> ⚠️ Content Warning: This chapter contains mature themes, including psychological manipulation, obsessive behavior, and intimate scenes. Reader discretion advised.
Rhea
She stood across from me, hands folded, white coat pristine.
No gloves.
No scars.
And in her eyes—none of the shattered pieces I had learned to live with.
She looked like power. Precision. Control.
And I hated her.
> "Is that what I was?" I whispered.
She smiled like a knife.
"No," she said. "That's what you still are."
---
Adrian
I watched Rhea stare at her former self.
The lab coat. The clinical posture. The lack of warmth.
She wasn't just looking at the person she used to be.
She was looking at everything they erased.
Everything they punished her for.
> For loving me.
The white-coated Rhea turned toward me, tilting her head.
"You were never supposed to become self-aware," she said. "The Adrian in the files died during Cycle 11. You're an unstable replica."
Rhea flinched.
But I didn't.
> "Then I guess I'm unstable."
I walked to the real her.
The broken one.
The one with dirt under her nails and blood in her memories.
And I kissed her hand.
---
Rhea
She didn't like that.
I could see it—the way her smile twitched. Like she'd lost something.
"You're clinging to the ghost of a mistake," she said sharply. "I made you in a moment of emotional breach. A lapse in judgment."
Adrian stepped in front of me.
> "Then I'm glad she broke."
The words hit her like bullets.
Because I remembered now—this version of me never cried. Never flinched. Never loved.
---
Echo Collapse: Memory Synchronization Incomplete
> Subject-RHEA (Control) — Rejected Merge
Subject-RHEA (Echo-000) — Dominant Host
---
The Mirror Cracks
White-coat Rhea moved forward, hand outstretched.
"You can still come back," she said. "We can overwrite the damage. Fix you."
But I shook my head.
"No," I said softly. "You're the damage."
And I smashed the mirror.
---
Adrian
She didn't even look when she did it.
Glass rained like stars—cutting her palms, her cheek.
But Rhea didn't bleed like others.
The red in her was darker.
Older.
Like she wasn't just a girl—but a memory that had refused to die.
And in the reflection, I saw them flicker—all the other versions.
Some smiling.
Some screaming.
All of them gone.
Except this one.
> Mine.
---
System Log: Terminal Conflict Engaged
> Project ECHO now under emotional threat.
Merge collapse predicted in 4.2 minutes.
All containment units ordered to self-destruct upon breach.
---
Rhea
The glass crackled under my boots.
She was gone.
Not dead.
Just deleted.
Like a line of code cut from its script.
But her voice echoed in my skull:
> "You'll regret choosing love over logic."
I turned to Adrian.
Held his face in my hands.
> "If I die, I want it to be as me."
He stared at me like I'd already been chosen.
> "Then let's make sure you don't."
---
Warning: Surface Memory Breach Approaching
> System exposure in 02:57
Facility lockdown failed
Core files rewriting…
---
Adrian
We ran.
Past the tanks. Past the remnants of versions that had no names.
And behind us—
The lab began to scream.
Lights shattered.
Ceilings groaned.
Reality itself bent like paper in a storm.
But Rhea's hand in mine didn't shake.
Not once.
And I knew:
They had tried to create the perfect subject.
But what they made—
> Was a girl they couldn't control.
And a boy who loved her anyway.
Adrian
The exit was just ahead.
Not the front gates — those were gone, buried in collapsing steel.
This was different.
A passage behind the mirrored tanks, where the walls bled wires and the lights turned crimson.
Everything groaned like it was alive and dying at the same time.
But we ran.
Rhea didn't speak.
She didn't need to.
I could feel it in her fingers — the tremor. The tension.
And the silence that always came before she broke.
> "We're almost out," I whispered.
She didn't answer.
But she squeezed my hand.
---
Rhea
There was no countdown.
Only screaming steel and the warning voice repeating like a lullaby:
> "System destabilized. Core breach detected. Evacuate immediately."
They didn't make exits for girls like me.
Girls they locked up.
Erased.
Rewritten.
But Adrian was pulling me forward like he didn't care.
Like we weren't seconds from dying.
Like if we could just get to the surface, we'd be clean again.
We wouldn't.
But I let him believe it.
---
System Log: Final Host Override
> Subject Echo-000 — Emotional dominance confirmed.
All prior versions terminated.
Core files corrupted beyond repair.
Initiating facility collapse…
---
Adrian
When we reached the final chamber, the door was already half-caved.
Behind us, the walls were buckling, sparks raining down like fireflies.
> "Can you fit through?" I asked.
Rhea hesitated.
Then she turned.
Not to me.
To the console behind us — flickering, smoking, still alive.
"What are you doing—?"
> "They'll come back," she said. "The files. The program. The tanked versions. If we don't erase it all—"
I grabbed her shoulder.
"You are the file, Rhea."
She looked at me.
And smiled — not sad, not broken. Whole.
> "Exactly."
---
Rhea
I stepped back into the center of the room.
Where it all began.
Where they made me a subject. A ghost. A thing.
Now I was choosing to be something else.
> "Go," I told him.
Adrian didn't move.
"Not without you."
"Adrian—"
But he was already typing.
Overriding locks.
Setting the final failsafe.
> "Then we die as ourselves."
---
Surface Breach Initiated
> Manual override accepted.
Host memories unrecoverable.
Final identity: RHEA VIRELLE / ADRIAN VALE
Termination in 00:34…
---
Adrian
We didn't kiss.
There wasn't time.
We just held hands in the dark.
While the lab screamed and the ceiling caved.
While the system rewrote itself one last time.
And in the end—
She looked at me.
Eyes clear.
Voice steady.
> "I was never yours."
"No," I whispered. "You were mine because you chose to be."
---
Final System Log
> PROJECT: ECHO – TERMINATED
ALL HOSTS DELETED
NO SURVIVING DATA
Or so they thought.
---
Six Hours Later
Somewhere in the woods, far from the ruins of the lab, a boy opened his eyes.
And beside him, a girl whispered:
> "We made it."
Rhea
The motel smelled like bleach.
The wallpaper was peeling. The air conditioning rattled every ten minutes like a dying heartbeat. Adrian stood by the window with the blinds cracked just enough to see the highway.
I sat cross-legged on the bed, staring at the veins on my wrist like they held secrets.
They did.
I wasn't supposed to remember them.
But something in me was waking up—something worse than fear. Worse than pain.
> Recognition.
A hand. A hallway. A child's scream cut off too early.
"Do you remember this place?" I asked.
Adrian didn't turn.
But his fingers curled at the windowsill.
"Yes."
He said it like a wound.
---
Adrian
St. Augustine's Motel used to be something else.
A transit safehouse for test subjects who failed their metrics. If they didn't meet performance, they were sent here for "reconditioning."
That was the word they used.
I remembered red tiles. A metal drain.
I remembered Rhea's hair soaked through, her face turned away so I wouldn't see her cry.
And I remembered this:
> I was the one who stood there and watched.
Because I wasn't hers then.
I was theirs.
"Adrian," she said softly behind me.
I didn't turn.
I couldn't.
Because she would've seen the look on my face, and she would've known.
---
System Log: Memory Crosslink Breach
> WARNING: Unauthorized memory pathways detected. Adrian Vale and Subject Echo-000 share classified experience logs. Neural sync violation: Level 2. Recommendation: Wipe and isolate.
Initiate Interference Sequence.
---
Rhea
The lights flickered.
Only for a moment—but my blood went cold.
I stood up, moving to the bathroom mirror.
My reflection didn't smile back.
It blinked.
Out of sync.
And then it spoke—but not aloud.
"They're inside you."
I stumbled back.
"No," I whispered. "No, I burned it down—"
The girl in the mirror didn't look like me anymore.
She looked like the other one.
The copy.
Clean.
Cold.
Empty.
"If he knew what you did…"
I covered the mirror with a towel.
Because I remembered now.
I hadn't just escaped.
> I'd killed the others to do it.
---
Adrian
When I heard her scream, I kicked the door in.
She was in the bathroom, crouched on the floor, sobbing with her hands over her ears.
"Rhea—!"
She didn't hear me.
Or she didn't want to.
"I see them," she whispered. "I see what I did."
And I froze.
Because for a moment—I saw it too.
Blood. An alarm. The version of her with a broken neck.
The one she left behind.
Rhea looked up at me with wild, red eyes.
"I'm not who you think I am," she whispered.
> "I wasn't the first. I was the last one who survived".
Adrian
She wouldn't let me touch her.
Her hands were shaking, her breathing uneven. The towel she'd used to cover the mirror lay crumpled on the floor like a discarded version of her—soaked with sweat, with memory, with everything she couldn't say out loud.
> "They weren't copies," Rhea whispered.
Not at first.
"They were… trials."
I didn't speak.
Because if I did, I wasn't sure I'd be able to stop myself from falling apart.
"They made us watch each other," she said. "When one failed, the others were shown what not to do."
Her voice cracked.
"And I watched them die. One by one. Not because they made mistakes… but because they remembered."
---
Rhea
There were seven.
Not all girls. Not all even human in the end.
Some of us started with names. I lost mine early.
Echo-000.
It sounded clinical. Empty. Easy to erase.
But even that wasn't enough.
They wanted loyalty. Predictability. Obedience. Love, if it could be manufactured.
Adrian was assigned later. Not to love me. But to test if I could be loved.
They paired him with every version.
Including the final one.
> The one I had to kill.
Because she looked too much like me.
Because she acted like me.
Because they programmed her with all my softest parts.
She almost fooled him.
But not quite.
Not enough.
Because here he was.
And I was still breathing.
---