Anna slowly chewed her steak, trying to make it last as long as possible. They had cut it into pieces for her, since they obviously couldn't give her a knife. It made her feel like a child. There was an odd symmetry to the treatment given those on either edge of their lives, now that she thought about it.

The meal was delicious, but Anna couldn't enjoy it because she kept thinking that she should have asked for something else. She had always felt little twinges of regret whenever she ordered food, but they had never so completely overwhelmed her. People eat tens of thousands of meals in their lifetimes, and messing up just one of them wasn't anything to lose sleep over, but for this one meal, there were no second chances. All of the countless possible meals she could be eating now, some doubtless too wondrous to imagine, she would never get to experience. All of the possibilities had been snuffed out the moment she had made her choice.

If she could drag this meal out forever, she could live forever. She knew this wasn't true, but it felt that way, and every bite of the filet mignon she chewed up and swallowed felt like an irreplaceable loss. She envied the cow it had once been a part of. It had no doubt grazed contentedly on its last leaves of grass, in ignorant bliss of the fate which awaited it. She looked down at her now empty plate. It was time for her to go meet the cow.

The guards led her out of her cell, and began walking her down the dimly lit hallway at a calm, measured pace. She had a momentary impulse to resist, to struggle, to try to somehow act on the world, even though she knew it was futile, but she didn't. To struggle and be subdued would serve only to annihilate her illusion of agency. If she chose to comply, she would succeed, and she would control her own destiny. If she chose to resist and failed, she would fail, and be powerless over her own fate. She heard the click of the guard's key in the lock as he opened the door to the final room.

The guards placed Anna in the chair and fastened the straps. They had put her in at a slight angle, and the left side of the seat was pinching the nerves in her upper thigh. She felt a sharp pain as the IV needed penetrated her lower arm. She didn't want to die, but in a way, she already had. She couldn't move, she couldn't act, she couldn't stop the needle from injecting the poison into her, and she couldn't even shift her body to alleviate the crushing pain in her thigh. She wasn't alive, only awake, and she wished she wasn't. She watched as the doctor pressed the plunger, and she felt the serum invading her body. She was terrified. Then, she wasn't.