Lennox Greenhouse — 5:42 AM
Gene stepped into the greenhouse, breathing in the misting air. The scent of damp soil clung to the silence, mingling with the sharper tang of iron. The glass walls had begun to catch the earliest light, streaked with condensation. Everything looked untouched.
Her eyes found the shirt instantly. It was a folded shirt, placed with care on the long wooden bench by the central planter. Dark fabric, frayed at the hem. Familiar. She had seen it dozens of times on Igor's shoulders, always slightly too tight across his back. Now it lay stiff with dried blood, the collar curled awkwardly, as if it had been peeled off in haste or violence.
She approached slowly, not touching it, just looking.
She saw the words, scratched into the metal beneath the bench, gouged deep with something sharp and unsteady.
WHICH ONE OF YOU REMEMBERS
Her chest tightened, and the greenhouse blurred around her for a moment, no glass, no dirt floor, no hanging vines. Just memory.
Silas Marlow's voice echoed through the infirmary hallway, hard and surgical.
"Subject Eight is compliant again. No further intervention required."
She was listening, jaw clenched, hands balled at her sides, just outside the door. Marlow had never said Igor's name, not once, just that label, that number. As if he were equipment.
Gene never called him that. Not even in her notes. Not once.
She remembered his face that night. Igor's eyes were open, but vacant, as if he was hearing someone from far away, someone buried deep in his mind.
A shirt left as a token, a message carved in accusation.
Which one of you remembers?
The implication dug beneath her skin. Did he think she'd forgotten? Did some part of him resent her for not doing more? Or, was it a question to himself?
Was Igor trying to remember who he was? Did he know something?
She wasn't sure..
She saw the fresh blood on the shirt. Whoever had left it, whether it was the man she once tried to reach or the thing that might have replaced him, wanted her to see it.
Gene stepped back, feeling her pulse thud in her throat.
If Igor was fractured, and if some split part of him was watching, he wrote a warning, and maybe a cry for help.
Gene traced the bloodstained fabric, then looked at the cryptic message beneath it. Her mind raced back to the last time she'd glimpsed Igor, not the blank, controlled shell the White Angels intended, but something else. Flickers of hesitation, moments where his gaze wavered.
She wondered if the fractures she sensed were signs that his mind wasn't fully locked down. What if mind control hadn't erased everything? What if it had left him a tool with a mind of its own?
She was unsettled by the thought that fragments of who he was remained alive, conflicted, and fighting back deep inside. If true, Igor wasn't just a weapon anymore. He was a man caught between two selves, and that liminal space was a dangerous, unpredictable place.
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Outside the Greenhouse, Igor's POV:
Igor moved within the shadows, silent as breath.
He felt the sharp, burning pain in his wings, the cruel price of snapping the nerve anchors just hours ago. He had ripped through the internal restraints with raw strength, ignoring the agony, desperate for freedom.
He saw her, Gene. He saw her through the condensation-glazed panels, her silhouette framed in fractured morning light, still as glass, staring down at the shirt he had left. His shirt. He had folded it with care, but the blood had ruined that gesture. It didn't matter. It was never meant as comfort. Only as proof.
She stood in the same way she had weeks ago, when he still sat like a half-man on the medical cot, eyes dull, ribs taped. When she said nothing but looked at him as if he mattered. She hadn't called him Subject Eight. Not even once.
Marlow, his handler, the watcher, tried to smooth over the cracks when the machine started to break. Subject Eight.
The man burning in the incinerator said that name, but before that, Igor hadn't heard it in weeks. He hadn't heard it since Marlow hissed it low like a curse, trying to tighten the collar. Trying to flip the switch back on.
The name itched, burned, and writhed under his skin.
He wondered if he hated the number more than the silence that followed.
He didn't know which came first: the man or the designation; the name or the weapon; the self or the submission.
He felt the world around him shatter, sharp sounds piercing the silence, flickering lights stabbing his vision, and disjointed memories clawing at the edges of his mind. His thoughts splintered, jagged and raw, cutting through the cold, mechanical commands that bound him.
Two voices battled inside. One was monotone and unyielding, enforcing obedience like a cold hand gripping his soul. The other was ragged and desperate, yearning to be heard like a whisper drowned in a storm.
His chest churned with a pounding rhythm that felt like fractured bones grinding beneath his skin.
He watched Gene, eyes narrowed, heart a muted drumbeat.
Did she think about what they did to him?
Did she know how close his personality was to almost disappearing entirely?
Did she come here to end what the White Angels started?
The light painted her face in fragile shadows.
She didn't look afraid.
He felt something twitch behind his ribs. A noise, one he didn't recognize, left his throat, low and quiet, almost human.
He touched the glass, but did not push it open. He needed to know who she thought she saw in the room.
Subject Eight?
Or Igor?
He gripped the jagged butter knife that scratched the words "Which one of you remembers?"
He wasn't sure anyone would hear it, but it was a cry, a question, a fragment of himself clawing through the fog of control and conditioning.
He left the message, a desperate, cryptic call carved into cold metal, amidst this turmoil.
He wrote it, but doubt ate at him.
Could he trust them?
Could anyone understand the storm inside him?
The man beneath the monster might still be seen by someone, even if the fear of betrayal warred with the hope.