Gene moved swiftly through the narrow service corridor that ran behind the greenhouse's eastern wall, her boots whispering over stone smoothed by decades of forgotten footsteps. The walls were close here, clammy with condensation, and the stale scent of earth and mildew clung to the air.
Old utility lights buzzed overhead in sporadic intervals, casting flickers of light like failing memories. The corridor had once been used by servants and workers long before her time, long before the estate became what it was now. A vein in the body of the mansion that pulsed with secrets instead of blood.
She paused at a bend where ivy had forced its way through a crack in the brickwork, trailing like fingers along the wall. A rusted iron latch sat just below waist height, nearly invisible beneath a blanket of moss and dust.
Gene knelt, wiping it clean with the edge of her sleeve, fingers tracing the corroded metal as if confirming it was still real. Then, with an astute push, she depressed the latch. The hidden door groaned against its frame, hinges shrieking faintly as it creaked open into a long-disused passage.
Cold air rolled out from the darkness beyond, smelling of damp stone and old secrets. She stepped through, letting the door fall shut behind her with a dull thud. The corridor ahead dipped slightly, descending beneath the east wing in a slow spiral.
As she moved forward, her hand brushed the wall for balance, not for fear, but for grounding. She wasn't lost. Not anymore. Not in this house.
Her comm unit pulsed faintly in her palm, a rhythmic glow casting pale blue light across her knuckles as she moved. The screen displayed the confirmation of a second transmission, this one silent, with no words, just basic coordinates embedded with a time-stamped signature.
She had chosen them carefully: the old wine cellar beneath the east wing, long sealed off from daily use, its shelves crumbling with age, its stone walls thick enough to muffle even a scream.
In the early years of the mansion, back when the estate had still functioned as a self-contained fortress of wealth and secrecy, the cellar had been used as a delivery point, tucked just beneath the path of servants who ferried goods through the back halls.
Most of the current residents didn't even know it existed. Dash might have forgotten, and Maisie… Maisie probably never knew.
But Gene had studied every inch of the blueprints and memorized the estate's skeleton during her days inside the White Angels. Not for curiosity. For survival. She knew every crawlspace, every blind turn, every corridor that didn't appear on the official floor plans.
The cellar wasn't just a meeting point. It was a message in itself. She wasn't running anymore. If they still believed her, if they still trusted her enough to listen, they would understand what the coordinates meant.
It was the closest thing to hope she could afford.
She didn't expect them to come right away. The message she'd sent was, 'You need to see what he's become. Not what they made him.' It wasn't a summons. It was a risk, a confession disguised as intel. There was too much pain between them, too many questions still circling like crows over a battlefield: What had she known? When had she switched sides? Could she be trusted now, after everything?
But still, she waited.
Not because she believed in immediate forgiveness, or even that they owed her a hearing. No, she waited because something had changed. In her. In all of them. The house was shifting, the lies unraveling, and whatever came next would require more than silence and guilt. If Dash or Maisie followed the coordinates, if they even let themselves consider it, they wouldn't find a White Angels agent or a spy in hiding. They wouldn't find someone there to manipulate or control.
They'd find Gene.
Not the version built by orders and training modules and Jack's cold directives, but the one she'd buried beneath all of that. The girl who used to believe that helping people meant something. The one who had spent years convincing herself that being useful was the same as being good. The one who had finally learned the difference and chose to fight back.
Gene's steps slowed as she reached the stairwell that spiraled downward into the dark. The cracked stone beneath her boots was damp, moss threading through the seams like veins in aging skin.
For the first time, she wasn't moving out of fear. Not from the White Angels, with their clipped orders and sterilized lies. Not from the blood on her own hands or the blurred memories of missions she couldn't justify anymore. And not from Igor.
Her breath caught as she placed a hand on the rusted railing. If Igor was truly free, if the man in the footage, bloodied and dazed, still carried the flicker of the person she once glimpsed through the cracks in his conditioning, then he deserved more than silence. More than distance. He deserved someone who didn't see him as a weapon waiting to misfire.
She owed him that.
She owed herself that, too.
To stop running. To face what they'd done. What she had done. And to finally stop treating him like a monster just because it was easier than admitting they'd made him one.
She pulled her sidearm from the back of her coat and checked the magazine with practiced precision. It wasn't for Igor. It never had been. But others might be watching. Others wouldn't care what he remembered, only what he could destroy.
The wind shifted. Gene's breath hitched. Behind her, something rustled in the overgrown garden, low, steady, not wind. Her muscles locked. One hand still on the gun, she turned her head slowly toward the vines curling against the greenhouse glass, every nerve on edge.
She pulled her sidearm from the back of her coat and checked the magazine with practiced precision, the metallic click echoing quietly in the narrow stairwell. The weight of it in her hands was familiar, too familiar. But it wasn't for Igor. It never had been. Her fingers lingered on the grip, not with threat, but with wary calculation. Others might be watching. Agents, operatives, servants loyal to Selene, or worse, those who didn't care what Igor remembered, only what he was capable of destroying.
They wouldn't hesitate. They wouldn't ask questions.
The wind shifted.
Gene's breath caught mid-inhale.
Behind her, something rustled in the overgrown garden above, low, deliberate, steady. Not the wind. Not the casual hush of leaves swaying in the morning air. This sound had weight. Purpose. Like a body moving through undergrowth, careful not to snap a branch.
Her muscles locked. One foot still on the top step, she kept her posture low, and centered. One hand remained on a gun, the other bracing against the stone wall as she turned her head slowly toward the vines curling against the greenhouse glass above. Her heart ticked like a countdown, every nerve taut with electricity.
A shadow shifted beyond the glass. Too slow for a bird. Too fluid for wind. She stared, breath shallow, every instinct screaming to run, but she didn't.
Because deep down, she already knew.
It wasn't White Angels.
It wasn't a ghost.
It was him.
From behind a rusted metal grate set deep into the stone wall across from Gene, a pair of eyes flickered into view, sharp, wary, and alive. Igor crouched in the shadows, pressed low behind a tangle of old furnace ducts, the air thick with dust and forgotten heat.
His breathing was shallow and measured, his jaw clenched tight against the ache that pulsed beneath his skin.
He said nothing. Didn't move. Just watched her, the only figure who hadn't fled, who hadn't turned away.
For the first time in a long time, he didn't feel like a ghost slipping through empty corridors, unseen and unlived.
"She stayed," he thought, eyes fixed on her steady form. "Maybe I can too."