SHE WAS A SUBJECT

Carl showed up at her door two nights later.

“No smirk tonight?” she asked, arms folded.

“I’m not here to play.”

“Then why are you here?”

He held up her black notebook.

“You dropped this. Again.”

She snatched it. “You looked inside again, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t have to. I remember what I felt.”

She tried to shut the door.

But his foot blocked it.

“Let me in, Wolfe. Just this once.”

She hesitated.

Then stepped back.

The second the door closed behind him, the tension snapped like a live wire.

They kissed.

Not softly this time.

It was wild. Rough. Starved.

Fingers in hair. Nails on skin. Shirts pulled. Power flickering and failing.

When he lifted her onto the desk, her notebook hit the floor with a soft thud.

But they didn’t care.

Because in that moment, nothing existed outside the space between them.

Morning was brutal.

Ophelia wore a high collar to hide the bite marks.

Carl didn’t bother.

Everyone noticed.

Lilith cornered her in the library. “So… you gonna tell me, or do I have to psychic-rip it from your head?”

Ophelia glared. “It’s not what you think.”

“You did sleep with him.”

Ophelia said nothing.

Lilith gasped. “Oh my god.”

“Shut up.”

Lilith squealed into a book. “Okay, but also… finally.”

Ophelia buried her face in her arms.

This wasn’t just physical. And that was the problem.

Because the only thing worse than liking your enemy… was loving him.

Two days later, a secret file was slipped into Ophelia’s locker.

No sender. No message. Just a name: Project Halo.

Inside the envelope: photos. Of her. Carl. Her father.

All dated years before she even arrived at Velgrave.

And on the last page — a classified seal.

Property of the Velgrave Authority.

Her fingers trembled.

Whatever this was, it was bigger than her powers.

Bigger than Carl.

Bigger than all of them.

And someone didn’t want her to find out.

The folder haunted her.

Ophelia kept it hidden under her bed, tucked behind a layer of memory-proof shielding, but the contents kept bleeding into her thoughts like ink into water.

Project Halo.

Her father. Carl. Classified surveillance footage.

The photos were old, but unmistakable. Her father, Dr. Everett Wolfe, in a Velgrave lab. Carl’s mother standing beside him. And in one photo — a baby.

A baby that looked like her.

She slammed the file shut.

No answers. Only questions. And one burning theory:

Velgrave wasn’t just training them. It was using them.

And she wasn’t a student here.

She was a subject.

She tried to avoid Carl the next day.

It wasn’t hard — Velgrave was buzzing with preparations for the Winter Solstice Trials, an elite showcase of power, strategy, and legacy.

But of course, avoiding Carl was like trying to avoid gravity.

He found her during Combat Tactics.

“You’re ignoring me,” he said casually, rolling up the sleeves of his uniform.

“Observation skills on point,” she muttered.

He leaned in. “Did I do something wrong?”

She turned sharply, meeting his gaze. “Did you know your mother worked with mine?”

That stopped him.

“What?”

She pushed a printout of the photo into his hand. “Tell me this means nothing.”

Carl stared at it, jaw tight. “I… I didn’t know.”

“Do you think this is a coincidence? You and me? Here. Together.”

He looked at her then, all arrogance stripped away.

“I think nothing about us has ever been coincidence.”

Ophelia needed answers. The real kind.

So she broke into the lower vaults.

She knew the codes — inherited through memory threads from a former student she once rewrote in a training drill. The deeper levels weren’t patrolled as often, and even if she got caught, she’d scramble the memories of whoever found her.

She slipped past steel doors and into a freezing corridor lined with containment chambers.

This was the Storm Vault — where Velgrave kept its most dangerous secrets.

Inside one cell, she saw a girl with lightning dancing across her skin. In another, a boy muttering to himself, rewriting reality with words.

And in the last room…

A mirror.

Just a mirror.

But when she stepped closer, it flickered.

Her reflection blinked — and showed her another version of herself.

Older. Colder. Wearing a black sigil across her chest.

The emblem read: HALO UNIT 9.