Chapter Six: Phase Two

They didn’t sleep.

Neither of them even tried.

Ava sat on the edge of the leather sofa in Luca’s penthouse, her arms wrapped around herself as she watched the skyline. She couldn’t tell if the cold in her bones was from what had happened earlier or from what was coming.

Across the room, Luca stood at a desk that looked more like a war tableblueprints, printed reports, and secured drives stacked in coded rows. Half of Hart & Co.’s private security database was spread out in front of him.

“You’re sure this was your father’s?” Ava asked, finally breaking the silence.

Luca nodded. “Everything I pulled came from an encrypted server buried three levels below Hart’s legacy files. No one accesses it but me. Or him.”

Ava ran a hand through her curls, her mind racing. “So what’s in it?”

“Redacted documents. Coded transactions. Ghost accounts. He was hiding something big.”

“Connected to me?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He paused.

“But I think he planned to keep you close. One way or another.”

She looked at him. “Keep me close?”

“Not physically. Strategically. He didn’t let anything slip through the cracks. If you were affected by something, it wasn’t by accident.”

The thought made her stomach twist.

She stood and started pacing the room. “They called me the thing your father left behind.”

“I know.”

“What does that mean, Luca?”

He didn’t answer. He was still staring at the documents. But Ava could see ithe was shutting down. Locking into strategy mode. That cold, controlled CEO persona he used to push people away.

She wasn’t going to let him disappear on her now.

“Talk to me,” she said. “If this was my life before I knew if I was manipulated, sedated, erasedthen I want to know. All of it. But you have to let me in.”

Luca looked at her.

And for a moment, something raw flickered across his face.

“I found something,” he admitted. “A list.”

“A list?”

“Of minors. Teen girls. Brought in through the mentorship program. Same year. Your name’s on it.”

Ava’s breath hitched. “What kind of list?”

Luca’s jaw clenched. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

A beat passed. Ava stepped closer.

“Was it a trafficking ring?” she asked, voice low.

Luca didn’t answer.

He didn’t need to.

Just then, his phone buzzed.

A single word text from his security chief:

“We’ve been breached.”

He grabbed it instantly. “Where?”

“Inside the Hart building. Off-grid. Someone accessed your father’s vault.”

Luca looked up at Ava. “They’re not just watching us. They’re pulling files faster than I can lock them down.”

He grabbed a secured hard drive from the desk and slid it into his coat pocket.

“We’re going now,” he said.

“Where?”

“To the one person who might know what Gabriel Hart was doing and why you were on that list.”

One hour later, they were inside an abandoned Hart Foundation satellite office, hidden behind a luxury wellness center on the East Side. Luca unlocked the steel door using a retinal scan, something even Ava didn’t know he had access to.

“This was a research wing,” he said. “My father claimed it was shut down in 2007. But this place? It’s still powered. Still protected.”

Inside, it looked frozen in timedust-covered files, blinking servers, untouched equipment. But nothing was random. Everything was curated, clean, and quiet.

Too quiet.

They moved to the back, where an old server stack blinked weakly behind reinforced glass. Luca hooked up the drive, fingers flying across the keyboard.

Ava paced.

Then she saw it.

A single framed photograph on the wall. Hidden behind a cabinet.

She reached for it, breath catching.

It was a group photo. A handful of girls. Teenagers.

And there she was.

Ava. Seventeen. Standing off to the side, next to a woman in a white coat. A staff member, maybe a doctor.

But it wasn’t the staff Ava was staring at.

It was another girl in the photo.

Same height. Same curls. Same face.

But it wasn’t her.

It was someone who looked just like her.

Luca stepped up beside her. “What is it?”

Ava pointed.

“Luca, who the hell is that?”

The server finally loaded.

A single file popped open:

Project MERCY – Duplicate Case Files

Subject 01: Ava Sinclair

Subject 02: Redacted

And a single line beneath it:

Control the memory. Control the subject.”

Ava stepped closer to the photo, fingers grazing the edge of the dusty frame. Her pulse hammered behind her ears. She wasn’t hallucinating. The girl looked just like herdown to the sharp jawline, the slant of her eyes, the slight gap in her front teeth that Ava had spent years trying to hide.

But the hair was shorter. The expression is colder. Controlled.

“Is this a joke?” Ava asked, voice hoarse.

Luca took the photo from her hands, scanned it, and then turned it over. On the back was a handwritten date:

July 17, 2007

Trial Cohort – Group B

His jaw tightened. “That was the summer after the program.”

Ava backed away, the memory from the video flashing in her mind, restrained, dazed, muttering about something she couldn’t remember.

“I wasn’t alone,” she whispered. “There were others. Like me.”

Luca turned toward the screen as the file continued loading. Rows of coded metadata appearedmost of it redacted, but one line remained visible:

Subject 01: Ava Sinclair

Subject 02: B. Hart

He froze.

“What is it?” Ava asked.

Luca leaned in, his voice low and cold. “B. Hart. That’s not a coincidence.”

“You think she’s related to you?”

“I think she’s related to him.”

They stared at the screen as another block of text decrypted:

Subject 01 – Control Group: Cognitive suppression successful

Subject 02 – Experimental Group: Resistance noted. Reassigned.

Ava’s head spun.

“Reassigned to where?”

Luca clicked deeper, but the rest was locked. Access denied.

Ava looked at the photograph again.

“That’s why I don’t remember. They erased it. Suppressed it. Programmed it.”

Luca turned to her. “And whoever she isshe wasn’t just part of it. She was the backup plan.”

Ava felt the room closing in.

“You’re telling me I was part of some kind of experiment? A program run by your father? And now there’s another version of me out there?”

“Not another version,” Luca said carefully. “A separate person. But maybe created because of you.”

He didn’t want to say the word. But it hung between them anyway.

Replication.

And the file name didn’t help.

Project MERCY.

Ava pressed a hand to her chest. “What the hell was he trying to do with us?”

Luca’s face was grim. Control the mind. Control the future. That was Gabriel Hart’s entire philosophy. And he saw you as the perfect subject.”

“Why me?”

“We’re going to find out.”

Ava turned away, her hands trembling. “What if I’m not who I think I am?”

Luca crossed to her. “You are. They may have taken your memory. Your truth. But they didn’t take you. You’re not a file. You’re not an experiment. You’re Ava.”

She looked up, eyes burning. “Then help me prove it.”

From the corner of the screen, a security alert flashed:

REMOTE ACCESS INTRUSION  SERVER LOCKDOWN INITIATED

Then a video feed kicked in.

A shadowed room. A desk. A girl sitting in a chair.

Not Ava.

But someone with her face. Same eyes. Same mouth.

And she was staring into the camera.

Then she spoke, calmly and even:

“Stop digging. She doesn’t belong to you. She belongs to the Program.”

The feed cuts to black.

Ava stared at the black screen, her reflection barely visible in the dark glass.

Her hands were cold. Her pulse was loud in her ears.

“She looks like me,” she whispered.

Luca didn’t move. His eyes were still fixed on the now-blank monitor, jaw set like stone. “It wasn’t just appearance. The voice. The stare. The control. That girl knew exactly who she was talking to.”

“She said I belonged to them.”

“No.” His voice was sharp, final. “You don’t.”

Ava turned to face him fully. “Then who is she, Luca? What the hell am I looking at?”

He didn’t answer right away.

Because the truth was worse than anything he’d expected to uncover.

“She’s not just a copy,” he finally said. “She’s trained. Positioned. She’s been active while you’ve been kept quiet. Which means there are two versions of your life. And only one of you knows it.”

Ava let that sink in.

Two versions. One forgotten. One controlled.

“What if they used her to cover up whatever happened to me?” she asked. “What if every memory I’ve ever doubted blank spot was because she was the one filling it in?”

Luca met her eyes. “Then we’re not just uncovering a conspiracy.”

He paused.

“We’re unraveling your entire identity.”

The words hit hard.

But Ava didn’t look away.

She nodded once, steel rising in her voice. “Then let’s burn the whole thing down.”

They began copying files. Every folder, every log, every hidden file buried in Gabriel Hart’s legacy system. The terminal whirred as drive after drive filled with raw, encrypted data.

Halfway through, a red warning blinked at the top of the screen.

LIVE SYSTEM INTERCEPT DETECTED.

Ava stepped back. “Is that them?”

Luca typed fast. “They’re trying to wipe the server remotely. We have minutes.”

He yanked one of the drives free mid-transfer. The screen glitched. The system fought back.

Ava spotted movement outside the window, barely a flicker, but it was there. A shape. A shift.

“Luca,” she said quietly. “We’re not alone.”

He looked up.

Shadows moved behind the glass. Fast. Silent.

Luca grabbed Ava’s hand. “We’re leaving. Now.”

They moved fast out through a back hall, into a stairwell, down five flights to a basement exit that hadn’t been used in years. Luca keyed in an old access code and forced the rusted door open just as Ava looked over her shoulder and saw a black-gloved hand reaching for the server cable behind them.

Seconds later, the room above went dark.

They hit the alley running.

Back inside the abandoned lab, the intruder reached the server and plugged in a drive of their own.

A new line of code was uploaded.

“SUBJECT 01: ACTIVE”

“SUBJECT 02: IN PURSUIT”

Then, a single command input by an unknown user:

“INITIATE REPLACEMENT”.