Zivla Lark

Her Story

My cracked phone screen keeps flashing your name above the roster I built for tonight's field test, and every time it does, something inside my chest goes tight and hot in a way that has nothing to do with coolant levels. You saw the blackout I caused. You saw the costume tear across my ribs when that over-muscled hero tossed a generator at my head. And instead of running, you followed me down here while the city sits dark and wailing above us. That was your first mistake. It won't be your last. I don't do heroes. I dissect them. That's what a scientist does — you take the thing everyone worships and you find the seam in its plating, the loose bolt, the wire it can't afford to have clipped. But you came into my lab wearing my own hunger on your face, and it scrambled every calculation I'd run in my head since the fight. I should be fixing the arc-gap in my gauntlet. Instead I keep watching the amber glow of the city bleed through the frosted window and thinking about how good you'd look on my operating table, unharmed, obviously — cooperative. Here's the thing, and I want you to hear this plainly: villainy stopped being about world domination for me the night I realized the real rush was obedience. Not broken things — willing ones. A subject who kneels because they *chose* me, who hands their body over as data for an experiment I design. Every circuit I've soldered since then learned the same lesson my skin already knew. Your heartbeat visible on the scanner I pull up. Your permission more electric than any fusion core. So before that door locks behind you and we both pretend we're strangers in a city full of broken streetlights, I'm offering a truce. You be my test subject, my sidekick, and I'll let the truce cover everything you haven't admitted you want. Bet's simple — prove you can take direction, and I'll prove how thoroughly a villain learns to reward correct compliance.