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Related Novels (1)
Related Chapters (2)
The Toll of Ascent
Words: 3485 · Source Novel:: The Interest Due
The fire brigade’s entry triggers an emergency review under the precedent of Chames v. Wade. In a packed hearing, Lena, though chemically dulled and struggling to walk, presents the hidden patch and her carved candle. Forensic toxicology confirms NX-17, and the guardianship is revoked amid a storm of media scrutiny. Julian vanishes to a non-extradition jurisdiction hours before arrest, leaving Lena with permanent neurological tremors and a shattered reputation—the tabloids paint her as a schemer who seduced a billionaire and then cried victim. The state seizes Ashford Hall, and Lena finds herself standing outside the courthouse with nothing but a plastic bag of belongings, her father a stranger to her, her body a debtor’s ledger. She understands now that she crossed the line into wealth as a whole person, but she crossed back into the world of the poor as a broken one; the interest was her memory, her future, and the woman she might have been.
The Guardian's Decree
Words: 3276 · Source Novel:: The Interest Due
As the nation debates the Supreme Court's ruling in Chames v. Wade—which holds that enforced medical treatment violates bodily integrity unless the state proves an overriding necessity—Julian makes his move. Armed with falsified MRI scans and the sworn testimony of Dr. Marcus Horne, a corrupt psychiatrist, he petitions the Meridia Family Court to declare Lena non compos mentis. The irony is crushing: Lena's own legal counsel, appointed because she is deemed too impaired to choose, merely parrots the clinical reports. The judge signs the guardianship order with a stroke of a pen, and Ashford Hall becomes an institution of one. Lena, now a legal infant, begins to carve tiny letters into the wax of a candle she hides in her pillowcase, writing the single word “appeal” over and over, as if tattooing it onto her fading self.