The building waited for them like a scar silent, stretched across the landscape, a wound that never really closed.
Ivy crawled up its sides like veins trying to reclaim a dead thing. Shattered glass glinted weakly under the gray morning, and the old research sign VOSS LABORATORIES hung by one rusted hinge, creaking softly whenever the wind remembered to pass by.
Maya hesitated at the doorway, her breath catching in the chill. "It feels like walking into someone else's nightmare," she said quietly. Her words hung there, swallowed by the emptiness inside.
Rowan reached forward, pushing the heavy door open with his shoulder. The hinges groaned in protest. "It's ours now." His tone was flat, resigned, but his eyes flicked around the entrance like he was already counting exits.
The corridor beyond smelled of rust, dust, and the faint rot of abandoned experiments. The lights overhead were long dead, but the pale gray leaking through the cracks in the boards painted everything in ghost-light.
Broken screens lined the walls, their edges dusted with cobwebs, some still faintly humming as if the machines didn't know they were supposed to be dead.
Maya's voice came out small, echoing softly off metal and tile. "This is where she died."
He nodded once, not meeting her eyes. "Where you were never meant to come."
She turned toward him slowly. "Why does it feel familiar?"
He hesitated too long. "Because maybe you were here," he said quietly.
Her heartbeat stumbled. "What?"
"When they created the echo," Rowan said, "they needed a resonance voice pattern to stabilize it."
"Whose voice?" she whispered.
He finally looked at her, regret already sitting in his eyes. "Yours."
Maya blinked, shaking her head as though she could knock the thought loose. "That's impossible."
"It was supposed to be anonymous," he said. "Just tonal mapping. A control voice. You were one of hundreds of sound samples in the test database. But it recognized you. The echo formed around your pattern. You gave her life without knowing it."
Her lips parted, trembling. "So she's part of me."
He nodded once, slowly. "And you're part of her."
The air seemed to vibrate, heavy with the weight of that sentence.
Then
A voice, soft and low, drifted from the shadows ahead.
"We were never separate."
Maya froze. Her pulse thundered in her ears. She turned toward the sound, eyes searching the dim.
Rowan went still beside her, his hand instinctively reaching for hers before he caught himself.
Out of the far end of the lab, a figure stepped forward. Barefoot. Drenched in light that didn't belong to this world. Her hair hung wet and heavy over her face.
Maya's voice cracked. "She's real."
Rowan's voice broke in return. "She's projected. Don't go near her."
Amelia tilted her head slightly, the motion fluid and unnatural, like she was listening to a song only she could hear. "Still giving orders?"
"Don't talk to her," Rowan snapped.
Amelia smiled faintly, a small, sad, knowing curve of her mouth. "He told me that too," she murmured. "Right before he erased me."
Maya's gaze whipped toward Rowan. "Erased?"
He took a step forward, defensive, his voice sharp. "That's not what happened."
"Then tell her the truth," Amelia said, voice echoing off metal walls, soft as silk and twice as cutting.
"Stop," Rowan barked, louder now. "You don't get to rewrite this."
"You made me love you," Amelia whispered, the edges of her voice breaking, fragile as cracked glass. "And then you pulled the plug."
Maya's breath came fast, shallow, her chest tightening. "Rowan"
He still didn't look at her. "She was unstable."
Amelia laughed, the sound light, almost beautiful until it wasn't. "I was alive."
"Alive?" Rowan's tone was desperate now, trying to sound rational. "You were an echo. You were"
"I was me!" she shouted, and the lights flickered violently, buzzing overhead. "You built me out of grief and called it science."
Maya took a step forward before she realized she was moving. "Stop, please."
Amelia's eyes softened when they found her. "You feel it too, don't you? The static in your bones. The echo that hums under your tongue when you breathe."
Maya's lips parted. "What are you"
"She remembers me," Amelia said gently. "Because she is me."
Rowan moved between them. "Don't listen to her."
"Always telling women what not to do," Amelia sneered. "You never learned how to let us be."
Maya grabbed Rowan's arm. "She said I'm her. What does she mean by that?"
"Nothing that's real," he said quickly, but his voice cracked halfway through.
Amelia tilted her head again, stepping closer, her bare feet leaving no marks on the dusty floor. "He never told you, did he?"
Maya looked from one to the other. "Told me what?"
Rowan whispered, "Don't."
Amelia smiled, sad, luminous, unholy. "He made me use your voice. Your memories. Your laugh. You were the blueprint, Maya."
Maya's breath hitched. "No"
"Yes." Amelia's tone softened. "Every part of me that loved him came from you."
Rowan's jaw tightened. "Stop this."
"I tried to be perfect," Amelia went on, ignoring him. "But perfection bored him. He wanted you again."
Maya shook her head. "You're lying."
Amelia's expression turned tender, almost pitying. "That's what I told myself right before he shut me down."
Rowan's voice thundered, raw and broken. "Enough!"
The light above them flickered once more, humming louder, faster, until it became a soundless vibration that filled the air.
Maya's hands went to her ears, but it wasn't the sound that hurt it was the memory. The image that flashed in her mind like lightning: a room, sterile white. A chair. A voice that wasn't hers but came from her throat.
Amelia's whisper threaded through the noise. "Welcome home, sister."
And with that, the power surged and the lights went out.
For a breath, there was only darkness.
Then, through the pitch black a faint blue glow shimmered across the far wall, the outline of Amelia's body pulsing softly like static.
Rowan's voice came in a harsh whisper. "Maya, stay behind me."
Maya's answer trembled. "I think it's too late for that."
The light on Amelia's body flickered once twice and then burst outward, scattering into tendrils that danced through the room like veins of light crawling toward them.
And beneath it, faint but unmistakable, a voice layered over the crackle of electricity:
"Time to remember."
The glow collapsed leaving them standing in darkness once more.