Chapter Six: What Memory Leaves Behind

He couldn’t breathe.

Not from the gas but from the pictures.

Three frozen moments, held in his hand like verdicts:

1. Sera, unconscious.

2. Aaron, dying.

3. Himself, smiling.

He wasn’t just a witness. Not just a pawn.

He’d been the prototype.

The first success.

He felt the images burning into his palms, branding him deeper than scars.

He didn’t remember smiling. Didn’t remember holding a syringe.

But the look in his own eyes in the photo?

Detached. Cold. Perfectly obedient.

“Adrian?” Sera’s voice came from the smoke.

He looked up, blinking through the sting, the fear.

She crawled toward him, blood on her hand where she’d scraped it during the blast. She grabbed the envelope from him, saw the photos and went completely still.

That silence?

Worse than screaming.

Her hand shook.

“Tell me this isn’t real,” she whispered.

“I don’t remember it,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

Her eyes locked on his. “You told me you were a victim.”

“I thought I was.”

“You told me ”

“I know what I told you!” he snapped, louder than he meant to.

She flinched.

He backed away from her, like his presence was a contamination.

Because maybe it was.

She couldn’t breathe.

The image was seared into her brain.

Adrian. Young. Clean-cut. Smiling. Syringe in hand. Her brother at his feet.

The truth she’d buried, begged not to find was right here, bleeding into her fingers.

And she didn’t want to believe it.

Not just because of the photo. But because of who Adrian was now.

Because of the man who’d pulled her from fire. Protected her. Chosen her.

But what if that man had only existed because the monster was erased?

What if he’d been built this way?

She rose to her feet slowly, shaking.

Adrian didn’t look at her. Didn’t speak.

He just stood in the middle of the chaos like a statue cracking from the inside.

“I don’t know what’s real anymore,” she said, voice raw.

He finally looked at her and she saw it.

Not denial. Not defensiveness.

Just fear.

Fear that she would walk away.

Fear that he’d deserve it.

Before she could speak again, her phone buzzed.

UNKNOWN CALLER.

She froze.

He saw it too.

“Don’t answer that,” he said.

She did anyway.

“Hello?”

A pause.

Then a voice she hadn’t heard in over a decade:

“Mara. It’s me. Don’t believe what they’re showing you. He didn’t kill me. I’m alive.”

Her knees buckled. The phone nearly slipped from her fingers.

“...Aaron?”

Before he could respond

CLICK.

Call ended.

And on her phone screen a new photo appeared.

Aaron.

Bound. Alive.

Holding a sign with one word written in blood:

"RUN."

She stared at the photo on her phone.

Aaron.

Older now. Hollow-eyed. Alive.

But not free.

His wrists were raw. Dried blood under his nails. The cardboard sign in his hands was torn, smeared, shaking.

RUN.

Every part of her wanted to fall apart. Scream. Cry.

Instead, she stood still. The quiet kind of still like the seconds before a glass shatters.

Adrian stepped toward her. “What did he say?”

“That he’s alive,” she whispered. “That you didn’t kill him.”

Adrian’s shoulders dropped just slightly, like some invisible weight slipped loose but he didn’t look relieved.

He looked ready.

“Then they’re still using him,” he said. “Which means this is just the next move.”

She turned her phone toward him. “He told me to run.”

“You’re not running,” Adrian said. “Not from this. Not from me.”

But her voice cracked: “How do I know you’re not part of this?”

He flinched. Just slightly.

It killed her to say it.

But the photo. The memories. The lies.

Everything felt poisoned.

“I would die before I’d hurt you,” he said. Quiet. Steady. “But I can’t promise I didn’t hurt him.”

Her eyes burned.

“I just want my brother back.”

“And I want you to survive long enough to see him again.”

His phone buzzed.

An encrypted CainTech channel. Only one person used this line:

Dorian.

He answered.

“Where is he?” Adrian snapped.

Dorian’s voice was calm. Almost gentle. “Still recovering. Still useful. You’ll see him soon enough.”

“You lied to me.”

“I raised you.”

“You programmed me,” Adrian growled. “You erased everything. My name. My family. Who I was.”

“I created something stronger,” Dorian said. “You’re not some broken little boy anymore. You’re a king.”

Adrian laughed cold and sharp.

“I’m not your weapon,” he said.

“No,” Dorian replied, “but you’re still mine.”

The line went dead.

He threw the phone across the room. It shattered on impact.

Sera flinched again.

He ran a hand through his hair, breathing like a man about to collapse.

“We need to find him,” she said.

“We will.”

“How?”

He looked at her.

“By going back to where this started.”

Her heart stopped.

“You mean ”

“The Phoenix facility. What’s left of it.”

Outside the penthouse, far below, a car idled.

Inside it Dorian.

Watching. Waiting.

He tapped a screen showing thermal scans of the apartment.

Sera. Adrian.

Then another heat signature appeared behind one of the walls.

Not either of them.

A third figure.

Already inside.

Dorian smiled to himself.

“Let them run,” he said. “They’ve already lost.”

Something shifted.

Not in Adrian. Not between them.

In the room.

A pressure drop. A breath that didn’t belong to either of them.

Sera froze.

Adrian caught it too.

He reached out slow, instinctive and pulled her gently behind him.

No words. Just tension.

Then

The light flickered.

She turned toward the hallway.

And saw it.

A shadow.

A figure. Black hoodie. Mask. Moving through the far room, silent as breath.

Adrian didn’t wait.

He lunged for the drawer by the kitchen pulled a matte black pistol from inside.

“Stay behind me,” he said.

“Who the hell is that?” she whispered.

But she already knew.

One of them.

Whoever “they” were Project Phoenix, Dorian, Callen this was the next move.

Adrian moved fast, quiet, professional.

Sera stayed close. Her heart pounded so hard it drowned out the silence.

They crept into the hall.

The guest room door was open.

Empty.

A breeze stirred the curtains.

The balcony door… ajar.

Adrian raised the gun.

He stepped outside

And the masked intruder turned, already mid-stride.

No hesitation.

They charged.

Adrian fired once.

The shot missed on purpose? She couldn’t tell.

The intruder tackled him.

They both slammed into the railing.

Sera screamed.

Adrian punched fast, brutal, military sharp but the figure was trained. Matched him blow for blow.

Then the mask slipped.

Just for a second.

Just long enough for Adrian to see the face.

His own.

He froze.

Not because of the face.

Because of the scar running down the jaw.

He remembered giving it.

In a fight. Years ago.

In the dark.

In a room full of mirrors and screaming.

They’d cloned him.

Or worse copied his conditioning.

The figure shoved him backward and leapt over the balcony edge vanishing into the stormy night like smoke.

Gone.

No trace.

Just one message burned into Adrian’s skull:

“You’re not the only version of yourself they kept.”

She helped him up, heart hammering.

“You okay?”

He nodded, dazed. “That was me.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Not just someone like me,” he whispered. “Someone trained as me. Programmed like me.”

She stepped back.

“How many of you did they make?”

He didn’t answer.

Because he didn’t know.

His phone buzzed.

A new message.

UNKNOWN NUMBER:

“He has your memories, Adrian.

And he remembers what you did better than you ever will.”