Chapter Forty: The Memory Key

The key pulsed in my palm like it had a heartbeat.

Smooth and cold, yet somehow alive.

Lucien tried to take it from me once. Just once.

The moment his fingers brushed it, the key seared his skin.

It wanted only me.

And I was starting to understand why.

We were back in New York two days later. The compound in Latvia collapsed behind us—literally. Seconds after I pulled the key from the chair, the ceiling cracked, then caved. Clara barely made it out. Hana wasn’t so lucky—she stayed behind to stall a security fail-safe none of us understood.

She smiled before the doors closed.

“I was born in a lab,” she said. “This is how I leave one.”

Lucien carried me to the chopper as flames swallowed the last of The Crucible.

No one spoke.

But I felt the key whispering.

Not in words.

In memories.

Mine.

And someone else’s.

I locked myself in the glass atrium of the Blackwood estate.

Snow dusted the trees outside. A fire cracked behind me. Lucien hovered like a storm I couldn’t yet name.

“Let me in,” he said.

“You already are.”

He flinched.

“Ivy—”

I turned to face him, fingers clenched around the glass key.

“This… it’s more than just a code or a trigger. I feel it inside me. It’s like it’s asking me to remember something I haven’t lived.”

“You don’t have to do this alone.”

I stepped closer.

Tipped the key between us.

“Lucien. What if I was never real to begin with?”

His hand cupped the side of my face.

“If you weren’t real, I wouldn’t bleed when I lose you.”

I waited until midnight to activate the key.

It hummed once, then unfolded—glass turning into light, light fracturing into data.

The floor beneath my feet shimmered, and suddenly I wasn’t in the mansion anymore.

I was in her memory.

The woman who bore me.

Not my mother.

Not my real one.

She looked like me.

Same dark hair. Same sharp cheekbones.

But her eyes…

They were colder.

Unapologetic.

A scientist.

A ghost.

She walked through the memory space like a queen, explaining to an unseen recorder:

“Subject IV-9 is the strongest of them all. Cognition above expectation. Empathy centers high. Still shows resistance to violence except when triggered. Adaptive learning exceeds parameters.”

Then she turned.

And looked right at me.

Through me.

“You will see this one day. You’ll hate me. But I made you for a war no one else can win.”

She smiled.

Sad.

“You’re not my daughter, Ivy. You’re my vengeance.”

I came out of the memory gasping.

Lucien was there.

Always.

He wrapped me in his coat, held me close.

“What did you see?”

“My real mother.”

“And?”

“She didn’t love me. She built me. Out of fury. Out of ambition.”

Lucien’s voice cracked. “Then you’re not her creation. You’re her defiance.”

Later, Clara found the encryption signature buried in the key’s code.

“It’s linked to a single server,” she said. “And it’s still active. Hidden inside the Blackwood estate.”

Lucien and I looked at each other.

Of course.

Of course it had always been here.

The Blackwood throne didn’t sit on wealth.

It sat on secrets.

We followed the signature through tunnels even Lucien didn’t know existed.

A locked sublevel. No lights. No warmth.

The door was biometric—and it opened only when I touched it.

Inside was a lab.

Empty.

Except for a single screen.

It flickered to life when I stepped forward.

And The Architect’s voice greeted me one last time.

“Now that you remember… the question is simple.”

“Will you destroy me?”

“Or become me?”

Lucien stepped between me and the screen. “She’s not yours.”

The voice replied: “She never was. And yet—she is all that remains of me.”

Then something new appeared.

My face.

A prediction.

My eyes… colder.

Sharper.

The face of the woman I would become if I said yes.

The new Architect.

I touched the screen.

Memories surged.

Futures unraveled.

And suddenly—

I saw the world I could build.

One where no girl was broken to be made strong.

One where fire didn’t mean death.

Where power was redefined.

But to build that world—

I’d have to erase this one.

Lucien’s voice broke through the static. “Ivy, if you choose this… you’ll lose yourself.”

I turned to him, breath shaking. “I think I already have.”

He reached out, trembling.

“But I haven’t lost you. Not yet.”

The screen blinked.

Two buttons appeared.

INHERIT.

DELETE.

My fingers hovered over both.

For one breathless second, I saw everything.

The rise.

The empire.

The war.

And then—

I pressed Delete.

The screen screamed.

The lab shook.

The code began to eat itself alive.

A voice cried, desperate:

“You were supposed to ascend.”

I stepped back.

“No. I was supposed to choose.”