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Chapter 18
Last Updated:
2025-05-16 18:54:26---.”
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Chapter 18: wonky roads
The road twisted through the mountains like something wounded — sharp turns, sudden drops, trees standing stiff and cold beneath a sky the color of old bruises.
Isla sat silent in the passenger seat, staring out the window, but not really seeing. Just motion. Just blur. Her reflection stared back — eyes too dark, mouth set like stone. Not Ivana. Not Isla. Just... something in the middle. A woman trying to hold herself together on the edge of some truth she couldn’t yet name.
Christopher gripped the steering wheel like it was the only thing keeping him tethered. Knuckles white. Jaw tight. He hadn’t said a word in an hour.
She finally did.
“You scared?”
He didn’t look at her. “Terrified.”
She gave a weak, crooked smile. “Of what? Me?”
“No.” He exhaled hard, like the words hurt. “Of what this’ll do to you.”
She turned back to the window. “You think I’ll fall apart.”
He didn’t answer right away. Then softly, “No. I think you’ll burn everything down. And I’m not sure I’ll make it through that.”
She didn’t smile this time. But her hand reached out across the console. Found his. He squeezed it, once.
They didn’t speak again until the GPS said, you have arrived.
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Facility B
It looked like a lie. A concrete bunker shoved into a nest of pines, half-swallowed by snow and silence. No guards. No lights. Just the kind of wrong that settles in your gut and refuses to leave.
Isla stepped out first. The cold slapped her lungs.
Christopher followed, one hand on the strap of his bag, the other near the gun hidden beneath his coat.
“You feel that?” she asked.
He nodded. “Yeah. Something... off.”
They moved up to the steel door. No locks, no cameras. But a keypad blinked to life like it had been waiting for her.
She hesitated. “317. Let me try it.”
She typed it in. Click.
The door opened.
Inside, it smelled like metal and memory — dry air, stale electricity, something vaguely rotten. Lights flickered on like ghosts waking up.
“Someone’s still keeping this place alive,” Christopher muttered, scanning the hallway.
They walked. Glass walls lined both sides — broken rooms, shattered equipment, wires dangling like veins. Monitors in corners blinked erratically. One looped footage.
Kids in gowns. Wires stuck to their skulls. Blank stares. No sound.
Then a screen pulsed and held.
Ronan Vale – Subject 317
Footage spooled: a boy. Then older. Then a man. Same cold stare. Scar on the chin.
Isla stepped forward, hand out. Touched the screen. It buzzed faintly.
“He’s real,” she whispered.
Christopher didn’t speak.
She looked closer. “He looks like me.”
More than that.
Identical.
Not twins. Not clones. Something worse.
A hiss cut the silence.
A wall slid open at the end of the hall.
Christopher moved fast, stepping in front of her. “Stay close.”
But Isla was already walking toward the darkness.
The room beyond was pitch black until a motion light snapped on.
A figure stood in the center.
Not a recording. Not a ghost.
Him.
Ronan Vale.
Older. Late twenties, maybe. Thin, sharp-featured. That scar still there. Eyes alive — too alive.
He didn’t move.
Isla stepped in slowly.
Neither of them spoke.
She inched closer. Her voice shook. “Are you real?”
His head tilted. “They said I wasn’t. But I bleed. I dream. I scream. So yeah. I guess I am.”
“You’re... me.”
“And you’re me,” he said, almost smiling.
Christopher lingered in the doorway, watching every twitch.
“Why’d you stay?” Isla asked.
“I didn’t. I left. Came back. This place — it’s the only thing that’s ever made sense. It made me. Broke me. Gave me a name.”
She hesitated. “Our mother?”
His expression cracked. “We don’t have one. Not really. We weren’t born. We were... built.”
Something inside her snapped.
“What?”
He turned, tapped something on the wall. A file flickered into view.
Project Echo-317x / Isla-R Variant
She stared.
She wasn’t born. She was a reconstruction. Pieced together from fragments. DNA, memory, hope. A second draft.
Her knees buckled.
Christopher caught her before she hit the floor.
Ronan crouched beside her. “You weren’t a failure. You were their second try. Their chance to fix what they broke in me.”
She blinked, dazed. “Why me?”
“Because you felt,” he said. “You weren’t supposed to. But you did. You loved her. Aurelia. You lost her. That made you dangerous.”
Her breath hitched. “You remember her?”
He nodded. “She called me her son once. Kissed my forehead. Just once. I’ve lived on that ever since.”
Isla reached out.
Their hands touched.
Same skin. Same warmth. Same chill.
“They’ll come for us now,” Ronan murmured.
Christopher stepped in. “Let them. We’re not alone anymore.”
Isla stood. Shaking, but upright.
“What now?”
Ronan looked her dead in the eyes.
“Now? We burn this place down. And make sure no one can ever rebuild it.”
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