Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Monster in My Blood

It wasn’t the whisper of ghosts that haunted me anymore.

It was the silence inside my own bones.

The day Hana handed me the report, I didn’t flinch. I didn’t scream or collapse or beg the world to lie. I just took it—cold paper, cold truth—and walked away from the light.

Because deep down, I already knew.

The real war had never been against Blackwood.

It had always been against myself.

“Ivy,” Hana said, following me into the corridor. “Please. Just listen.”

“Don’t.”

“You need to know what we found.”

“I don’t need anything except distance from it.”

“It’s not a virus. Not a code injection. It’s embedded.”

I stopped walking. Turned.

“In me?”

Hana hesitated. “Yes.”

Later that night, I locked myself in the vault.

The same place where Reagan once tested weapons meant to reshape humanity. The place where power was born in blood and silence.

I sat on the floor, my knees pulled to my chest, as the data looped across the screen.

Voice scans. Memory patterns. Neural responses I’d never authorized.

They were mine.

But they weren’t me.

Lucien found me hours later.

He knelt in front of me, didn’t speak. Just sat there, holding space.

When I finally looked up, my throat cracked with the weight of it.

“He made me a weapon,” I whispered. “Before I could ever speak. Before I had a name.”

Lucien’s hands found mine. “You’re not him.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you’ve spent your whole life fighting not to become him.”

I let the tears fall.

Not because I was broken.

But because something inside me had finally cracked open.

The truth was simple and terrifying.

I had been born with something buried inside me. A dormant program. A series of encoded responses—emotional, cognitive, strategic—activated by exposure to specific phrases, sounds, triggers.

It had a name.

Project Heirloom.

Designed to evolve over time.

Not just mimic Reagan’s strategies.

But surpass them.

Clara was the one who found the journal. Hidden inside a music box in my mother’s old estate. It had her handwriting—slanted, precise, desperate.

“He thinks she’s just a failsafe. But I built something more. If they ever try to control her, she’ll undo them from the inside.”

My mother hadn’t been a victim.

She had been a saboteur.

And I… I was the fuse she left behind.

I spent the next week in isolation.

Not because anyone asked me to.

But because I was afraid.

Afraid of what I might become.

Afraid of what I already was.

Lucien came every night. Never pushed. Never accused.

He just reminded me I was real.

That love didn’t vanish under bloodlines or buried code.

But the fear stayed.

What if Reagan wasn’t the final storm?

What if I was?

It happened on the fifth night.

A dream. But not like the others.

This one was red.

The walls bled numbers. Voices chanted my name. Screens blinked to life with every breath I took. And in the center—

A child.

She looked just like me.

Except her eyes were solid black.

She opened her mouth and said one word:

“Awaken.”

I sat up in bed, gasping.

Sweat slicked my back. The lights in the mansion flickered once—twice—then died completely.

Lucien ran into the room. “Ivy?”

Before I could speak, the fire alarms went off.

Downstairs, the security vault had unlocked itself.

When we reached it, the monitors inside the vault had all activated.

The same message blinked across every screen:

[PROJECT HEIRLOOM: PHASE TWO DETECTED.]

Lucien stared at the words, then turned to me slowly.

“What the hell is phase two?”

I couldn’t answer.

Because suddenly, I remembered.

A moment. A voice. A trigger.

Not from now—but from childhood.

Something my mother used to say when she tucked me in.

“Stars don’t obey kings, Ivy. They burn them.”

It wasn’t a lullaby.

It was code.

And when Lucien said it aloud, without knowing—

The second phase had activated.

My skin burned.

Not with heat.

With electricity.

Memories that weren’t mine unfurled like fire across my spine. I saw rooms I’d never entered. Spoke languages I’d never learned. I saw maps of cities I’d never touched—systems, allies, secrets.

I saw war.

I saw myself leading it.

Lucien grabbed me. “Ivy—look at me.”

But I couldn’t move.

The storm had opened inside me.

And it knew its name.

The following morning, I sat in the glass garden.

Alone.

Alive.

And changed.

I didn’t speak for hours. Just watched the sunrise bleed across the horizon.

Lucien finally approached, quiet but steady.

“Is it you?” he asked. “Or is it the program?”

“I don’t know anymore.”

“I don’t care,” he said.

I turned to him, stunned.

He continued, “I didn’t fall in love with a name, or a mission, or a clean bloodline. I fell in love with the fire. Even when it scares the hell out of me.”

Tears slipped down my cheeks. Not because I was afraid.

Because I knew—

The only thing stronger than the monster in my blood was the man who refused to run from it.