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Chapter 18
Last Updated:
2025-05-16 18:54:26---
Chapter 18: The Road to Shadows
The road wound through the mountains like a scar. Sharp turns. Blind edges. Endless trees that stood like silent sentinels under a sky thick with winter gray.
Isla stared out the window, the world blurring past. Her reflection stared back at her—eyes a little too dark, lips too tight. Not Ivana. Not Isla. Just something in between. A woman on the brink of a truth that could fracture her from the inside out.
Christopher drove in silence. His hands gripped the steering wheel tighter than usual. His knuckles were pale. Tension crackled in the confined space of the SUV, thick as fog.
She finally broke it. “Are you scared?”
He didn’t look at her. “Terrified.”
She smiled faintly. “Of what? Finding out who I am?”
He took a breath. “Of what it’ll do to you.”
Isla nodded, then turned back to the window. “You think I’ll fall apart.”
“No,” he said, voice low. “I think you’ll set the world on fire. And I’m not sure if I’ll survive it.”
She didn’t answer. But her fingers slowly crept across the console and laced with his. He squeezed back.
They didn’t speak again until they reached the coordinates.
---
Facility B
It looked like nothing. Just a half-buried concrete bunker behind a wall of pines, snow curling around its base like an open wound refusing to freeze shut. No guards. No gates. Just silence.
Isla stepped out first. The cold hit her lungs hard.
Christopher followed, backpack slung over his shoulder, hand brushing the hilt of the gun hidden beneath his coat.
“Do you feel it?” Isla whispered.
“Yes.”
The weight. The hum of something unnatural just beneath the surface.
They walked up to the steel door, and Isla’s fingers hovered over the keypad. Surprisingly, it was active.
Her voice trembled. “317. Let me try it.”
She typed in the numbers.
The lock clicked.
The door opened.
Inside, the bunker smelled of dust, old electricity, and chemicals. The lights flickered to life as they stepped in, casting long shadows on the walls. The air was dry. Too dry.
Christopher scanned the hallway. “It’s not abandoned. Someone’s maintaining this place.”
They moved deeper. Through rows of glass rooms—some shattered, some intact. Monitors still hummed faintly in corners, looping old footage. Children in hospital gowns. Blank eyes. Electrodes on skulls.
Then, one screen flickered.
Ronan Vale - Subject Designation 317
Age progression footage. A boy morphing into a teenager. Then a man. Cold eyes. A scar on his chin.
Isla stepped closer.
She touched the screen. The glass buzzed under her fingers.
“He’s alive,” she whispered. “He’s real.”
Christopher watched her carefully. “You see it, don’t you?”
She nodded slowly. “He looks like me. Exactly like me.”
They weren’t just similar.
They were genetically identical.
Twins? No. Duplicates? Not quite.
Something else.
Something unholy.
A sudden hiss broke the silence.
A hidden door opened at the far end of the corridor.
Christopher reached for her wrist. “Careful.”
But Isla was already walking forward. The space inside was pitch dark until a motion light flickered on.
In the center stood a figure.
Not a video.
Not a memory.
Him.
Ronan Vale.
He was older now—late twenties, maybe thirty. Tall. Gaunt. But his eyes were alive, sharp, and knowing. The scar on his chin confirmed it.
He didn’t move.
Isla stepped into the room.
Neither of them spoke at first.
She took another step.
“Are you real?” she whispered.
Ronan tilted his head. “They said I wasn’t. But I bleed. I dream. I scream when it hurts. So yes, I suppose I am.”
She trembled. “You’re me.”
His mouth twitched. “And you’re me.”
Christopher stayed in the doorway, eyes locked on Ronan’s every move.
“Why did you stay here?” Isla asked.
“I didn’t,” he replied, stepping forward. “I left. But I came back. This place… it’s all I’ve ever known. It built me. Broke me. Birthed me.”
“Who is our mother?” she asked suddenly.
Ronan blinked. “I don’t know. We weren’t born. We were stitched.”
Isla’s heart thudded.
“What do you mean?”
He walked past her to a control panel and tapped a sequence.
A file loaded.
Project Echo-317x / Isla-R Variant
She stared at the words.
She wasn’t born. She was reconstructed. Memory fragments inserted. DNA borrowed. A new vessel. A mirror.
Her knees gave out.
Christopher caught her.
Ronan knelt beside her. “You’re not a mistake, Isla. You were their second attempt at making a soul.”
Tears blurred her vision. “Why me?”
“Because you were never meant to feel this much,” Ronan said softly. “But you did. You loved her. Aurelia. You mourned her. And that made you dangerous.”
She looked up at him, eyes wide. “Do you remember her?”
He nodded. “She called me her son. She kissed my forehead once. Just once. And I’ve held on to that every day since.”
Isla reached for him.
Their hands touched.
It felt like touching glass. The same heat. The same cold.
He whispered, “They’ll come for us both, now.”
Christopher stepped closer. “Let them. We’re not alone anymore.”
Isla stood slowly.
“What now?” she asked, her voice shaky but strong.
Ronan looked at her. “Now, we burn this place down. And we bury the ashes.”
---
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