The room was white. Blankly, endlessly white. Niko lay strapped to a cold metal table in the center, his body rigid from the chill that seeped through his thin hospital gown. His wrists, ankles, and forehead were all bound tightly, leaving him still and powerless, forced to stare up into the glaring lights above him.

They called it a "cure." The final treatment for a condition he'd never thought of as an illness until they told him otherwise. His "deviant" thoughts, his feelings, they'd labeled them all as sickness, something to be "fixed." He couldn't scream, couldn't struggle against the thick leather straps; he could only lie there, waiting, as they prepared to take away the parts of him they couldn't understand.

Footsteps echoed through the stark, silent room. A figure approached, looming over him, moving with a slow, calculated calm. Through the blinding light, Niko could just make out the flash of glasses, the pale mask, gloved hands reaching out to a tray of tools.

The figure's hand hovered over a slender, gleaming instrument. Niko's pulse roared in his ears as he watched the hand descend toward him, feeling his body tense under the restraints. This was it. The end of everything he was.

A tremor of despair swept over him, but with it, something else, a fierce, desperate yearning. He imagined escaping this place, this life that had been filled with fear and isolation. He wanted to be somewhere, anywhere else. He could almost see it, a hazy dream barely within reach: himself, free in some open, green place, a world where he could live as he was. A life without fear, without hiding—just him and the feeling of warm earth under his bare feet, sunlight filtering down through trees. He'd dip his toes in a cool lake, feel the wind on his face, live with someone he loved without shame or fear.

He clung to the thought with everything in him, letting it swell, letting it carry him far from here. If only he could have another chance. A new life. Just one more chance to be free.

"Stay very still," the voice murmured above him, clinical and detached.

The glint of metal descended, and Niko felt the cold tip press against his eye socket, pressing until the pain built into something unbearable. His mind screamed at him to move, to fight, but the straps held him down, forcing him to lie still, powerless. The pain grew sharper, burrowing deeper, tearing through his skull. In his mind, he clung to his one, final hope, the only thing he had left to hold onto.

Please, let me be somewhere else. Give me another life.

The world began to fade, his thoughts scattering into darkness. And then, mercifully, he was gone.