11:45 AM – Lennox Estate Greenhouse
Gene crouched low behind a shelf cluttered with dead begonias, the damp leaves brushing against her sleeves. The comm unit was in her hand, her thumb hovering uncertainly over the 'send' button. Through the flickering hallway security feeds, she caught brief, silent glimpses of Maisie and Dash, faces taut with grief, voices unheard but words heavy with meaning.
Gene crouched low behind a shelf cluttered with dead begonias, the damp leaves brushing against her sleeves. The comm unit was in her hand, her thumb hovering uncertainly over the 'send' button.
Through the flickering hallway security feeds, she caught brief, silent glimpses of Maisie and Dash, faces tense and cautious, but no longer distant as they'd been in recent years since Maisie had grown into adulthood and college life pulled her away.
They were finally connecting again, quietly bridging the distance time had placed between them. It was fragile progress, but it was there. Hope stirred.
Her breath caught. This moment, this chance, was too important to waste. She pressed 'send' and released the footage of the tunnel: Igor's unsteady steps, the haunted look in his eyes, the way his wings dragged behind him.
Gene closed her eyes, whispering, "It's time."
She hesitated, her thumb trembling over the screen. Once she sent the tunnel footage, there was no turning back. It showed Igor, alive, free, vulnerable in a way no one had ever allowed him to be.
Her mind flickered back to the first time she saw him. Not in person, but a cold file photo pinned to a mission board, labeled simply: Subject Eight. Just another asset, another tool to wield. Until she caught the look in his eyes, a flicker of something human beneath the cold designation.
Then she remembered Jack's words from their last encounter: "If Subject Eight ever goes rogue, you put him down. Immediately."
But Gene no longer believed that. Not after everything she'd uncovered about what they'd done to him, and her wanting to belong with her friends.
Steeling herself, she tapped 'send.'
The footage zipped instantly to both Dash's and Maisie's comm units, accompanied by a single message:
"You need to see what he's become. Not what they made him."
After hitting send, Gene slipped silently out of the camera's frame, pulling her knees close to her chest as she settled into a shadowed corner. Her gaze drifted upward, tracing the pale, mottled light filtering through the greenhouse's fogged glass ceiling.
The glass blurred the sky into a wash of muted colors, as if the world beyond were distant and uncertain.
In the stillness, a faint sound teased her ears, a barely perceptible rustling, like the soft flutter of wings brushing against leaves high above. Or perhaps it was nothing more than the restless wind weaving through the trees.
Either way, the fragile noise stirred something deep inside her, a mixture of hope, fear, and something like a silent plea. The quiet pulled at her, reminding her that nothing here was truly still.
──✦──
Igor lay low beneath the dense canopy of the woods just beyond the estate's iron fence, his body curled tight beneath a blanket of ivy and decaying leaves. The damp earth pressed cool against his skin, muffling the shallow rhythm of his breath. He was barely there, an echo in the forest's shadows, part ghost, part hunted thing.
The wound along his back pulsed with relentless heat, the skin torn raw and slick with a dark, viscous seep that clung stubbornly to his clothes and flesh. Every movement sent fresh waves of agony rippling through him.
He didn't know if the wound was infected or simply slow to heal; the sharp, searing pain was his only certainty, a brutal reminder that he was still alive, still human, still feeling. In that ache, there was a twisted comfort, a grounding to reality when everything else in his fractured mind was a jumble of static and fractured memories.
Around his wrist, a frayed ribbon, faintly scented with the subtle sweetness of Maisie, was wrapped tight, almost like a tourniquet for his mind. It was the only thing he hadn't let go of, the only anchor to a world beyond his torment.
Clutching it, he felt a fragile thread of connection, a reminder that someone out there still cared, still remembered him as more than just Subject Eight.
Through gaps in the thick branches overhead, the greenhouse came into view, its glass panels catching the light in a muted shimmer.
He had seen Gene there earlier, moving slowly among the tangled vines, pausing with a tremble that he recognized all too well. She had cried. He had seen the silent sorrow etched in her face, a mirror of his fractured pain.
His thoughts fractured like shards of broken glass, sharp and disjointed: Not a monster. Not a man. Just something left behind. A shadow clinging to the edges of a world that had moved on without him, a lost fragment searching for a place to belong, or at least, a reason to keep fighting.
A sudden flash cut through the haze of pain and confusion, a memory sharp and searing.
The night they locked him down, the cold bite of the syringe pierced his skin, the blinding white light flooding his vision until everything faded to a sterile void.
And then Gene's face, pale and strained, her hand trembling as she reached out, caught somewhere between fear and something like sorrow.
The memory wrenched at him, stirring something buried deep beneath the conditioning. His body began to shift, muscles stiff but determined, moving cautiously through the underbrush.
Step by step, he edged toward the faint draft of air rising from a vent hidden in the roots, a narrow passage leading into the labyrinth of tunnels beneath the mansion.
His thoughts were fragmented, glitching like a broken transmission. Images, sounds, and feelings collided and scattered, snippets of past and present blurring together.
The Voice, the relentless, controlling presence in his mind, grew harder to hear, drowned out by the rising flood of memories that threatened to break the conditioning's hold.