The first memory Mila had after waking up on a cold steel bed wasn't her sister's voice, nor the warm fingers that once brushed back her hair on rainy nights. It was the metallic scent of blood, faint but constant, and the soft clicking of a woman's heels on a marble floor.
She was only six.
The room had no windows. Only one lamp in the center. The walls were silver, clean, silent. Sterile, as if it had never known warmth. She wore a gray uniform far too big for her frame, her bones poking through the sleeves like broken twigs. She had cried for days, calling out for her sister, Inez. No one came. Just the woman.
Elegant. Tall. Wrapped in a long white coat that swayed like silk with each step. Her perfume was floral, but not soft—sharp, invasive. Her lips were red like blood and never smiled.
"You're special," the woman whispered the first time they met, brushing Liana's cheek with a cold, gloved hand. "You were abandoned, but I saved you. From now on, you're mine."
Mila didn't speak. She just stared. The woman smiled faintly.
"Soft eyes," she murmured. "We'll need to fix that."
That was the beginning
The first test was with a rabbit. A white one, clean and calm, its ears twitching as it was placed in her arms.
"Kill it," the woman ordered, voice gentle, almost motherly.
Mila froze, eyes wide. "Why?"
"Because you must learn. This world is cruel to the weak. Emotions will betray you. Obedience will save you."
"I… I can't…"
"You want to stay with me, don't you?" she said, kneeling. Her voice softened. "Do you want to be thrown out into the world again, unloved? Forgotten? Your sister left you. I didn't."
Mila's small fingers trembled around the rabbit's fur.
"But she..."
"She's dead."
That lie carved a hole in her chest. Inez face, warm and full of laughter, suddenly felt like a faded dream.
"She left you behind," the woman added. "But I never will. So do this. For me."
That day, Mila didn't kill the rabbit.
But the next day, after twenty-four hours of starvation and isolation, she did. From then on, it only got worse. Animals turned into dummies, dummies into simulations, and simulations into people.
They trained her to move silently, strike fast, obey faster. Her soft heart was tucked away in a steel vault of orders, consequences, and reward systems. The elegant woman, whom all the others called "Madame Syra," rarely raised her voice. But when she did—when her voice cracked like ice across marble—it broke Liana more than any beating.
"I love you," Madame Syra whispered once, while adjusting the strap of Mila's bullet vest before her first real mission. "That's why I teach you this way. I only want you to survive."
Mila believed it. Desperately.
Because the alternative—the truth—was too cruel to bear.
As Mila grow older she could dismantle a firearm in under seven seconds. she could slit a throat without flinching. she had her first solo kill: a man whose face she didn't remember, only the way his body went limp in her arms. Her reward was a warm bath and a single strawberry candy. Madame Syra kissed her forehead and called her a good girl.
Sometimes Mila would cry, but only when no one saw.
Sometimes she whispered to herself, in the dark, "Inez, did you really leave me?"
She clung to the lie they fed her because believing it gave her purpose.Being Syra's weapon meant she wouldn't be thrown away.
She tried to feel nothing. She trained herself to never question. She mastered obedience.
But even then, her heart betrayed her.
Every time she saw a child cry, every time she smelled warm bread from a street vendor during a mission, every time she saw a sister hold her sibling's hand—something inside her flickered.
Regret?
Hope?
Or a wound that never closed?
By the time she she's on the right age, Mila had become a ghost in the facility. Feared, revered, and empty. Her code name was "ECHO." A shadow with a soft voice. A killer with gentle eyes. Her hands were clean in appearance, but her soul was soaked red.
Yet every time she walked the halls, people bowed to Madame Syra. And Mila followed like a silent dog at her side.
But no matter how obedient she became, there was always another test. Another command. Another mission.
"Show me you are not weak," Syra would whisper like a lover.
"Show me why I saved you."
And Mila did.
Because the fear of being thrown away again was worse than any bloodshed.
Until that day.
When she saw her.
When her gun was raised, and across the rusted prison yard stood a woman with eyes just like hers—fierce, tearful, unyielding.
"Mila," the woman said.
That name hadn't been spoken in over a decade.
"I'm Inez… your sister."
A name Mila buried long ago.
A truth she was told had died.
It shattered her world in a single breath
The moonlight poured softly over the compound walls like spilled milk, washing the barracks in ghostly hues of silver and shadow. Inside the eastern tower, Mila stood at her post, unmoving. Her spine was straight, eyes ahead, just like she had been taught. Just like she had done for years. But her fingers trembled—barely, almost imperceptibly.
For the first time in her life, she had lied.
She could still hear Inez voice in her ears, trembling and desperate, calling her "Mila," over and over like a prayer fighting to be remembered. That name had once meant warmth, safety, a whisper of lullabies in a world full of noise. But over the years, it had become a threat—something she was trained to forget.
But tonight… her sister's eyes… the birthmark on her cheek… it all clawed at the walls inside her that she thought were impenetrable.
She closed her eyes.
"She's dead," the elegant woman had told her long ago. "You don't need that name anymore. It will only make you weak."
Yet here she was, remembering it all in such violent clarity it felt like a dagger twisting in her gut.
Liana's hand moved to her chest where her uniform hung neat and precise, fingers brushing over the spot where her sister had touched her. Where she said they were once the same. Her breathing grew heavier. She'd lied when the commander had asked her if anything unusual happened in the west wing.
"All clear," she had said.
A clean, practiced lie.
Her heart thundered behind her ribs. Why did it feel like betrayal and salvation at once?
She blinked rapidly, staring out into the darkened yard where spotlights swept in rhythmic arcs. Nothing out of place. Everything quiet.
And yet… something watched.
Far above, behind a window veiled with lace, Madam Syra stood barefoot, unmoving.
She had seen it—the way Mila hesitated. The flicker in her eyes, the slight delay in her answer. A hesitation no trained guard should have. Certainly not one of her creations.
Syra had not moved from that spot for hours. The gentle swish of her silk robe whispered against the cold marble as she stepped closer to the window, eyes narrowing. Her lips curled into a slow, knowing smile.
Mila.
The child she had shaped from the blood and clay of grief.
She remembered the day she found her, clutching a stuff toy and waiting for a sister who never came. So small. So afraid. So easy to mold. Her voice had been so soft then, barely a whisper, "She'll come back…"
But she never did.
And so Syra fed her words in place of lullabies.
"She left you."
"She's gone because you weren't enough."
"I saved you. I made you useful."
Mila had believed every word. Trained like a weapon. Refined like glass—sharp, beautiful, hollowed.
But tonight, that glass cracked.
Syra's eyes gleamed like twin shards of obsidian. She turned and walked away from the window, her movements silent as a ghost. Her fingers twitched with anticipation.
If there was something pulling Mila back toward her past, Syra needed to cut it—before the girl remembered who she used to be.
Back at her post, Mila finally moved. Her legs, stiff from standing in one place too long, carried her slowly down the corridor. Her boots clicked softly, echoing with lonely rhythm. She passed the infirmary, the closed storage rooms, the cold showers—each space filled with silence too loud to bear.
She found herself outside the barracks where she and other elite guards slept. Her hand reached for the doorknob, but stopped. Her reflection glinted in the polished steel of the door.
Who was she?
A weapon?
A girl?
A sister?
She gritted her teeth. "No. I'm not weak," she muttered, pressing her forehead to the cool door. But her voice cracked on the last word.
Inside, the others were already asleep or pretending to be. Shadows of uniforms hung neatly in cubbies, and folded sheets rested at the corners of beds like silent sentinels. She crawled onto her own cot, fully dressed, staring at the ceiling.
She could still feel Inez fingers curled around hers. Still hear her voice whispering childhood memories like spells from a forgotten life. For a moment, she let herself cry. Just a single tear, swallowed back as quickly as it came.
No one could know.
At the far end of the facility, Syra stood in front of a rusted filing cabinet, drawing out an old, yellowed file. She flipped it open, eyes scanning the photograph of two sisters—Inez and Mila—dirt-smudged and wide-eyed. The record listed them both as missing, presumed dead after the street raid.
Syra traced her fingers over Hiliana's name and smiled faintly. "So you survived."
She had trained Mila to forget her. But if the bond was strong enough to survive memory loss and reconditioning… then it was a threat. She set the file down and tapped her nails against the metal.
Back in her cot, Mila curled onto her side, knees to her chest, her arms hugging herself tight.
For the first time since she could remember, she felt something deeper than orders, stronger than discipline—hope.
And it terrified her.