We found a cheap motel on the outskirts of the city, the kind of place that didn't ask questions as long as you paid in cash. David had a stash of emergency money hidden in various locations around Miami, part of his preparation for the day his conditioning might break.
"Two rooms," he told the desk clerk, a middle-aged woman who looked like she'd seen everything and didn't want to see any more.
"One room," I corrected. "We're together."
David raised an eyebrow but didn't argue. After what we'd been through in the past twenty-four hours, I wasn't about to let him out of my sight. Not when he was the only person in the world I could trust.
The room was exactly what you'd expect from a twenty-dollar-a-night motel. Faded carpet, questionable stains on the walls, and a bed that had probably seen more action than a war zone. But it was clean enough and, more importantly, off the grid.
"You take the bed," David said, settling into the single chair by the window. "I'll keep watch."
"When's the last time you slept?"
"Sleep is for people who don't have governments hunting them."
"David." I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at him - really looked at him. The golden eyes were completely gone now, replaced by warm brown ones that looked exhausted. "You're human now. Mostly human. You need rest."
"I'm not sure what I am anymore." He ran his hands through his hair, and I noticed they were shaking slightly. "Everything I thought I knew about myself was a lie. My name, my past, my purpose - all of it was programming."
"But you're remembering the real stuff now."
"Fragments. Pieces that don't always fit together." He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. "It's like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle when half the pieces are missing and the other half might belong to a completely different picture."
I wanted to help him, but I wasn't sure how. My abilities seemed to work on genetic material, not psychological trauma. Although...
"What if I could help you remember more?" I asked.
"How?"
"When I touch you, I can see your memories. What if I could help you access the ones that are buried deeper?"
He opened his eyes and looked at me warily. "That could be dangerous. There are things in my head that were locked away for good reasons."
"Like what?"
"Like the details of what they did to me. Like the other subjects who didn't survive the process." His voice was flat, but I could see the pain underneath. "Like the missions I completed before I started fighting the conditioning."
"You mean the people you killed."
"Yes."
I was quiet for a moment, processing that. This man - this person who had protected me, who had chosen to help me instead of following orders - had blood on his hands. But then again, so did I. Every enhanced being who had lost control because of my genetic pulse, every innocent person caught in the chaos I'd triggered - that was on me too.
"We all have things we're not proud of," I said finally. "But you can't change the past. You can only decide what kind of person you want to be going forward."
"And if the memories are too much? If they drive me insane?"
"Then I'll be here to help you through it."
He stared at me for a long moment. "Why? Why would you do that for me?"
"Because you're doing it for me. Because we're in this together now." I held out my hand. "Because everyone deserves a chance to remember who they really are."
After a moment's hesitation, he took my hand.
The connection was immediate and overwhelming. Where before I'd seen scattered memories - birthday parties and bedtime stories - now I was diving deep into the locked vaults of his mind. And what I found there made me understand why the government had buried these memories so thoroughly.
David Chen had been eight years old when his parents died in a car accident. But it wasn't really an accident. The government had been watching him since he was five, waiting for the right moment to recruit him. His IQ was off the charts, his physical reflexes were naturally enhanced, and he had an unusual genetic marker that made him ideal for their experiments.
So they arranged for his parents to die.
The crash was carefully orchestrated to look like an accident - a drunk driver running a red light, hitting their car head-on. David survived with minor injuries. His parents weren't so lucky.
"They murdered them," I whispered, seeing the memories play out like a movie in his mind. "Your parents. They killed them to get to you."
"I know." His voice was rough with emotion. "I figured that out years ago, when I started remembering. But I buried it because... because I couldn't function if I let myself feel it."
The memories kept coming. Foster homes where he was isolated from other children. "Special schools" that were really government training facilities. Doctors who ran endless tests, pushing his body and mind to their limits.
And then, at sixteen, the real experiments began.
They started with psychological conditioning - breaking down his sense of self and rebuilding it according to their specifications. Then came the genetic modifications - injections of alien DNA that rewrote his cellular structure, gave him enhanced strength and speed and senses that were more animal than human.
"They told me I was serving my country," he said, his hand tightening around mine. "That I was part of an elite program to create the perfect soldiers. I believed them because... because I wanted to believe them. Because the alternative was admitting that my entire life had been stolen from me."
The worst memories were of his first missions. Assassinations disguised as accidents. Infiltrations that left entire research facilities destroyed and everyone inside dead. He'd been a perfect weapon for ten years, never questioning orders, never feeling guilt or remorse.
Until something went wrong.
"What happened?" I asked, even though I could see the memory forming in his mind.
"A target. A scientist who was developing countermeasures to genetic modification. But when I got there..." He paused, his breathing becoming labored. "She had a daughter. A little girl, maybe five years old. The same age I was when they started watching me."
In the memory, I watched as David stood in a laboratory, preparing to eliminate Dr. Sarah Martinez and destroy her research. But then the little girl walked in - she'd been hiding under her mother's desk, playing with dolls while her mom worked late.
"I couldn't do it," he whispered. "For the first time in ten years, I looked at a target and saw a person instead of an objective. I saw myself in that little girl, and I couldn't pull the trigger."
"So what did you do?"
"I told them to run. Gave them a five-minute head start and then destroyed the lab to make it look like I'd completed the mission. But the conditioning was broken. Once I started feeling again, I couldn't stop."
The memories after that were fragmented - years of fighting the programming while pretending to be the perfect soldier. Slowly regaining his humanity while carrying out orders that made him hate himself more each day.
"That's why you were chosen for me," I realized. "Because you were already compromised. Because they thought marriage and a breeding assignment might bring you back under control."
"Instead, it finished breaking me." He looked at our joined hands. "You finished breaking me."
"Is that good or bad?"
"I don't know yet."
I was about to respond when exhaustion hit me like a truck. Accessing his memories was like running a marathon - it took everything I had to maintain the connection. But as I started to pull back, I felt something else in his mind. Something that didn't belong to him.
"David," I said urgently. "There's something else. Someone else's memories mixed in with yours."
"What do you mean?"
"I can see... other subjects. Other people they experimented on." The images were clearer now - dozens of children and teenagers, all being subjected to the same genetic modifications. "They've been doing this for decades."
"How many?"
"I don't know. Hundreds? Maybe thousands?" I could see files and numbers, project names and success rates. "Project Genesis has been running since the 1990s. You weren't the first enhanced soldier they created."
"Where are the others?"
"Some are dead. Some are still active, still under conditioning. And some..." I paused as a new set of memories surfaced. "Some escaped."
"Escaped where?"
Before I could answer, the motel room window exploded inward.
Glass shards flew everywhere as dark figures poured through the opening. They moved too fast to be human, dressed in black tactical gear that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. And their faces...
They didn't have faces. Not human ones, anyway. Where features should have been, there was only smooth, pale skin broken by a series of small holes that might have been breathing slits.
"Harvesters," David breathed, instantly on his feet and moving toward the bag where he'd stashed our weapons.
"What?"
"The cleanup crew. When experiments go wrong, they send in the Harvesters to retrieve the assets."
One of the creatures turned toward me, and I could see something that might have been eyes deep within those breathing holes. When it spoke, its voice sounded like it was coming from underwater.
"Target acquired. Subject Aria Blackwood, compliance required."
"Like hell," I said, and let my abilities flare outward.
The effect on the Harvesters was immediate and violent. They stumbled backward, clawing at their heads and making sounds that were somewhere between screaming and static. But they didn't fall down. Whatever they were, my genetic rewriting ability was only hurting them, not stopping them.
"They're not fully biological," David said, firing his gun at the nearest Harvester. The bullets hit center mass but barely slowed it down. "Part machine, part something else."
"Something else like what?"
"I don't know, but we need to move. Now."
He grabbed our gear while I focused on keeping the Harvesters disoriented. It was like trying to rewrite a computer virus - there was biological material there, but it was so twisted and modified that I could barely make sense of it.
"The window," David said, already moving toward the hole where the glass used to be.
"Are you insane? We're on the second floor."
"Trust me."
We jumped.
David landed like a cat, rolling to absorb the impact. I landed like a human being - hard and painful, but without breaking anything important. Before I could catch my breath, he was pulling me toward a stolen car he'd apparently prepared for exactly this situation.
"Where did they come from?" I asked as we peeled out of the parking lot.
"They've been tracking us since we left the safe house. I was hoping we'd have more time."
"Time for what?"
"To find the others. The escaped experiments you saw in my memories." He took a hard right, tires squealing. "If we're going to fight back against the government and whoever sent those Harvesters, we're going to need help."
"And you think the other escaped experiments will help us?"
"I think they're the only ones who understand what we're going through." He glanced in the rearview mirror, where the motel was already burning. "Besides, what choice do we have?"
I thought about that as we drove through the Miami streets, past military checkpoints and emergency vehicles. Twenty-four hours ago, I'd been a college student worried about my wedding. Now I was a genetic anomaly with reality-warping powers, married to a reformed super soldier, being hunted by faceless creatures that were part machine and part alien.
"You're right," I said finally. "We need allies."
"I know where to find them. There's a place... a sanctuary of sorts. Run by someone who escaped the program years ago."
"How do you know about it?"
"Because I was sent to destroy it once. But when I got there..." He smiled grimly. "Let's just say I had another attack of conscience."
"And you think they'll trust us?"
"I think they'll listen. Especially once they realize what you can do."
"Which is?"
"Set them free. All of them." He reached over and squeezed my hand. "You can give them back what was stolen from them, just like you did for me."
I felt the power humming under my skin, no longer frightening but purposeful. Maybe David was right. Maybe instead of running from what I was, I should embrace it. Maybe I could use these abilities to help people instead of just causing chaos.
"Okay," I said. "Let's go find our army."
As we drove deeper into the night, I could feel something changing inside me. Not just my powers, but my sense of purpose. I wasn't just a victim anymore, or even a survivor.
I was becoming something new. Something that could fight back.
And the people who had stolen my life, David's life, and countless others were about to find out exactly what they had created.
End of Chapter 5