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Chapter 17
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2025-05-16 18:50:17Chapter 17: Ashes of Silence
The room was dark, but Isla couldn’t sleep.
Christopher was beside her, shirtless, his breathing deep and steady, the heat of his skin grounding her in ways she couldn’t explain. The image of the photo, the child’s eyes—her eyes—kept burning behind her closed lids like a scar she’d only just begun to feel.
A thousand questions coiled in her throat.
She slipped quietly from the bed, pulling on one of Christopher’s shirts, the cotton falling halfway down her thighs. The corridors of the estate were still, the walls watching her. Every door she passed seemed to whisper—Aurelia, Ethan, the boy.
Me.
She walked to the library and pulled out the box of journals Aurelia left behind. Not the public ones—the hidden ones. Bound in black, aged with years and grief. One had a note tucked inside:
“Memory is a double-edged sword. What you uncover may undo you.”
Her hands trembled as she flipped through the pages. Most of the entries were formulaic—literally. Codes, neurochemical diagrams, dosage notations.
Then, on page 134, a single entry caught her eye.
“317 responded to touch. Laughter. Dreams. It wasn’t supposed to happen. They said he wouldn’t feel. But he did. He called me Mama.”
Her breath caught.
There it was again. 317. The boy in the photo.
Isla read on.
“I held him while he slept. I knew I’d be punished if they found out, but I didn’t care. He reminded me that I was still human. Until they took him from me.”
Her fingers went cold. The ink on the next line was smeared.
“I screamed so hard I forgot my name. Ethan never looked back. Said love was weakness. Said it had to be done.”
Isla clutched the journal to her chest and sank to the floor.
Aurelia had loved him. The boy wasn’t just an experiment. He was her son.
And maybe… Isla was more connected to him than she could admit.
A creak behind her.
She looked up.
Christopher leaned against the doorframe, eyes shadowed, sweatpants hanging low on his hips. His voice was husky from sleep.
“You found something?”
Isla nodded. “She loved him.”
He stepped inside. “I know.”
“Why didn’t she tell anyone?”
“Because she couldn’t risk it. Ethan would’ve erased her too.”
Isla rose slowly. “She said he felt. That they didn’t expect him to, but he did. That he called her Mama.”
Christopher sat beside her, resting his elbows on his knees. “That’s what made it worse. He wasn’t supposed to be real. Just data. Code in skin.”
“But he was.”
Christopher looked at her, eyes hard. “You think you’re connected to him.”
Isla hesitated. “Yes.”
He didn’t flinch.
Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a USB. “I didn’t want you to see this until you were ready.”
She stared. “What is it?”
“Encrypted files. Some of Ethan’s. Some I found after Aurelia died. There are names. Coordinates. Project lists. I think he survived. I think he became something else.”
Her voice was a whisper. “And you waited to tell me?”
“I was scared,” he admitted. “If you found out… you might leave. Or break. Or… disappear the way Aurelia did in the end.”
A deep ache clawed at her chest. “I’m not her.”
“I know. But I love you the same.”
The words cracked the silence like thunder.
She turned to him. “Say that again.”
“I love you,” he said simply.
No pretense. No hesitation.
Isla leaned in, pressing her lips to his slowly. Tenderly. This time, it wasn’t fire. It was a slow burn. A tether. His hands cupped her cheeks, and hers tangled in his hair, the USB clutched between their palms as they kissed—like the truth itself rested between their bodies.
They didn’t make love that night. They held each other.
The kind of hold that felt like armor.
---
The Next Morning
Isla woke before sunrise.
She copied the USB’s contents onto her private drive and opened one of the files. It was a logbook—detailing Project 317’s “termination.”
But the last line read:
“Relocated to Facility B. Memory suppression protocol incomplete. Emotional leakage detected.”
There was a name scribbled below it.
Ronan Vale.
Her pulse jumped.
“Christopher!” she called out.
He rushed in. “What is it?”
She turned the screen to face him. “Ronan Vale. He wasn’t terminated. He was moved. He’s alive.”
Christopher’s face paled. “I know that name. There’s a foundation under that alias. Private security. Government-adjacent. Very discreet.”
“What if that’s him?” she whispered. “What if he’s been watching us this entire time?”
Christopher crouched beside her. “Then we find him.”
Her fingers shook as she highlighted the coordinates in the file. The facility was in the woods of Quebec—remote and heavily redacted. Whoever Ronan was… he’d become a ghost.
Isla felt the old photo in her pocket again. The eyes staring back at her from that child’s face.
Her eyes.
“Christopher,” she whispered. “What if I wasn’t adopted at all?”
He froze.
“What if I’m not just like him—what if I am him? Or part of him? His twin. His copy. What if they made me from what they couldn’t keep?”
The theory sat like ice between them.
“I think it’s time,
” he said after a long pause. “We go to Quebec.”
She nodded, heart pounding.
“We find out what they did,” Isla whispered. “And we end it.”
Pinakabagong kabanata
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