Chapter Two: Mirrors Lie

There were rules to working with trauma victims.

Don’t push.

Don’t assume.

Don’t let your past bleed into theirs.

Sera was breaking all three by the time she walked into the private office they'd assigned her.

It was too clean. Too still. A chrome desk, untouched. No personal items. A corporate smile pretending to be a room. Fake. Like everything here.

She shut the door, locked it, and opened her bag. Pulled out the original case file now weathered and creased on Daniel Ward.

Photo: Seventeen. Shaggy hair. Wide eyes. Bruise under one cheek.

Status: Missing. Presumed dead.

Last seen: With her brother.

Aaron Vaughn.

Her hands hovered over the file.

He’d called her Mara. No one else did.

Who the hell is texting me?

And more importantly what did they mean by “You’re next”?

Her gut whispered something she didn’t want to name.

It’s starting again.

She turned on her laptop and began pulling staff files: Leo Martin and the first suicide victim. Both from Project Ion, CainTech’s most classified division. She opened a document labeled "Personnel Web," tracking employee overlap.

There it was.

Adrian Cain Project Ion founder.

And at the center of both suicides: a name. Not Adrian.

D. Ward.

Her heart punched her ribs.

Was someone trying to expose him?

Or protect him?

Adrian stared at the frozen security footage.

He zoomed in again on the symbol the three lines in a circle. Rough. Carved by hand.

It wasn’t just familiar.

It was burned into his skin.

He rolled up his sleeve. There, near his shoulder blade, half-faded and blurred by time, was the same damn mark.

He didn’t remember where it came from.

But in his dreams it was always on the wall of the room he couldn’t escape.

And the girl… the girl with dark eyes, holding his hand, whispering

“Daniel, don’t forget me.”

He closed his eyes.

“Daniel.”

The name didn’t feel foreign anymore.

It felt stolen.

His office door opened.

He didn’t move.

“I said I didn’t want to be disturbed.”

His assistant hesitated. “Apologies. But there's someone asking for access to Level C.”

His head lifted. “Who?”

“Ms. Vaughn.”

Sera.

Of course.

The therapist with sharp eyes and a memory like a knife.

She wasn’t backing down.

He didn’t know why that thought… pleased him.

The elevator dropped too fast as it descended to Level C CainTech’s most restricted floor. She hadn’t gotten formal clearance, but someone had unlocked it for her.

Someone wanted her to see what was down here.

The doors opened to a hallway colder than the rest of the building. Lights dim. No art on the walls. Just metal and concrete.

Her heels echoed as she walked toward the archive room.

She scanned her ID card. The door clicked open.

Inside rows of servers, old file cabinets, hard drives. A surveillance hub.

Sera found a terminal and started typing. Searching archived project logs, security footage, name matches.

She typed: Daniel Ward.

Access denied.

She tried again. D. Ward.

File Found.

Her hands froze.

A single video link.

She clicked it.

The screen went black… then flickered to life.

A boy maybe fifteen. Thin. Pale. Hooked up to electrodes. Crying. A gloved hand touched his shoulder.

“Your name,” a cold voice said from offscreen.

The boy shook his head.

“Say it.”

“No.”

The voice grew sharper.

“Say your name, Daniel.”

Sera flinched.

The boy whimpered then whispered, “I’m not Daniel. I’m… I’m no one.”

The screen went black.

The lights overhead flickered.

Then shut off.

Total darkness.

Behind her footsteps.

And a voice she hadn’t heard in fifteen years:

“Mara… you shouldn’t have come here.”

The voice wasn’t a hallucination.

It came from the dark.

Low. Male. Familiar.

But impossible.

“Aaron?” Her voice cracked.

Silence.

She spun toward the sound, heart thundering. Her eyes strained against the pitch black, every inch of her body rigid with disbelief.

It couldn’t be. Her brother had been gone for fifteen years. Dead. Disappeared.

The file was closed. But that voice

Footsteps. Closer now. Not fast. Slow. Measured.

Sera reached into her bag, fingers closing around the small stun baton she carried.

She stepped backward barely breathing.

The screen in front of her flickered again. A single frame lit up

A still image.

The boy from the video. Crying. Bruised.

Label: D.W. SUBJECT 004.

And next to it…

Subject 005: A. Vaughn.

Her blood went ice-cold.

Aaron had been part of it. Whatever “Project Velvet” or “Project Ion” really was they’d taken both of them.

The lights buzzed.

Flickered.

Came back on.

The room was empty.

No one there.

No voice. No footsteps. Just the hum of servers and the scream of her pulse.

Sera backed away from the screen, fingers numb, heart ready to implode.

Then

A loud beep. Her ID badge locked her out.

All screens went black.

“Dammit.”

She ran from the room like it might close in on her. Up the hallway. Toward the elevators. Toward daylight. Toward air.

He heard the elevator ding from his office and looked up just as the doors slid open.

Sera staggered out.

Pale. Eyes wide. Breathing hard.

She looked like she’d seen a ghost.

No. Worse.

She looked like she’d become one.

“You were on Level C,” he said, voice low.

She didn’t answer.

He stepped forward, grabbing her arm gently, but firm enough to stop her flight.

“I asked you a question.”

She stared at him. And for the first time, the fire in her eyes wasn’t confrontational.

It was pure, razor-sharp fear.

“You lied to me,” she whispered. “You know what happened down there.”

“I know there are things about me I don’t remember,” he said. “That’s not the same as lying.”

“There was a video,” she said. “Of you. As a kid. Hooked to machines.”

His jaw clenched.

“I’m not imagining this,” she said. “And I saw his name. My brother’s. Aaron Vaughn. He was listed as ‘Subject 005.’”

He stilled.

That name.

Vaughn.

Suddenly it clicked.

The way she looked at him. The familiarity. The intensity.

“You’re Mara,” he said. Quiet. Hoarse.

“No one calls me that.”

He stepped back. “Except him.”

They stared at each other, breathless.

A past neither of them fully remembered had just cracked open between them.

From his office across the building, Dorian watched the two of them on the security feed.

He clicked his earpiece.

“They’ve made contact,” he said.

A pause. Then a voice replied:

“Then initiate Phase Two. It’s time he remembers who he really is.”

SERA

“You’re Mara.”

The way Adrian said it made her skin prickle. Not because it was wrong but because it was too right.

“Yes,” she said, voice shaking. “That was what he called me. No one else. No one except ”

Her throat closed. Saying Aaron’s name out loud felt like tempting fate.

Adrian stepped closer. “You’re his sister.”

Her eyes narrowed. “And you’re Daniel Ward. Whether you remember it or not.”

He didn’t deny it this time.

Didn’t flinch.

Didn’t speak.

He just looked at her with something raw and unfamiliar behind his eyes. Not anger. Not fear.

Grief.

“I saw both your names down there,” she said. “You were ‘Subject 004.’ My brother was ‘005.’ What the hell happened to you? To us?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“I think you do,” she pushed. “Some part of you does. Why else would your name trigger a lockout on a hidden surveillance server? Why else would someone text me using a name no one alive should know?”

His expression shifted.

“You got a message?”

“Yes,” she said. “From an untraceable number. It said ”

Her voice faltered.

“‘You’re too late, Mara. You’re next.’”

Adrian’s jaw tightened.

“That’s not a threat,” he said. “It’s a countdown.”

Sera’s heart dropped. “To what?”

He didn’t answer.

He didn’t have to.

ADRIAN

The name Mara had been echoing through his dreams for years. Now it had a face.

He didn’t remember her but he felt her.

Every instinct he had told him to push her away.

But something deeper, buried under the frost and the silence wanted to protect her.

The worst part?

She knew more about him than he did.

Every truth she uncovered made the floor beneath him crack wider.

He wasn’t Adrian Cain.

He was a lie.

He turned, walked to his desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a thin metal case. Inside a flash drive, marked only with a scratched-in symbol.

The one from the video. From his dreams.

He handed it to her.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Everything I’ve ever deleted.”

Sera blinked.

“You had access to it this whole time?”

“I didn’t say I read it,” he said. “I was… afraid.”

She stared at him.

“Then let’s be afraid together.”

They plugged the drive into her laptop.

A folder opened.

Inside audio logs. Reports. Photos. Recordings of therapy sessions labeled “Daniel Ward: Behavior Conditioning – Phase I.”

They clicked the first.

“Subject 004 shows signs of resistance. Recommendation: emotional suppression. Begin auditory dissociation training at Level 3. Continue pharmacological schedule.”

Sera covered her mouth.

Adrian stared at the screen like it was a weapon.

It was.

Against both of them.

“What did they do to us?” she whispered.

Adrian stood slowly. Walked to the window.

The city glowed below them. So alive. So far from what they’d been.

He pressed his hand to the glass.

“I think they turned us into ghosts,” he said quietly. “And gave us new names to forget who we were.”

Behind them, the laptop flickered.

The screen went black.

Then

> SYSTEM OVERRIDE DETECTED

> FLASH DRIVE COMPROMISED

> INITIATING MEMORY LOCK RESET IN 3… 2… 1…

The laptop sparked fried.

Sera leapt back.

Adrian’s chest heaved.

The files were gone.

And somewhere, someone had just hit the kill switch.