> ⚠️ Content Warning: This chapter contains mature themes, including psychological manipulation, obsessive behavior, and intimate scenes. Reader discretion advised.
Adrian's pov:
There shouldn't have been a door.
Not in that hallway. Not behind the piano room. I'd memorized every blueprint of St. Augustine's—the entire west wing had been sealed off after the fire a decade ago.
But here it was.
A dark, narrow archway. Half-open. And cold air slipping through the gap like something alive.
I didn't call for anyone. I didn't need to. The academy was dead silent. The storm outside rattled the windows like bones.
I stepped inside.
It smelled like old paper. Like ash. Like something older than memory, but carved into the walls.
A single bulb flickered overhead. The room was… wrong. Books lined the shelves, but not in any language I recognized. Surveillance monitors blinked on, one by one, showing feeds that shouldn't exist—Rhea at the edge of the school gates. Rhea in the corridor yesterday. Rhea asleep in her dorm—
Except she never slept there.
I moved toward the monitor.
Then I heard it.
"Don't," said a voice.
I turned so fast my shoulder cracked.
There she was.
Rhea.
But she was wearing a white hospital gown. Her hair longer. Pale. Her wrists wrapped in bandages that looked weeks old.
She didn't blink. Didn't move.
"You're not her," I said.
She tilted her head. "Aren't I?"
I looked back at the screens. One by one, her images disappeared. Static replaced each one until only a black square remained in the center. One line of text glowed in red across the bottom.
> SHE NEVER LEFT.
I grabbed the nearest switch. Pulled it.
Nothing changed.
"Where is she?" My voice cracked. "Where's the real Rhea?"
But the girl was gone.
Not disappeared—evaporated. Like smoke. Like memory.
Like she'd never existed.
A hiss filled the air, slow and mechanical, and the room's far wall began to slide open—revealing a second chamber.
Inside it was a single chair. Bolted to the floor. And restraints.
And on the wall: photos.
Hundreds.
All of me.
Sleeping. Bleeding. Smiling. Screaming.
This wasn't obsession.
This was research.
This was dissection.
And Rhea hadn't been a ghost.
She'd been the one holding the scalpel.
Absolutely. Here's Chapter Fifty-Eight of She Was Never Yours, where the lines between memory, surveillance, and obsession begin to twist into something far more calculated than either Adrian or Rhea ever imagined.
Rhea's pov:
The room was live.
I could feel it humming through the walls—the pulse of dormant machines waking up. Surveillance feeds returning online. The system had recognized him. Just like it was designed to.
Adrian Vale had found the threshold.
And I was the final gatekeeper.
He wasn't supposed to get this far without cracking. Without breaking. Without begging me for the truth. But he hadn't begged. He hadn't even asked. He demanded.
And that was the problem.
The Adrian in front of me was different from the one they'd built.
He was remembering too fast.
And worse—he was remembering wrong.
I stepped back into the control room. My fingers skimmed across the ancient keys. Manual access—offline, untraceable, undetected.
> [ACTIVATE: PROTOCOL MARIONETTE]
The screen blinked once.
> ACCESS DENIED.
Of course. Of course it was. They'd already locked me out.
They knew.
They always knew.
Because this wasn't a story about control anymore. It was a story about letting go.
And they'd rigged it from the start.
---
Adrian's pov:
I stared at the chair in the center of the chamber, trying to decide if I should sit in it—or burn the whole damn thing down.
The photos on the wall hadn't been taken with a regular camera.
Infrared. Heat-mapped. Some with time stamps dating back… five years?
No.
Impossible.
I was sixteen five years ago.
And I hadn't even met Rhea until this year.
Right?
I tried to recall our first meeting.
But suddenly, there was static.
In my head.
As if something had been spliced in—replaced—rewritten.
I gripped the edge of the monitor. My knuckles were white. I scrolled through the interface, searching for anything—any word, any file—that could tell me what this place was.
And then I found it.
A single folder.
> VALE_001: FIRST ITERATION
I clicked.
It opened a subfolder.
> STATUS: ABANDONED
NOTES: SUBJECT 001 SHOWED EARLY SIGNS OF REJECTION.
MEMORY PURGE INCOMPLETE. CONTAINMENT FAILED.
I didn't breathe.
I didn't blink.
The next line:
> OBSERVER: RHEA VIRELLE – CLASSIFIED STATUS: HANDLER / TEST SUBJECT DUAL ASSIGNMENT
Handler.
Not student.
Not girl.
Handler.
My vision blurred. My fingers clenched the edge of the desk so hard it cracked.
Was I ever free?
Had I ever even been real?
---
Rhea's pov:
He knows now.
Not all of it—but enough.
The worst part?
I wasn't even supposed to fall for him. I was supposed to monitor him. Extract behavioral data. Test the limits of control—how far identity could be shaped through isolation, fear, and simulated emotion.
But Adrian Vale had always been a variable.
A broken rule inside a closed system.
That's why he remembered me—before he was supposed to.
That's why I had to finish this.
The door opened behind me.
I didn't turn around. I already knew who it was.
Dr. Marian.
The original architect.
She placed a hand on my shoulder. "You've done well, Rhea."
I shook her off. "Don't lie to me."
Her eyes were ice. "Then don't lie to yourself. You knew he was never yours."
Here is Chapter Fifty-Nine of She Was Never Yours, where Adrian confronts the architect—and uncovers the hidden observer neither he nor Rhea ever expected.
Adrian's pov:
The woman in front of me wasn't part of any memory I had.
Yet my body reacted like it remembered her.
Dr. Marian.
That name alone made something recoil inside my chest.
She stood tall, dressed in gray like a goddamn executioner, with a face carved from granite and eyes that held no warmth. Only precision.
"Adrian," she greeted, like I was a child returning to class after detention. "You're early."
I didn't speak.
My hands were still shaking.
I could see Rhea standing behind her. Frozen. Expression unreadable, as always—but something in the slight twitch of her jaw, the way her eyes refused to meet mine, told me everything I needed to know.
She knew this woman.
She had always known.
"You designed this?" I asked finally. My voice was hoarse. "The school. The systems. Me?"
Dr. Marian tilted her head. "No, Adrian. You designed you. We simply… removed the unnecessary parts."
I nearly laughed.
But it came out more like a gasp.
"Removed," I echoed. "You erased my memories. You made me forget—everything."
She smiled, just faintly. "Only the things that made you fragile."
My fists clenched. "You turned me into a machine."
"No," she corrected. "You were already one. We simply refined the gears."
---
Rhea's pov:
There was no protocol for this.
No script.
No guide.
Adrian wasn't just breaking down—he was breaking through. Tearing apart the simulation. Unraveling every layer we'd wrapped around him to keep him stable.
Dr. Marian stepped toward him, perfectly calm. "You've been watched since you were twelve. Did you think the scholarship, the academy, the prestige was coincidence?"
"You used me."
"I built you."
His silence was the loudest sound in the room.
Then he turned to me.
The look in his eyes—
I'd seen rage in him before. Possession. Hunger. But never betrayal.
Not like this.
"Was any of it real?" he asked.
I didn't answer.
Because the truth was worse than a lie.
It was real.
Too real.
That's what ruined everything.
---
Unknown Surveillance Log – Observer C2
> Subject 001 has reached Phase IV Recollection. Subject 019 (Virelle, Rhea) has deviated from original directive. Architect (Dr. Marian) has reengaged site protocols. Security breach predicted within 72 hours.
> Initiate Observer Override.
> Begin Protocol: WIDOW'S WAKE
> -- END TRANSMISSION -
Adrian's pov:
I didn't know how I got outside.
One second, I was staring into the face of the woman who built my cage.
The next, I was standing in the freezing courtyard, the sound of alarms swallowing the sky.
The lights in the west tower flickered erratically. The glass above the observatory cracked like a spiderweb. Everything around me—the pristine campus, the perfect order—was unraveling.
And then the voice came.
Not from a person.
From the system.
> "Protocol: Widow's Wake initiated. Please proceed to designated clearance zones. Memory integrity breach confirmed."
I turned.
Rhea stood in the center of the courtyard, her black hair soaked in rain, eyes wide—but not with fear.
With decision.
She was holding something in her hand.
A keycard. Red-striped. High access.
She tossed it to me.
"They're going to wipe you again," she said, her voice low. "Level seven clearance. That's how they do it. Through the server room beneath the library."
"And you're telling me this because…?"
"I can't protect you anymore, Adrian."
Lightning split the sky.
For a second, she looked like something out of a dream I used to have.
Something I wasn't supposed to remember.
---
Rhea's pov:
I broke every rule.
Every instruction.
But when I saw him start to remember—really remember—it wasn't duty I felt.
It was dread.
Because if he remembered what I was supposed to be… he wouldn't love me. He'd destroy me.
And I would let him.
We ran through the back halls like fugitives, the alarms blaring overhead. Surveillance drones buzzed past the windows. The academy no longer felt like a school. It felt like a battlefield.
He grabbed my wrist at the edge of the staircase.
"Who else is watching us?" he asked.
I didn't answer.
Because I didn't know how to explain that the watchers didn't live outside the school.
They lived beneath it.
---
Unknown Surveillance Log – Observer S9
> Subject 001 has accessed unauthorized corridor Δ–17. Subject 019 has initiated contact breach with non-operational observer protocol. AI node "MOTHER" reports instability in timeline anchor points.
> Secondary observers initiated. Project: MARIONETTE is no longer under passive observation.
> Engage Architect Lockdown.
> Initiate Synthetic Recollection Protocol.
> All assets: prepare for the collapse of St. Augustine's Simulacrum.