Chapter Forty – Between the Wires
The rain didn't stop.
It hadn't for two days.
Not that I cared anymore. Time felt like an echo I was trying to outrun, and I had more pressing things to lose sleep over.
Like the fact that the cameras weren't where they used to be.
I noticed it the morning after.
One above the hallway—gone.
One by the west stairwell—dead lens.
Even the one near the courtyard where we used to speak in shadows had a new angle.
They weren't watching to study us anymore.
They were watching for control.
And that meant one thing:
They were afraid of what we might do next.
---
Rhea hadn't said much since that night.
She moved slower, quieter. Not withdrawn—just... calculated. Like a line had been crossed, and now every decision had weight.
We'd given in. Stripped away the distance between us.
But we hadn't won.
Not yet.
The war was still breathing behind the walls.
And I knew the system never let go of its weapons willingly.
Especially when the weapons started choosing each other.
---
"You ever think," I said quietly, "about what we were before they rewrote us?"
Rhea was seated on the edge of my bed, fingers tapping patterns into her knee. She didn't look up.
"I used to."
"Not anymore?"
She exhaled slowly. "Memories are illusions here. Even if I remembered something real, how would I know it wasn't planted?"
Her eyes finally met mine.
"I only trust what I feel now."
"And what do you feel?"
A pause.
Then, softly:
"You."
---
We didn't speak for a while after that.
I moved to sit beside her. Our shoulders touched.
It was strange—the silence used to be unbearable. Now, it felt like the only space where truth didn't feel like a threat.
Then a soft knock.
Twice. Pause. Then three.
A signal.
Rhea's eyes flicked toward the door. Her body tensed—but not in fear.
Anticipation.
She stood. "It's time."
"For what?"
She turned toward me.
"For answers."
---
We didn't take the main halls. Rhea led us through an old service passage that ran behind the chemistry wing. I'd never even noticed it existed. Dust lined the floor. The walls bore graffiti that had long since faded into irrelevance.
We stopped in front of a rusted door.
She pulled out a chipped key.
"Where'd you get that?"
"Some answers require sacrifices," she said without flinching, and unlocked the door.
Inside: cold light. Metal shelving. Boxes stamped with institutional serials.
And someone waiting.
I recognized him immediately.
"Levi?" I stepped forward. "I thought they transferred you."
He didn't smile. "They did."
His eyes dropped to the jagged scar across his jaw.
"They didn't want anyone noticing what I remembered."
---
Levi used to be the school's top academic.
Smart. Sharp. Too curious.
Then one day he vanished.
The official record said 'relocation due to academic opportunity.'
What they meant was: he remembered too much.
"I wasn't just a student," Levi said. "Neither were you. This place—St. Augustine's—it's the cover. The illusion."
He pulled a folder from beneath the table and dropped it in front of us.
Inside: blueprints. Maps. Medical reports.
And photos.
Dozens of us.
Some smiling. Some sedated. Some… gone.
Rhea stiffened beside me.
"I've seen this before," she said. "In dreams."
"No," Levi corrected. "You saw it before the resets. They're fragments. Slivers of old protocols trying to break through."
He tapped a photo of me—eyes vacant, wires running into my temples.
"You were Prototype A-03. The first one to rebel completely. They had to erase you seventeen times before you stopped clawing at the walls."
"And her?" I asked.
Levi looked at Rhea. His jaw tightened.
"She was never supposed to bond."
"What does that mean?" I demanded.
"She was designed to trigger you. To lead you back to the loop. Not pull you out of it."
Rhea was silent. Her face unreadable.
But I saw the tension in her jaw.
"And now?" I asked.
Levi's voice dropped.
"Now they've deemed you a threat. Both of you."
---
The silence was sharp.
Rhea stepped forward, her voice low and even.
"How long do we have?"
Levi didn't sugarcoat it.
"Not long. The resets aren't working anymore. You're resisting too fast. Too strong. They'll try containment next."
"What kind of containment?" I asked.
He didn't answer directly.
Just pulled out a syringe.
And a photo.
The girl in the image was maybe fifteen. Pretty. Too pale.
"Subject C-12. She resisted the bonding protocol. This is what they did to her."
The girl wasn't smiling.
She wasn't anything.
Eyes open. But no one home.
"Neurological burn," Levi whispered. "Her memories were too fractured. They didn't want to risk reassembly."
Rhea reached out, touched the edge of the photo, then slowly pulled her hand back.
"They'll do that to us?"
"If we let them."
---
The next hour was planning.
Maps, escape routes, backup drives.
Rhea's old notebook was pulled apart—coded messages etched between the lines. Levi decrypted them with a scanner clipped to his belt.
It wasn't just about running.
We had to dismantle the control system.
Break the loop.
Burn the watchers.
"You'll need to access the Core," Levi said. "It's underground. Beneath the East Wing."
I blinked. "That wing's been condemned for years."
"Exactly. Because that's where the truth lives."
---
We left the hidden room through another tunnel, this one leading to the old chapel.
No one went there anymore.
Too cold. Too quiet. The kind of place grief echoed too loud.
Rhea paused at the altar, her fingers brushing the edge of the broken stained glass.
"They wanted me to be your ending," she said.
Her voice was quiet. Brittle.
"But every time they wiped us, we found each other again."
She turned to me.
"They don't understand it. Love. They think it's a flaw. A malfunction."
"It is," I said softly.
"But it's ours."
She nodded.
Then stepped closer.
Her lips brushed my ear.
> "Then let's make it fatal."
---
Later that night, as I lay awake in my room, the air buzzed.
The vents whined.
And I knew it had started.
The system was waking up.
One last attempt to control us.
But I wasn't the same boy who followed orders anymore.
And Rhea wasn't just a trigger.
We were both something else now.
Something the system hadn't calculated for.
Something it couldn't reset.
Not without dying with us.