The girl leaps from the tiny platform, no amount of fear in her eyes. She knows she'll die, and this doesn't scare her. The alternative does, however.
"Mila! NO!" A taller girl runs out onto the platform, her fingertips just barely rushing the falling girls hair. She falls to her knees at the edge, and even with the falling rain, she hears the smaller girl hit the paving stones in the courtyard, nearly a hundred feet below.
She doubles over, tears mixing with the rain. The sky darkens, turning a deep purple, nearly black. She can see dark patches spreading across Mila's clothes, and hears footsteps drawing closer to the dead girl. She needs to get there first.
She knows these halls well, after spending most of her life here. But the spiral staircase seems dark and forbidding as she races down it, occasionally hopping over the guardrail to drop to a lower level. She stumbles out into the pouring rain, and kneels by her friends side.
"Mila, please. Wake up." She knows it's impossible of course. Her skulls been cracked, and her neck is at a strange angle, but she still shakes her, looking for a sign of life. When she hears the footsteps on the other side of the door, she knows it's hopeless.
"I'm sorry." She kisses her friends cheek, and fades into the shadows. People converge on the area, loading the dead girl onto a stretcher and sending pages to inform the necessary people. The girl turns her back on the blood smeared pavement, and begins the long climb to the platform.
The note is where she knew it would be, wrapped in a thin layer of plastic and jammed between two stones. She works it free and brings it inside to read, to a window overlooking the tiny courtyard still full of people.
My dearest Cara,
I'm so sorry it had to end that way. They were coming for me today, you know that. I should have stayed behind, said goodbye the right way. But I can't. You would stop me, ask me to stay with you another hour, and then another. They would find me, and take me. I don't want to live that way, divided between so many people, unable to think, or truly live my life, and unable to die. I think, therefore I am. But what if I'm not? What then? I'm sorry I didn't have the courage to go through with the unwinding, and I'm sorry I cut short the limited time we had left. I'm sorry. I love you.
-Mila.
The girl leans against the windowsill, and looks out over the bloodstained courtyard. Raised to be stronger than human, to be smart and brave, and selfless. Raised to be unwound, to be given to the highest bidder. She should condemn her friend for choosing suck a cowardly path, but she can't. She folds the paper carefully, her friends tears still damp on the paper, and wipes away her own. She can't let them see that she feels anything but contempt for this girl, this coward.
In the hall on the way to the dining hall she sees the calendar with all the children's birthdays. Her friends is marked in red. Her own red box is three weeks away.