Her perfume smelled like something familiar. Like before.
"You're Adrian Vale," she said, like she already knew me.
"And you're not just here to study," I replied.
Her smile didn't fade.
"Careful," she whispered, voice like honey. "Not everything designed to break you looks like a threat."
---
Rhea watched Lira the way an animal watches a storm.
Not afraid.
Just... already calculating who would survive it.
"She knows you," Rhea said.
"They sent her to divide us."
Rhea looked at me. And for a terrifying moment, I wondered if it was working.
"Then don't let her."
---
I started dreaming again.
Not dreams.
Memories.
But they weren't mine.
They were versions of me. Versions that had loved Rhea and lost her. Versions that had betrayed her. Versions that had burned for her and been burned by her.
Each dream ended the same.
> Rhea screaming my name. My hands soaked in blood. And then—nothing.
---
One night, I woke up to find her gone.
Just her shoes left by the window. Her file left open.
Inside it, a note:
> "If I don't come back, don't follow. That means they found me."
I didn't hesitate.
I ran.
Through the old west wing. Past the burned classrooms. Into the underground tunnels beneath St. Augustine's.
The air there was colder than the rest of the school. Like the place itself was a secret that had never forgiven us for surviving it.
I found her.
Held down.
Two masked figures. White suits. One with a syringe, the other holding her head still.
She wasn't struggling.
She was waiting.
> For me.
---
I didn't hesitate.
I became the thing they designed me to be.
The syringe hit the wall. One body crumpled. The second tried to scream, but I broke his throat first.
It wasn't clean.
It wasn't humane.
It was the kind of violence that only comes from knowing what's been taken from you.
Rhea didn't flinch.
She reached for me with blood on her palms and kissed me like the world was ending.
"They wanted to see if you'd kill for me," she said.
I looked down at the corpses.
"Now they know."
---
We burned the bodies.
Erased the tapes.
Lira saw us on the way back.
She smiled.
"Well done," she said. "Loop 18 is going off-script."
---
Later that night, I found a photo in my desk drawer.
It hadn't been there before.
It showed me. Standing in a corridor. Watching myself.
On the back:
> "Consciousness breach detected. Subject A-03 approaching mirror stage. Recommend reset."
I burned it.
But the words stayed in my head.
> Mirror stage.
> Who the hell had I really been before all of this?
And why did I feel like the real version of me hadn't woken up yet
Time fractured after the photo.
I didn't sleep. Couldn't. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the back of that photo, the scrawl of the phrase:
> "Monitor subjects reengaged. Pattern unstable. Proximity persists."
We were being watched. Again. Still.
Or maybe we never stopped.
The idea sank its claws into me and refused to let go. Even the walls of St. Augustine's felt closer, like the whole school was holding its breath.
I left my dorm before dawn, the air sharp with frost. Rhea had vanished again—no note, no message. Just a silence that wasn't absence.
It was the kind of silence that meant she was protecting something.
Or preparing.
---
I found Caleb by the west tower—he was a new face, one of the scholarship transfers from the Foundation's program. Too smart. Too quiet. The kind of student who watched everything but spoke like he'd already calculated your response.
And he was staring up at the old bell.
"What are you looking for?" I asked.
He didn't turn. "The bell tower hasn't worked since the fire ten years ago. But someone's been up there. You hear it too?"
I did.
The low, metallic hum. Barely audible. Like a system warming up.
He glanced at me then, unreadable. "You're part of it, aren't you?"
"What?"
He stepped closer. "You and the girl. The ones who weren't supposed to survive reset. You two are the trigger loop."
I didn't answer.
Because I didn't have to.
He pulled a slip of paper from his coat. Coordinates. Room number. Time: Midnight.
Then, just as quickly, he disappeared down the corridor.
---
Midnight.
The room he marked was one of the sealed labs below the east wing. Boarded, officially condemned. But when I pulled the panel away, the lock disengaged like it had been waiting for me.
Inside: flickering monitors, rusted consoles, and walls that had seen too much.
Rhea was already there.
"I told you not to come alone," she said softly.
"You knew I would."
She didn't deny it. Her fingers danced across a broken terminal. Something sparked. The screens lit.
> SUBJECT: A-03 | STATUS: UNSTABLE
SUBJECT: V-05 | STATUS: INTERLINKED | EMOTIONAL CO-DEVIATION DETECTED
ALERT: SYSTEM FAILURE IMMINENT
I stared.
> Interlinked.
She looked up. "The school isn't a school. It's a pressure test. We're variables in an equation that refuses to die. Every time we remember each other, the system has to recalibrate. And now... it's running out of time."
"Then let it break."
She shook her head. "No. Adrian, they're going to reset again. Tonight. That's what this room was—an old version of the observation chamber. It wasn't just cameras. It was control."
I touched the glass.
There were faint scratch marks. Not random. Like someone had carved from the inside.
> REMEMBER ME.
My chest tightened.
"Then we don't run," I said. "We fight it."
"We can't fight what we don't understand."
"You understand it."
She hesitated.
Then slowly opened a small, rusted box by the console.
Inside: photos. Dozens of them.
All versions of us.
In labs. Classrooms. Crying. Bleeding. Laughing. Kissing. Dying.
Some were marked. Some had red Xs. Some had numbers in the corners.
She passed me one.
It was us—seven years younger. She had a scar across her cheek I didn't recognize.
> "We met before St. Augustine's," she said quietly. "They wiped that timeline because I didn't follow my protocol. I fell for you."
"Again?"
"No. For the first time."
The light flickered.
And then a new file appeared on the screen.
> PROTOCOL 0:
INITIATING FINAL CONVERGENCE LOOP.
The console shut down.
Behind us, the door slammed shut.
Locks engaged.
> We were in it now.
The last loop.
---
Back in my room, I couldn't sleep. I didn't even try.
I spread the photos across my desk, trying to piece together what story they told. Every version of us. Every failure. Every moment we were supposed to forget but somehow didn't.
There was a pattern.
A word that kept reappearing on the edge of the photos.
> "Lyrah."
Not Rhea.
> Lyrah.
My hand trembled. I knew that name. Not just from here. From somewhere buried.
Somewhere before.
The truth wasn't coming in clues anymore. It was coming in floods.
And this time, I was going to let it drown me if I had to.
The halls were different now.
I didn't mean architecturally. St. Augustine's had always been too perfect—symmetrical and sterile, its white walls meant to erase every trace of who we used to be. But something had shifted.
There were gaps.
Flickering lights that didn't used to flicker. Lockers that opened on their own. Hallways I didn't remember walking through until I was already inside them.
Like the school was folding in on itself.
Or unfolding us.
---
Rhea hadn't spoken since we got back.
Her silence wasn't cold. It was calculated.
She moved differently now, like every step was measured against something only she could see. The way her eyes scanned the ceiling vents. The way she avoided certain classrooms. The way she started writing in a notebook she claimed not to own.
She was unpeeling.
And I couldn't tell if it was by choice.
---
We met in the art room.
Because it had no cameras. Or so we thought.
She pressed a slip of paper into my palm, but didn't let go.
"Read it. Memorize it. Burn it."
I looked down. Five lines. Not even full sentences.
> MEMORY 03 REPEATED IN SUBJECTS A + V. PROGRESSING BEYOND SEDATION RESPONSE. SEVER BOND BEFORE 04 INITIATES. PRIMARY THREAT: ATTACHMENT. SOLUTION: RESET OR REMOVE.
My mouth went dry.
"They want to cut it off again."
She nodded. "But this time it won't work."
"Why not?"
Rhea leaned closer. Her voice was barely a whisper.
"Because something woke up in you. And they didn't authorize it."
---
That night, the power flickered. Then died.
Emergency lights kicked in—blue and dim, casting the school in a ghost's reflection. Doors clicked open in places that should've stayed sealed. Files appeared in the inbox of my tablet, marked PRIVATE. One was a video.
Rhea. Sedated. Crying silently.
Then me—walking toward her. Smiling.
Not the me I remembered.
The version that obeyed.
I slammed the screen down.
"They're showing me what they took out."
---