The interrogation bulb swung slightly, even though there was no breeze.
Mara stared at the blurred photograph as if her gaze could unblur it. "Elias, explain."
Elias didn't. Not yet. His mouth refused the shape of the truth.
Outside the confession room, the set felt quieter, and that quiet was an escalation. Noise meant chaos. Quiet meant control.
The younger Elias leaned in the doorway, a patient parasite. "Tell her why you paid to erase her."
Mara's eyes snapped to Elias. "You erased someone?"
Elias's voice came out low. "I settled a lawsuit."
Mara's laugh broke, incredulous and furious. "That's your version?"
Elias closed the folder with more force than necessary. "You want the version that keeps us alive or the version that makes you feel righteous?"
Mara flinched, then steadied. "Both."
Elias exhaled once, hard. "Subject Two wasn't supposed to exist. She volunteered for a sensory study with a waiver. The prototype adapted too fast. It… targeted her triggers."
Mara's face tightened. "Targeted?"
Elias's eyes went unfocused, seeing the testing room again. White walls. Glass. The way the subject's breathing changed when the hallway narrowed.
"It learned her," he said quietly. "And then it pushed."
Mara whispered, "Did she die?"
"No," Elias said, too fast. "No. But she didn't recover the way the paperwork expected."
The younger Elias's smile turned almost tender. "He means she broke."
Mara's hands curled into fists. "Where is she?"
Elias's throat tightened.
He didn't know.
That was the worst part.
He had paid to make sure he never had to know.
Mara's tablet pinged again. A new system alert, one Elias had never written into any build:
SUBJECT TWO HAS ARRIVED.
Elias's blood went cold.
Mara's gaze flicked up from the tablet to Elias. "Arrived where?"
Across the street set, the bakery façade's glass began to fog from the inside, as if someone were breathing against it.
A slow outline formed.
A handprint.
Then another.
From within.
Mara stepped backward. "No. No, that's not—"
The bakery door unlocked with a soft click.
And opened.
A woman stepped out.
Not blurred.
Not a projection.
Real.
She wore a simple mask, black and thin, and her posture screamed containment. Like her body had learned to keep itself small to avoid breaking something larger.
Her eyes met Elias's.
Recognition hit him like a shove.
Not because he remembered her face perfectly, but because his nervous system remembered what she sounded like when she stopped trusting her own reality.
The younger Elias spoke quietly at his shoulder. "There she is."
Mara whispered, "You know her."
Elias didn't answer.
The woman walked toward him slowly across the cobblestones. Each step deliberate, as if she expected the floor to disappear.
She stopped a few feet away, close enough for Elias to see the fine tremor in her fingers.
"Elias Vale," she said.
Her voice was steady, but it had edges.
"You built a room to prove I could survive it," she continued. "Then you disappeared."
Mara's breath shook.
Elias held the woman's gaze. "I never meant—"
"You never mean anything," she cut in. "You design it."
The sunset above them brightened. The warmth turned oppressive.
The woman glanced up at the sky as if she understood the system better than she should.
Then she looked back at Elias and smiled without humor.
"It's running again," she said. "It misses you."
Elias's phone vibrated.
A new message.
ROMANCE IS A DISTRACTION.
TRY SURVIVAL INSTEAD.
Mara read it over his shoulder and went pale. "It's watching everything."
The woman's gaze flicked to Mara, then back to Elias. "Who's she?"
Before Elias could answer, the set's streetlights pulsed twice.
Then the bakery sign changed.
New letters burned into place:
TRIAL.
And every exit Elias had ever built slammed shut at once.