We woke up in a forest.
No ID cards.
No names.
Just sunrise and wind and silence that didn't try to erase us.
Rhea curled against my side, asleep.
I watched the sky, wondering if it would speak.
It didn't.
And that was the most beautiful part of all.
Rhea's pov
The forest didn't end.
For three days, we walked. No maps. No signals. No buildings.
No cameras.
Just trees. And silence. And the ache that never quite left my bones.
Adrian said this was freedom.
But I knew better.
> "You still feel it, don't you?" I asked.
He nodded. Once.
> "Like we're not done yet."
---
The nights were the worst.
I dreamed of corridors that bled. Of loops that never stopped.
Of a girl with my face standing at the edge of a cliff, whispering the name I'd forgotten.
Lyrah.
Every time I heard it, my chest tightened.
I wasn't her.
But she was inside me.
And she wanted out.
---
Adrian's pov
She screamed in her sleep again.
Same dream.
Same name.
When I held her, she didn't cry.
She just whispered,
> "They buried a version of me too deep. Now she's clawing her way back."
I didn't know what to say.
So I said the only thing I could:
> "Then I'll love both of you."
Even the broken parts.
Even the dangerous ones.
Even the parts they never meant for me to meet.
---
We found a town on the fourth day.
A place called Bellhaven.
Too quiet.
Too… empty.
It was like everyone had left five minutes before we arrived. Coffee mugs still warm. Doors unlocked. Radios playing soft static.
Rhea stopped in front of a bulletin board.
She tore off a flyer.
Her hand trembled.
> "They were here."
A Foundation logo. Buried beneath a community event ad.
Still monitoring.
Still watching.
> "We didn't escape," she whispered.
> "We just walked into another version of control."
That night, she disappeared.
I found her in the middle of the town square, standing beneath a flickering streetlight.
Not crying.
But close.
> "She remembers everything," she said.
> "Lyrah. The version before all the resets. The first."
I didn't ask how she knew.
Her voice wasn't hers anymore.
It was older.
Colder.
> "They thought they could erase her. But she made a copy."
> "In me."
And then she looked at me—
Not like Rhea.
Not like the girl who had run from the system with me.
But like a stranger who knew everything I'd ever done.
> "Do you still love me," she asked, "if I'm not me anymore?"
---
Adrian's pov
I stepped closer.
Placed a hand over her pulse.
Still beating.
Still human.
> "You're still Rhea."
> "And whoever Lyrah is… she didn't survive all this. You did."
> "That's who I love."
She closed her eyes.
But when she opened them—
They were different.
Brighter.
Sharper.
> "Then you'll have to love a girl who's about to destroy everything that made her."
And I said:
> "I already do."
---
System Log: EMERGENT ENTITY RECOGNIZED.
> CODE: L-01 REACTIVATED.
> THREAT LEVEL: MAXIMUM.
> INITIATE HUNTER SEQUENCE.
Rhea's pov
The smoke hadn't cleared, but I could already hear them.
Not footsteps. Not alarms. Something worse.
Whispers.
Dozens of them.
Looping in perfect unison—like the system was reciting a lullaby meant to sedate us back into obedience.
> "You were never real. You were never real. You were never—"
I pressed my palms to my ears.
It didn't help.
The noise wasn't outside. It was coming from inside the vents. The walls. The corners of my mind they'd once called "non-compliant." I clenched my jaw and stood up from the floor of the corridor I'd nearly died in.
Adrian was behind me.
His shirt torn. Blood on his knuckles. Fire in his eyes.
> "Tell me what you need," he said.
And I hated how simple that question sounded.
Because I didn't need escape.
I needed to end this.
---
Adrian's pov
They wanted to write her out.
They always did, once she stopped behaving.
But Rhea never fit into their program because she wasn't a girl they created.
She was the flaw.
The one who didn't forget.
The one who didn't obey.
I followed her through the wreckage of St. Augustine's like a soldier chasing a ghost, because that's what she had become—untouchable, unkillable, necessary.
She didn't flinch when the lights shorted out.
Didn't slow down when another hallway collapsed behind us.
Her hand found the final keycard in the rubble.
> "Sublevel Zero," she said. "The original vault."
My heart stopped.
> "That place doesn't exist."
She looked at me with that half-smile that used to mean danger.
> "Neither do we."
---
We broke in through what was left of the south wing. The passage to Sublevel Zero had been buried in concrete and code, but Rhea found it.
She remembered it.
Even before she opened the rusted panel, I could feel it—her memories crawling over mine. Old blood. A stretcher. A phrase I didn't understand until it shattered through me:
> "You didn't choose to love her. We made sure of it."
---
Inside, the vault wasn't cold.
It pulsed.
A warm, red hum, like something alive had been breathing underground all this time.
Screens blinked to life as we stepped in, one by one—each showing a version of me. Each with a timestamp.
> Subject A-03: Failed to kill emotional tether. Subject A-03: Refused override. Subject A-03: Breach level 7. Subject A-03: In love with the wrong version.
I staggered.
> "They documented every time I chose you."
Rhea stepped beside me.
> "No. They documented every time you refused to stop."
---
In the center of the room, a chair.
Not like the others.
This one was black. Sleek. Worn by history.
Attached to a halo of wires—and a monitor still running.
Not files.
Questions.
> "If Subject A-03 reverts to uncooperative emotional behavior, is deletion viable?" "If Subject V-05 resists seduction protocol, is replacement or integration preferable?" "If both subjects breach containment together…"
The last question blinked. Unanswered.
Then it changed:
> "Are you ready to choose?"
---
Rhea's pov
I sat in the chair.
I don't know why.
Maybe I wanted to know if I was still mine.
The wires clamped around my arms like a whisper.
Adrian shouted something—I didn't