The alarms howled like a dying animal—shrill, mechanical, endless.
Red lights strobed across the chamber as Jack grabbed Lena by the arm and pulled her back toward the corridor. Kael covered their retreat, firing two clean rounds at the door frame as a shape moved through the smoke behind them.
Rhea didn't follow.
Not yet.
But Jack could feel her watching.
She wanted him to see.
To understand.
To suffer.
The image of Elara—strapped to that machine, unconscious, breathing but barely—burned behind his eyes. It wasn't hope. It was something worse.
Proof that she had been real all along.
That he wasn't chasing a ghost.
He was chasing a prisoner.
"Move!" Lena shouted, pulling free and taking the lead. Her flashlight bounced across the hallway walls as the power grid shorted again. Lights fizzled. Doors slammed shut around them.
Behind them, voices echoed—garbled commands over a private comms channel. Too sharp to be random security.
Kael cursed. "They've activated the custodians."
"Human?" Jack asked.
Kael shook his head grimly. "Worse."
They didn't stop.
Not when the corridor narrowed.
Not when the temperature dropped.
Not when they passed a door marked with a symbol Jack hadn't seen in years—three ravens circling a spiral.
They burst into the stairwell, boots pounding on metal steps.
Two floors up.
Then three.
The hatch.
Still open.
They climbed into the farmhouse kitchen just as something below screamed. Not human. Not an animal.
Something made to fill silence with dread.
"Go!" Kael shouted.
They ran into the trees.
The rain had stopped, but the forest felt soaked in something thicker. Fog curled around trunks. Branches cracked beneath their weight.
They didn't speak until they reached the car.
Only then did Jack stop and turn back toward the treeline.
A single figure stood at the edge of the woods.
Rhea.
Unmoving.
Watching.
And beside her—just for a moment—another shape.
Feminine.
Smaller.
Like a shadow echoing Elara's outline.
Then they vanished.
The ride back to the city was silent for the first thirty minutes.
Lena stared at the drive in her lap, as if it might bite.
Kael watched the mirror as if they were still being followed.
Jack gripped the wheel too tightly.
Finally, Lena broke the quiet.
"That machine they had her in. I've seen tech like that in recovered Raven blueprints."
Jack said nothing.
"It doesn't just preserve memory," she continued. "It streams it. Like data. Thoughts. Personality fragments. All in real time."
"She's being copied," Kael said. "Over and over."
Jack's voice was low. "That's why she wasn't conscious."
"Probably kept in a low-theta state," Lena muttered. "Minimal brain activity. Enough to power the stream, but not enough to regain self-awareness."
"They're keeping her asleep on purpose," Jack said. "Because the moment she wakes up, it breaks the circuit."
Kael looked out the window.
"What now?"
"We find a way to disconnect her safely," Jack replied. "And we burn every part of that system afterward."
"And Rhea?"
Jack didn't answer.
He didn't know what Rhea was anymore. She wasn't just pretending. She believed in what she was doing. Maybe she'd always believed. Maybe the Rhea he met had been a mask stitched from Elara's past and Jack's weaknesses.
Or maybe… she still wasn't done becoming.
They dropped Kael at a safehouse near the east terminal. Jack drove Lena back to her studio.
When he finally reached his apartment, dawn had started bleeding into the sky—washed-out pink behind rooftops. The kind of morning that felt more like a punishment than a promise.
Jack entered, closed the door behind him, and sat in the dark.
The apartment was quiet.
But not empty.
On the table—something he hadn't left.
A file.
Unmarked.
Just paper. Tied in a string.
He opened it.
Photos.
A woman.
Late thirties. Long black hair. Eyes like broken glass.
Smiling in one photo. Screaming in another.
Jack's breath caught.
It was Amina.
A name he hadn't spoken in years.
A face he hadn't expected to see again.
Attached was a note.
No handwriting. Just a printed line.
"She has something that doesn't belong to her."
Another sheet. Hospital report.
Severe neurological trauma. Exposure to an unknown artifact. Currently in lockdown at a private clinic under a false ID.
Jack leaned back.
Stared at the ceiling.
The past was crawling out of the grave.
And now he had a choice to make.
Chase Rhea.
Or save Amina.
Because someone out there wanted him split.
And they knew exactly where to cut.