I think I'd heard of soulmates before meeting my end, it was something that my mom and dad always joked about. Laura and Matt Piety, thats who I was born too. They said they were meant to be, that they were always meant to be.

Thats whats kind of funny about that idea, the idea that my parents were soulmates. I almost believed it. They had a matching freckle on their chests, just a little dot. An imperfection in their skin that connected them together for life.

Even for a life after each other, they had that freckle to remind them.

I stopped believing in soulmates after the divorce papers were signed. We all liked who we liked and when we stopped liking them, that was that. You had to move on. You couldn't keep calling your ex-husband even though it was supposed to be his weekend. That personal, romantic, and emotional connection is over as soon as you make sure it's over.

Though I guess that everlasting connection turned out to be me, a kid pretty much makes sure that theres always going to be a string attaching you and the other person together forever.

Brown eyes and nearly invisible cheek bones told people a story about my mother's soft face while my curly but frizzed blonde hair told people about how bad my dad's hair was as a teen. A child that was made up of twp people that were seen in equal amounts in her face, body, and personality.

Life moves on though, with or without you. Mine moved on in a thundering roar, something that couldn't and wouldn't be stopped. No matter how much I tried to stop it.

Walking home by yourself in the dark isn't always a great plan, even when you're 22. That decision to walk home after a night of clubbing kinda threw my life into a ringer that I'd just never seemed to find my way out of. Life bitch-slapped me so hard that night that I practically lost 2 teeth and got a nice little shiner to remember the moment by.

I don't remember much but I can remember the date clearly. July 17th, 2009. Houston, Texas. It was muggy that night, and pretty foggy thanks to the rain today. But it was that weird fog that didn't hang low, just right in the middle at your waist. It didn't move when I walked through it to go home and I was sure that made shit hard to see as a driver.

Something in my senses told me to stop, maybe its the animal instincts but I felt like I needed to stop and take a note of my surroundings because something was going to happen. Something big. I don't remember much after that, I can't even recall where I lived back then.

I know I heard a few sharp pops and the screeching of tires. A car? I think a car hit me. I could hear that sound of glass shattering so clearly despite the drunken haze and how much my bones didn't feel right as I seemed to almost fly through the air and hit a light-post. My head made a nice DING as I bounced from it.

This was weird. I struggled to stand and I groaned for a while on the floor. It felt wet down here though. I needed to get up but everything spun too quickly for me to do so. I have to get up. I remember rolling to the side and seeing black boots. That was all I noticed. Black boots and gloved hands. They carried me away from there.

Honestly, I don't know what happened after that. I know I woke up in a hospital bed of sorts, wind blowing over my face as people yelled things about a head injury, cracked ribs, broken arm, blood-loss. The lights were even spaced above me, I watched them pass over my face every 2 seconds. That was how I counted how much longer I had to live.

Two seconds at a time. You do that for a few minutes and it seems like you've had all the time in the world.

What a luxury that is, right?

When I woke up after the hospital, I still wasn't ready. I think that was my main issue with taking in what people told me was called the Extremis Virus. I wasn't ready to let go of this life. I'd just finished college, I wanted to go into a career with something humanitarian. USAID, or Habitat for Humanity, something to help people. I'd applied for a graduate program in Art history, I wasn't ready to die.

I had plans. Plans of things to do, I wanted to get a dog in a month or two. I wanted to travel to Europe. I wanted to go to a bar and dance on top of the tables. I wanted to be a kid again and watch cartoons.

"Why?!" I remember screaming at the men and women in white coats after they'd shot me up with whatever was in the black little tubes. The people in black simply stared at me, a glance that meant I wasn't getting help so why did I continue to scream? I never wanted to be a weapon. I wasn't a domestic terrorist, I swear.

"Omi-god." I know I gasped a few times when I found that I really couldn't move. I kept wondering where I was and how I got there. Why was I there?

"Subject 46's former genetic code is expelled, orally." A female called it out as I spat blood over my cheeks. I didn't want to be strapped down to a table, just to cough more and more blood until these little robots had made me perfect. I was freaking out.

People around me were comatose, completely uninterested in my drunken screams and my pleas. There were a few person-sized cocoons near me, beige but plastic looking. Things weren't making sense. How much had I drank tonight? Was it still night? Where am I?

"Wh-whats..." I couldn't form words anymore. It felt like my mouth had fallen asleep despite the jerks of my limbs thanks to some kind of electrical shock. I felt sleepy now. Sleepy enough to just lay my head down and let this go. I fought the feeling, scanning the concrete room with metal grates for flooring.

"Subject 46's beat is down to 45 beats a minute." Another lab coat called out to no one. I wondered if this was a prison? Was I in a hospital basement? It was disorienting. My head was slipping to the side, I couldn't keep it up right anymore. I can't control myself anymore but I didn't feel my arms or my legs. Were they gone?

My head wilted over to the side like a dead tree branch, it hit the side of my restraints with a light ding. I blinked blearily, I can't do this.

When my eyes shut is when I recalled thinking, 'I can't win this'.