Lilia stepped back, breathing hard:
_"There is something else." … "Something you did not say."
The screen trembled, and the text changed automatically, as if someone from within were rewriting the line.
*Subject C is still active.
Celine stared:
_"Subject… what?"
The man's face paled for the first time:
_"This… should not be appearing now."
Lilia slowly lifted her head. Her eyes were no longer only the eyes of a child or an experiment; there was an awareness beginning to take shape within them:
_"So, we were not only two."
No one answered.
Because some truths, once spoken, no longer need confirmation.
In that moment, Celine realized something both terrifying and clear: that the recovery of memories would not be a single explosion…
but a sequence.
And that the first thing to shatter, before any secret,
would be the illusion that this story belongs to Lilia alone. "Subject C" did not appear on the screen by itself.
With it, the entire rhythm of the place changed.
In the experiment, there are fundamental elements:
Lilia (A): she is the capability, representing the core of the experiment and the "primary objective," as they seek to measure the impact of the experiment on a person who possesses certain rare characteristics in her brain and memories.
Celine (B): she represents balance, the element that ensures the stability of the experiment; without her, the experiment becomes chaotic or collapses.
The other person (C): represents the response, meaning the "modifiable or testable element" used to record results. Or that was his role at the beginning. But the unexpected event, the merging of Lilia's and Celine's memories, generated a "shared consciousness." The organization was not willing to end the experiment there and sought an alternative solution. When they found no other method, they decided to erase Lilia's and Celine's memories of the organization and temporarily transfer the shared consciousness data into the mind of the child C, detaining him at the headquarters.
The devices no longer blinked in a steady rhythm, but as if they were breathing. A slow pulse, then faster, then a brief pause that left the heart suspended.
Lilia spoke in a low voice, as though addressing something inside her rather than around her:
_"He does not want to be revealed."
The man in the black coat no longer concealed his anxiety. He moved closer to the screen like someone trying to deny a sentence that had appeared before him:
_"Subject C… was supposed to be shut down and kept in containment until the appropriate time."
Eva turned to him sharply:
_"You do not shut down something that is alive. You only postpone its emergence."
The screen finally displayed an image. Not clear. Just the shadow of a child, slightly older than Lilia in the old photographs, but his features were unstable. As if the face refused to be preserved.
Celine felt a sudden tightening in her chest.
Lillia:
_"I know this feeling, not his face. His presence. This… this is what I have felt my entire life. The unexplainable emptiness."
Lilia stepped toward the machine. This time, no one tried to stop her.
_"Tell the truth now," she said "All of it."
To be continued...