The wind howled over Vireon's sleeping skyline.
Lyra sat cross-legged on the rooftop, her hoodie pulled up, datapod in her lap. Her heart hadn't stopped pounding since she escaped Lab B-7. Someone had tried to kill her. Not scare her. Kill her.
And now she knew something she wasn't supposed to.
Her mother alive once. Her birth an experiment. Her brain part of something called Project WITTED. And someone wanted that equation silenced forever.
She slid the datapod open again. The video was gone auto-deleted after playback. But the core files? Still there. Heavily encrypted.
She smiled slightly. "You really wanted to keep secrets, Mum."
The encryption wasn't just complex it was poetic. Mathematical patterns wrapped in metaphors. Equations named after lullabies. Lyra's fingers twitched.
It was made for her.
Half an hour later, she hit the centre code. It opened with a whisper of light and one chilling phrase:
"WITTED wasn't meant to evolve. But you did."
She blinked. Then the screen flooded with data.
Brain patterns. Synthetic neuron maps. Child subject logs.
And a name:
Subject A01 – Lyra Elen
But below it… another name lit up:
Subject A02 – ACTIVE
Her throat tightened.
She wasn't the only one.
Another like her? Another brain built for the unpredictable?
The datapod pinged again another file opened by itself.
"Incoming Transmission."
She hesitated.
Then tapped it.
The screen flickered.
And then, there she was.
The Girl with Red Eyes.
Not glowing red like a cyborg real red. Like polished rubies. Hair tied back tight, military jacket, no expression.
She looked… twelve. But her eyes weren't twelve. They were ancient.
"Hello, A01," the girl said.
Lyra swallowed. "Who are you?"
"I'm A02. My name is Kael."
"How did you ?"
"You opened the file. That's how we connect."
"We?"
"There were ten of us. You were hidden. I wasn't."
The datapod screen distorted, then cleared. Kael's face was closer now.
"They trained me. Broke me. Built me again. All brain, no heart."
She paused.
"You still have a heart, Lyra. That makes you dangerous."
Lyra couldn't breathe. "What do you want?"
"To warn you," Kael whispered. "They're not just hunting you. They're activating the old system. The real one. The one that turns minds into weapons."
Lyra leaned in. "What system?"
Kael tilted her head. "You ever wonder why the world is so quiet?"
"What?"
"No wars. No rebels. No chaos. That's not peace, Lyra. That's programming."
Lyra's stomach dropped.
"You mean…?"
"They've been using kids like us for years. You solve an algorithm, and somewhere, someone dies. We were tools. Ghost soldiers. You ran. I stayed."
The screen flickered again.
"And now? They want to reboot everything. You're the key. Because unlike the rest of us you were born outside the system. You're pure code."
Lyra felt the wind turn cold.
Kael's red eyes narrowed. "Find the other files. Decode your full build. And don't trust anyone."
The screen went black.
No goodbye. No signature.
Just silence.
Lyra slowly stood, datapod in hand.
Somewhere out there, another version of her was being used as a weapon. Others had already been used. She was part of something far darker than just science.
She wasn't special.
She was a product.
And now she had to decide play the game their way?
Or rewrite the rules.
She turned to go inside then stopped.
A light blinked on her window.
Someone was inside her flat.
Her aunt was supposed to be asleep.
She pulled her bag close and slid down the side pipe like she'd done a hundred times. But this time, her palms were slick with sweat.
At the window, she peeked through the blinds.
Her aunt wasn't in bed.
But someone was sitting on the chair.
Not moving.
Not breathing.
It wasn't her aunt.
It was a message.
A humanoid doll. Plastic skin. Fake blood on its dress. Holding a card.
She climbed in silently, hand trembling as she picked it up.
The card read:
"We see you. Stop digging. Or next time, the doll won't be fake."
She backed away slowly.
Someone had already been inside her home.
She was being hunted.
Not just watched.
And she was done running.
She looked into the mirror at the girl with glasses, the one no one noticed. No one respected. No one feared.
But they were wrong.
They should've feared her all along.