer instantly.
“Then I’ll spend the rest of my life proving its real anyway.”
The room fell silent.
Luna quietly wiped tears from her eyes.
“This is the saddest and most romantic nightmare I’ve ever witnessed.”
Isabella looked toward the hospital window uneasily.
“There’s more.”
Everyone groaned softly.
Luna pointed dramatically.
“Absolutely not. We have reached maximum trauma capacity.”
But Isabella continued anyway.
“The experiments weren’t fully psychological.”
Thompson’s expression hardened.
“What else did they do?”
Isabella swallowed hard.
“They tracked memory responses, emotional synchronization… and physiological reactions between paired subjects.”
Sophia frowned weakly.
“What does that mean?”
Isabella looked uncomfortable answering.
“If one subject experienced distress, the other often reacted similarly, even at a distance.”
A cold chill ran down Sophia’s spine.
Suddenly, so many moments made sense.
Thompson always sensing danger around her.
His panic during the shooting.
The strange emotional pull neither of them could explain.
“No,” Thompson whispered.
Isabella looked at him sadly.
“You always protected her instinctively.”
Silence settled heavily again.
Then Sophia quietly asked haunting her most.
“Am I still in danger?”
Nobody answered immediately.
Which meant yes.
Thompson sat beside her carefully.
“Samuel is dead.”
“But Blackwood isn’t,” Isabella said quietly.
Thompson cursed softly under his breath.
Luna looked exhausted.
“How many evil rich people are left in this city?”
“Too many,” Isabella answered honestly.
Sophia stared down at her hands.
“So what happens now?”
Thompson answered immediately.
“You disappear.”
She looked at him sharply.
“What?”
“We leave Raven Hill.”
Isabella looked surprised.
“You’d abandon the investigation?”
“I’d burn the entire city down before letting them touch her again.”
The raw honesty in his voice silenced everyone.
Sophia studied him carefully.
“You’d really leave everything?”
“Yes.”
No hesitation.
None.
Emotion tightened painfully inside her chest.
For so long, Thompson carried revenge like oxygen.
Now he was offering to walk away from it for her.
Luna crossed her arms.
“Well, emotionally, that’s beautiful. Strategically? Terrible.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Isabella nodded slowly.
“If Blackwood survives, they’ll keep hunting both of you forever.”
Thompson’s expression darkened again.
“I know.”
Sophia looked between them quietly.
Then down at the black ledger resting on the table.
Evidence.
Truth.
The thing her parents died protecting.
The thing that destroyed countless lives.
And somehow now it belonged to her.
Slowly, Sophia reached for it.
Thompson frowned slightly.
“What are you doing?”
She looked directly at him.
“Ending this.”
Before anyone could respond—
The hospital lights suddenly went out.
Darkness swallowed the room instantly.
Luna screamed.
Emergency alarms began ringing through the hallway.
Thompson stood immediately, every instinct turning sharp again.
“No…”
Footsteps echoed outside the hospital room.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Then a familiar male voice spoke from the darkness beyond the door.
“You really thought Samuel was the one in charge?”
- Writer
