Eight months after diagnosis
The converted warehouse sat on the outskirts of London, its industrial bones softened by rolling paddocks and custom-built enclosures. Elizabeth arrived before dawn, as had become her ritual – a desperate attempt to outrun the betrayal of her own body. Her car's headlights swept across the morning mist, and already the animals stirred in recognition.
"Morning, lovelies," she murmured, her voice softer than it had been in any boardroom.
The miniature pigs squealed their delight, pressing against the fence as she scratched behind their ears. Her hands, once steady enough to sign million-pound deals without trembling, now shook slightly as she distributed treats from her jacket pockets. But here, on the farm, that tremor felt almost acceptable. The animals didn't judge weakness. They accepted it as simply another fact of existence.
The llamas approached with their characteristic dignity. Athena, a cream-coloured female Elizabeth had named after the goddess, pressed her velvet nose against Elizabeth's palm, and something unclenched in her chest. Here, in the quiet of early morning, the tumour felt like a distant storm cloud rather than the constant thunder in her skull.
"You're the only one who still treats me like I matter," Elizabeth whispered, running her fingers along Athena's neck.
The farm had been purchased on impulse, driven by a visceral need to escape the city and the constant reminders of her declining power. The property manager, a weathered man named Davies, had been bemused by her specifications: maximum animal capacity, climate-controlled enclosures, and gaming infrastructure installed in the converted warehouse's upper level.
"You want a farm and a tournament-grade gaming rig?" he'd asked.
"I want a place to escape to and a place to fight," Elizabeth had replied, and that was the truest thing she'd said to anyone since the diagnosis.
The farm had become her sanctuary, but the gaming setup had become her obsession.
By ten AM, the transformation was complete.
Elizabeth settled into her gaming chair, surrounded by three monitors displaying map layouts, kill-death ratios, and ranking statistics. The professional setup rivalled any esports facility – a quarter of a million pounds of equipment she'd acquired in a fury of retail therapy after the diagnosis. What had started as a desperate distraction had become an all-consuming obsession, a new battlefield where she could still dominate.
"Stack up on bot lane," she commanded, her fingers flying across the keyboard with newfound muscle memory. "Jungle, prep for dragon. We take this objective, or we're out of the tournament."
The voice that cooed to animals was gone, replaced by a tactical commander who'd thrown herself into competitive gaming with the same ruthless focus she'd once applied to hostile takeovers. Her team, five of Europe's best competitive players, responded with practised efficiency. They'd learnt that Elizabeth Wynsor brought the same strategic brilliance to virtual battlefields that had made her a legend in finance.
In eight months, she'd progressed from a complete novice to Master tier – a rank that typically required years of dedicated play. Her game sense was extraordinary; her ability to predict enemy rotations was almost precognitive. It was as if her dying brain had found a new arena in which to prove its superiority.
The professional esports organisation had initially been sceptical when she approached them about joining their practice squad. But after she'd systematically dismantled their training opponents in a series of exhibition matches, they'd signed her with a modest contract and generous sponsorship terms.
"You're a savant," their team manager had said, reviewing the match statistics. "I've never seen anyone climb so fast."
"I've spent my entire adult life reading people and markets," Elizabeth had replied. "This is just applied pattern recognition."
But it was more than that, and she knew it. The gaming was her last remaining battlefield, the last place where she could prove that Elizabeth Wynsor was still exceptional, still worth something, still alive in a way that mattered.
Seventeen months after diagnosis
The afternoon had been good. Elizabeth had climbed three divisions, her strategic calls precise and her reflexes sharp enough that her teammates barely needed to communicate. Jake, their jungler, had even commented, "You're playing clean today, boss. Whatever you did this morning, keep doing it."
What she'd done was watch the sunrise with Sage and the llamas and had felt something almost like peace. The medication was working better today. The migraine that had become her constant companion was reduced to a background hum rather than a ceaseless roar.
She'd felt almost like herself.
By the time the evening tournament began, Elizabeth was riding high on a six-game winning streak. The professional team had invited her to participate in a showcase match against one of Europe's top-ranked squads – an honour that had rekindled something she thought the tumour had already killed: ambition.
"Elizabeth's our ace card," Marcus had said during the pre-match briefing. "They won't be expecting a financial strategist who plays like a machine."
The match began smoothly. Elizabeth's character – a sharp tactical agent – moved through the virtual terrain with practised efficiency. The map was Split, a competitive standard, and her team had executed their opening flawlessly. Three kills in the first round. The scoreboard showed 3-0 in their favour.
Then came round seven.
It was a standard anti-eco round, a strategic gamble where the opposing team had minimal resources. Elizabeth called for aggression, a full-court press to lock down the enemy's options. The execution should have been simple: push the advantage, eliminate the underequipped team, secure the round.
But something felt off about the positioning. She could sense it the way she'd always sensed market inefficiencies – a wrongness in the geometry of the moment.
"Collapse," she commanded. "They're rotating through..."
She didn't finish. The enemy team emerged from an unexpected angle, their weapons raised. Jake, their jungler, should have spotted them. He should have called the rotation thirty seconds earlier. The information warfare was their job; her job was to execute on the intel provided.
Except Jake's call hadn't come.
And in the three seconds of silence where the call should have been, the enemy team eliminated two of her squad members and turned her advantage into a disadvantage.
She watched her character die, watched the round dissolve into chaos, and watched four months of competitive climbing evaporate into a loss.
"Jake." Her voice was quiet, which was worse than if she'd shouted. "Why didn't you call that rotation?"
A pause. She could hear him breathing through the headset.
"I... I thought I called it. I thought..."
"You didn't think," Elizabeth interrupted, her hands beginning to tremble. "Thinking would have required actually tracking the enemy position, and you clearly weren't doing that. You were sloppy."
"Boss, we still have time to-"
But Elizabeth was already gone from the present moment, sliding into something darker. The tumour pressed against her skull like a living thing, like a hand clenching around her brain. She could feel her thoughts fragmenting, could feel the rage building behind her eyes with the weight of a tsunami.
The next match was worse.
They won the first two rounds through sheer mechanical skill – Elizabeth's fingers moved across the keyboard and mouse with barely controlled violence, each keystroke a small act of destruction. But then came the moment: a critical tournament match, single elimination, and Elizabeth called for a strategy that required Jake to make a specific play in a specific location at a specific time.
Jake executed ninety percent perfectly. He made the rotation, anticipated the enemy movement, and set up the flank. But he was three seconds late on the plant denial, and the enemy planted the bomb in a location that meant Elizabeth's cover approach was compromised.
It was a tiny mistake. In any other context, it would have been unremarkable – the kind of minor miscalculation that separated Master tier from Grandmaster.
But Elizabeth wasn't thinking rationally anymore.
She felt the rage build like pressure in her skull, felt it travel down her spine, felt it ignite in her chest and burn outward through her arms. Her hands moved to her mechanical keyboard – the custom-built, tournament-grade piece of equipment that had cost more than most people's monthly rent.
She lifted it.
For a moment, she held it suspended above the desk, her arms shaking with the effort of containing what was about to happen. She could feel Jake waiting through the headset, could feel the rest of the team holding their breath, and could feel the surveillance cameras recording this moment for posterity.
And she thought: Let them see what I am. Let them see what the tumour has revealed was always underneath the performance.
She slammed the keyboard down onto the desk with enough force that three keys shattered immediately, the mechanical switches snapping like bones. Once wasn't enough. She lifted it again and drove it down, watching the damage cascade across the board – the spacebar crumpling, the num pad shattering, the entire device coming apart under the force of her rage.
"You are a motherfucking amateur," she spat at Jake, her voice distorted by something almost feral. "You had one job. One. Job. And you couldn't manage it because your tiny little brain doesn't have the capacity for precision."
"Elizabeth..." Jake's voice was small, frightened.