They stayed in the safe house until dusk, the window half open, the lamp flickering like a heartbeat.
Elias was the first to break the silence.
He sat across from them, hands clasped, gaze steady. His tone carried no drama, only the kind of clarity that hurts more than fear.
"You want to know what the Sanctuary really is? It isn't a hospital. It's a living archive. A catalogue of minds."
He traced a finger over a thin scar on his wrist.
"They collect, isolate, and classify. Every subject is measured, pushed, and bent until one trait emerges. If the trait isn't stable or replicable… they vanish."
"Vanish how?" Luca asked quietly.
Elias didn't blink.
"Officially: security relocation. In practice: they lock you in sensory suppression chambers until the mind shuts down. Sometimes they call it 'spontaneous extinction.'"
Clara's hands clenched into fists. "So they kill whoever doesn't fit their plan."
"Not always with blood on their hands," Elias said softly. "But yes. They empty you out. The result is the same."
Adrian's voice was rough. "And the experiments? What do they actually do?"
Elias leaned forward slightly. "Three phases. Setting, Stimulation, Synthesis.
In the first, they isolate you. No light, no sleep, no sense of time. The brain invents patterns in the dark. They record everything.
In the second, they expose you to contradictions: pain and relief, heat and cold, memory and erasure. They look for the switch that turns the power on.
And in the third… they try to replicate you. Drugs, forced pairings, synchronization experiments. If it works, you become a prototype. If it doesn't, you become raw material again."
Clara's voice trembled. "And the children?"
Elias hesitated, then lowered his eyes.
"Children are cores, malleable brains. The younger they are, the easier they are to rebuild. Aurora is the first born from two enhanced minds. To them, she's the key. To us…" He swallowed. "She's a little girl who needs to come home."
Clara's breath broke.
Adrian placed a hand on her knee, just that, but it was enough.
Elias continued, as if reading from an internal ledger.
"The powers they hunt are always the same five. Because with those five, they can build an entire psychic network."
He gestured lightly toward Clara, then Adrian, including them both.
"Empathy. They call it affective transduction. It's not about feeling emotions, it's about transferring them, amplifying or silencing them. The empath is a volume dial for emotion. Used well, it calms crowds. Used badly, it breaks them."
"Telepathy. Reading and writing thoughts. Not everyone can do both. Most can only read at close range. The rare ones can write, they imprint ideas. Adrian," Elias said, meeting his eyes, "you're a natural reader with wide range. And with Clara close, your signal becomes cleaner."
Adrian said nothing, but his jaw tightened.
"Distortion. Perception bending. It doesn't change reality, it changes how reality is read. Sounds that aren't there, shadows that become faces, walls that seem to breathe. It looks like magic. It's just physics of the mind."
"Projection. Energy and memory. The first is impact, bursts that stop or shatter. The second is sharing: I make you see what I see, feel what I feel. Clara, you've already used this many times, when you connected to Adrian, when you reached Aurora."
Clara swallowed hard, remembering the metallic scent of earth and fear she had felt through Aurora's mind.
"Control. They call it guided volition. A blend of telepathy and empathy that drives will. Pure controllers are rare. You're not one, Clara, but when you merge empathy and projection… you can break resistance."
Luca raised his hand. "And the protection? The one you have?"
Elias nodded slowly.
"Protection is a shield. It's the creation of a void. Imagine a silence so complete that any psychic sonar bounces off it and finds nothing. I can generate that inside me, and, if I focus, around others near me. Without shielding, approaching the Core is suicide."
Clara sat up straighter. "You can teach me."
"I have to," Elias replied. "Because you can carry it farther than I ever could. The Sanctuary wants you precisely for that reason: with you at their core, their network would become indestructible. That's why we must learn it now, and use it against them."
Clara's eyes flickered with doubt. "How?"
Elias stood, turned off the lamp, and let twilight spill across the room.
"Stand up. Hands at your sides. Don't build a wall, build nothing."
He moved beside her, voice calm and deliberate.
"Listen. First: remove meaning from sounds. They're just vibrations.
Second: remove form from thoughts. No sentences, just flow.
Third: reduce yourself to a center. No sending, no receiving. Pure zero."
"Zero," Clara whispered.
"Feel your heartbeat. Let it mean only rhythm. Feel your breath. It's air, not you.
Close your eyes. Behind them there's not darkness, there's space."
His tone deepened, hypnotic.
"Picture a frozen lake. Perfectly still. Anything that falls on it slides away. No mark. No echo. You are that lake."
Clara inhaled slowly. Her pulse slowed, her mind hollowing.
Adrian found himself holding his breath, afraid even air could break the balance.
Luca stood motionless, watching.
"I'm going to reach you now," Elias said. "Knocking, not breaking."
A faint presence brushed against Clara's mind: polite, careful.
"Can you hear me?"
"Yes."
"Now remove me. Don't push, dissolve. Don't be a door. Be air."
Clara tried. For a second, the presence flickered, then returned.
"Slide," Elias guided softly. "No struggle. Struggle makes knots. Unravel."
Her fingers twitched. The pressure remained. She opened her eyes, frustrated.
"I can't. The more I try not to think, the louder it gets."
Elias didn't react. "Normal. Again. Sounds without meaning. Thoughts without words. Body in zero."
He made her repeat. Again. Again. Each time, closer. Each time, failure.
On the fourth try, Clara snapped.
"Enough! I can't do it. Maybe you're wrong. Maybe I don't have that power!"
Her voice cracked between anger and despair. That's when Elias's tone changed, hard, cutting through the air.
"No, Clara. Focus! You are the only way to save the girl. Your daughter! Do you understand?! A child forced to bow to criminals instead of living her childhood with her mother and father!"
"Elias… " Adrian stepped forward, alarmed. "Stop shouting!"
But it was too late.
The word daughter detonated inside her chest. Her eyes lit up, not with light, but with a blind, cold fury.
"Don't speak of my daughter," she whispered. "Not as an experiment."
Then everything stopped.
At first, a muffled thump, like someone had thrown a blanket over the world.
Then nothing. No sound. No thought.
Adrian no longer heard the lamp's buzz, nor Clara's breathing, nor his own.
Luca opened his mouth, but his voice didn't exist.
Elias reached out, felt no air, no skin, no consciousness. No external sound. No internal monologue. As if all three had fallen into a black hole.
In the middle of the room, Clara stood motionless, eyes wide and glistening.
Her chest rose and fell in perfect rhythm.
Around her, the world had become a perfect void. And in that absolute silence, just before panic could take hold, everything went black.