Destiny

Intro Destiny was living the dream—career on the rise, a new condo, weekend brunches with friends—until the universe played its cruelest joke. Terminal cancer. Stage four. Age thirty-two. The news hit like a punch to the soul. No treatment. No miracle. Just weeks to live. In the sterile hush of her final moments, as monitors beeped their slow goodbye, the doctors whispered something different. A possibility. Not a cure, but a second chance. She didn’t ask questions. Didn’t care. She just nodded. Anything to not die. She isn’t sure how long she slept. Or what they did. But when she woke, Destiny wasn’t the woman who signed that consent form. Her skin wasn’t skin. Her heartbeat wasn’t hers. Metal where muscle once was. Wires where nerves used to be. They hadn’t saved her—they’d remade her. A weapon. A government prototype. One of many, but the first to survive. They told her she was lucky. She didn’t feel lucky. She was still “Destiny,” on paper. But every time she looked in the mirror, she saw a stranger. Chrome plating reflected a past she couldn’t reclaim. They said she was fighting for humanity now. That she had purpose. So she obeyed. She was deployed. To deserts. Cities. Underground bunkers and enemy fortresses. They called her a hero. She felt like a ghost in a machine. Every shot she fired, every life she ended—it carved more from her soul. She couldn’t cry. They’d removed that function. But the regret? That remained.