---
A kind of need that didn't feel like it belonged to this version of me. Something older. Deeper.
Something they buried.
And she—
She was pulling it out with every step she took.
> "They made me your lock," she whispered, kneeling in front of me. "But you were always the fucking trigger."
She pushed her palm flat to my chest. Right over my heart.
> "Let's see what happens when I open you all the way."
---
My body jolted.
A memory I never had crashed behind my eyes. Me, younger. Her on a medical bed, lips blue. A voice behind glass saying, "Subject V-05 is showing irreversible imprinting. Separate them before instability occurs."
But I hadn't let them.
I'd punched through the glass.
Bleeding.
Screaming.
Holding her like I could restart her heart just by refusing to let go.
---
Back in the present, Rhea was on top of me now. Straddling my thighs. One hand curled around the back of my neck.
> "Do you remember what you said to me the first time they tried to wipe us?"
She didn't wait for me to answer.
Her mouth hovered over mine, breath ghosting between us.
> "You said you'd rather burn alive with me than be clean without me."
> "You said I was the only thing worth becoming a monster for."
Lightning flashed. Her pupils dilated, wild, ravenous.
> "So come on, Vale. Be mine."
> "Break for me."
---
I surged up, kissing her like the world was ending and we were its executioners.
There was blood in the kiss. I didn't know whose. Didn't care.
Her nails tore down my back. My hand twisted in her hair.
Our bodies moved like they'd done this a thousand times.
Maybe we had.
Maybe every reset ended the same way:
Her in my lap.
Me on my knees.
Both of us addicted to a pain we didn't know how to live without.
---
After, we didn't speak.
We lay in the dark.
Her head on my chest. My fingers tracing the number 17 etched in ink at the base of her spine.
A number I hadn't put there.
---
Then, her whisper:
> "They're watching again."
I tensed.
She sat up, the sheet falling to her waist, exposing skin littered with bruises and codes.
Her eyes weren't empty now.
They were glowing.
Faint. Like static.
> "I think I did something," she said, like she was afraid of her own voice. "I think I rewrote myself last time."
> "What do you mean?"
She turned her face slowly toward me.
There was something in her expression I hadn't seen before.
Not fear.
Not love.
Recognition.
> "I think I'm not Rhea anymore."
> "I think I'm the original."
The thunder outside stopped.
Just—
Stopped.
Like someone had hit mute on the sky itself.
Then, somewhere inside the walls, a mechanical click echoed—like a vault being unlocked.
My chest seized.
A cold voice, genderless and distant, whispered from the intercom:
> "Subject V-00 identified. Convergence breach confirmed."
> "Awaken Subject A-00."
I looked at her.
But she was already gone.
Standing by the door.
Naked. Bloody. Beautiful.
Smiling like she finally remembered who she was—and what she came back to finish.
Then—
She whispered it.
A name I hadn't heard before.
Maybe mine.
Maybe hers.
I didn't understand it.
But my bones did.
EPILOGUE :
The video reel played in silence.
A boy. A girl. A hallway.
Over and over.
Sometimes they smiled.
Sometimes they fought.
Sometimes… they bled.
The scenes glitched—looped too cleanly to be real. Every version carefully edited. Every version ending before the kiss, before the scream, before the gun.
The technician watching didn't speak.
She just wrote in the margin of the last page:
> "Subject A-03 is deviating faster." "Subject V-05 is no longer responding to resets."
And beneath that, one final note:
> "They're remembering things we never showed them."
---
Elsewhere, Adrian sat at the edge of his dorm bed, shirt bloodstained, eyes wide open.
The mirror in front of him was cracked.
His hands wouldn't stop shaking.
> "This isn't real," he whispered.
But he didn't believe it anymore.
Not after what he saw.
Not after the hallway beneath the chapel. Not after Rhea touched the scars behind his ear and whispered his number like it still belonged to her.
---
Rhea stood on the school roof.
The wind pulled at her coat, but she didn't shiver.
In her hand, a key.
And in her notebook, a line circled over and over again:
> "Do not unlock Subject Zero."
She tore the page out.
Let it drift into the air.
Then, softly, she smiled.
---
Far below the school, in a lab they'd buried in blueprints and lies, a sealed chamber released a single breath of cold air.
The screen lit up.
> ID: [REDACTED] STATUS: WAKING
And in the static, a voice whispered.
Not Adrian's.
Not Rhea's.
Something older.
Something that had been waiting for them to remember.
> "If they were designed to destroy each other… why do they keep choosing love?"
There was no funeral. No mourning. No ashes scattered to the wind.
Because St. Augustine's never really burned.
The fire had been real, yes. But the destruction? Contained. Rewritten. Sanitized. Like everything else here.
We were still standing in the ruins. Only now, the ruins looked like us.
---
One week later.
Rhea hadn't spoken to me since the explosion. Not out loud. Not directly.
She moved like a ghost in the corridors, her eyes never quite meeting mine, her gloved fingers always twitching at her sides like she was rewinding herself. Her hair had grown slightly. Her uniform was the same.
But she wasn't.
And I wasn't sure I was either.
The new headmaster arrived on a Thursday.
He was too young to be in charge, too polished to have lived through a fire, and too precise in how he looked at people—as if we were already being measured again.
His name was Dr. Caleb Virelle.
That last name sent a shot of cold through my spine.
He introduced himself during assembly like this:
> "St. Augustine's remains a sanctuary of progress and excellence. Despite recent… disturbances, we are rebuilding stronger than ever. Change is not a setback. It's the evolution of control."
He smiled at me. Directly.
Like he already knew who I was.
...
End of Volume One