> ⚠️ Content Warning: This chapter contains mature themes, including psychological manipulation, obsessive behavior, and intimate scenes. Reader discretion advised.
The sky above St. Augustine's was the color of static.
It had rained all morning, but the clouds refused to break. Everything was damp. The halls hummed with half-whispers, students avoiding eye contact like the walls themselves were listening.
I sat in the back of Literature, unread book open in my lap, staring through the glass at the floodlit courtyard. The cracks in the pavement looked like veins. Like something beneath the surface was trying to claw its way out.
They said the fire had been "contained." That no one died. That the incident had been "handled."
But there were new surveillance nodes in every hallway now. Silver orbs that blinked red when you passed beneath them.
And people—they changed too.
Some walked slower. Some stopped speaking altogether.
Some didn't come back.
---
Rhea hadn't spoken to me in days.
Not really.
She sat two rows ahead, shoulders taut, hair pinned back like she was trying to forget she had ever let it down.
I could still taste her. Still feel the way her breath had hitched when I—
"Mr. Vale."
I blinked.
The teacher's voice didn't belong here. Too normal. Too rehearsed.
"Would you care to read the next passage?"
I glanced at the book in front of me. Othello. Irony.
Rhea didn't turn around. But her hand clenched the desk.
I read. My voice was steady. Mechanical. The words sounded like they belonged to someone else:
> "O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on."
Laughter.
Not mine. Not hers.
From the ceiling.
No one else reacted.
Just me.
---
The system had changed its voice.
Used to be sterile. Predictable.
Now it sounded like me.
---
Later, in the corridor, Rhea brushed past me without looking. Her fingers grazed mine for less than a second, but it was deliberate.
There was something tucked into my palm.
I didn't look until I was alone.
It was a torn corner of notebook paper. Faint ink. Her handwriting, slanted and sharp:
> "Follow the pattern. Not the memory."
Below it, a name:
Caleb.
And a room number I didn't recognize.
---
I went after lights-out.
St. Augustine's after midnight was another world. The cameras blinked less frequently. Some didn't blink at all.
I moved quiet. Like the shadows knew my name.
Room 302. West wing. An old dorm that had supposedly been shut down after a "mold outbreak."
I knocked.
Nothing.
Then: a voice.
"You shouldn't be here."
I turned.
He was thin, pale, with ink-stained fingers and eyes that didn't blink enough.
"Caleb?"
He stared at me for a long time. Then nodded.
"You're Subject A-03."
My blood turned to ice.
"I don't go by that."
"Doesn't matter. They still do."
He stepped aside and let me in.
---
His room looked like a conspiracy theory exploded.
Strings on corkboards. Redacted files. Surveillance footage printed out in grainy black-and-white.
In the center: a map of the school. But not just the visible parts.
There were lower levels. Access corridors. Hidden elevators.
And dates.
Dozens of dates.
"These are loops," Caleb said, tapping a cluster of them.
"Resets."
"You and Rhea—you're on your seventeenth."
I laughed. Not because it was funny. Because it was horrifyingly familiar.
"She told me."
"Did she tell you about the ones where you killed her?"
My heart stopped.
"She dies in almost every one," Caleb said.
"But she always comes back."
I sank into a chair.
"Why?"
He pointed to another board.
It was filled with photos. All of me. All of her.
Different versions.
In some, I looked like a soldier. In others, she wore white coats.
"Because you're the fail-safe," he said.
"And she's the trigger."
---
Back in my room, I stared at the ceiling for hours.
Rhea's words repeated like a pulse:
> "Follow the pattern. Not the memory."
What if what we remembered wasn't real?
What if what we felt was?
---
In the mirror, the mark on my collarbone was darker again.
Not ink. Not scar.
A code.
A door.
And something on the other side had started knocking.
The next morning, I got a letter.
Slipped under my door. No return name. No handwriting.
Just one line typed on a clean, white strip of paper:
> You're being watched. Again.
> "What if you're not just remembering, Adrian?"
"What do you mean?"
"What if the real you never came back?"
---
The letter burned in my hand.
You're being watched. Again.
I stared at it long enough for the words to imprint themselves behind my eyelids. When I blinked, they stayed.
Rhea was still asleep—if you could call it that. She'd curled up in the art room under a frayed old tarp, one hand still wrapped around the scalpel tucked under her sleeve.
I didn't wake her.
Instead, I walked. Quiet. Slow. Every creak of the wood beneath my shoes felt like a siren.
I needed answers.
And there was only one person left alive I could get them from.
Dr. Harrow.
---
The infirmary was colder than it should've been.
Too clean. Too silent. The scent of antiseptic bit at my tongue.
I didn't knock. I opened the door, stepped in, and shut it behind me. Locked it.
Dr. Harrow didn't look surprised to see me.
She sat behind her desk like a statue carved out of frost, her silver-rimmed glasses catching the overhead light. Her hands folded neatly over a pale folder labeled:
> VALE, ADRIAN. — Clearance Level: 6
"Should've known you'd come eventually," she said softly.
I walked forward, slow and deliberate, until the edge of her desk kissed my waist.
"What did you do to me?"
Her smile was brittle. "Nothing you didn't sign off on."
> "I was twelve."
"Even children can consent—if the contract is rewritten enough times."
I slammed my fist on the desk. Hard. The folder didn't move.
"What was Project Fenrir?"
She tilted her head. "A solution. You were unstable. So was she."
Rhea.
My pulse spiked. "What did you do to her?"
She didn't blink. "Rhea wasn't supposed to come back. She's... incomplete. You were our perfect result. She was a failed prototype."
I took a step back like she'd hit me.
A failed prototype.
But Rhea had survived. Fought. Remembered.
And me?
I hadn't even known I was a lie.
---
She slid the folder toward me. "Go on. Take it."
I hesitated.
"This is what you wanted, isn't it? The truth?"
My fingers curled around the edge of the file.
It was thick. Dozens of pages. Photographs. Brain scans. Observation notes. A signature that was mine but younger, shakier.
I flipped through the first page.
Subject Name: Adrian Vale
Conditioning Start Date: March 12
Memory Alteration Trials: 19
Success Rate: 97%
Current Identity Stability: Pending
Emotional Attachments: Unstable. Requires neutralization.