CHAPTER 6

By morning, they were quiet again.

Not distant — just heavier.

Ophelia stared at the cracked windowpane, sunlight slicing across the floor in sharp lines.

Carl traced a finger down her bare back. “You could leave, you know.”

“And go where?”

“Anywhere. Start over.”

She turned to face him. “I don’t want to start over. I want to finish what they began. On our terms.”

His eyes met hers. “Then we burn it down.”

A soft knock interrupted them.

Lilith’s voice from outside: “Um, hi. Sorry to interrupt your intense brooding and post-sex bonding, but you both need to see the newsfeed.”

They opened the screen.

There, broadcast live:

The headmistress was dead.

Blood on the marble floor.

Velgrave was under lockdown.

Velgrave Academy was not built for silence — it was a place of constant hums and murmurs: the crackle of powers, the echo of boots, the low buzz of secrets whispered behind locked doors.

But this morning, everything was still.

Ophelia stood frozen in front of the holoscreen as the footage looped again.

Headmistress Rhea Voss, found dead in her chambers.

Not a natural death. Not an accident. A clean, surgical strike to the heart — the kind used in military-level power suppression.

Lilith whispered, “They said her body was cold before midnight.”

Carl leaned against the wall, arms crossed, jaw tight. “She knew too much.”

Ophelia tore her eyes from the screen. “No. She was too much. She was in on it. Project Halo. All of it.”

Lilith raised an eyebrow. “Then why kill her?”

Ophelia looked away, voice low. “Because she was starting to doubt it.”

A beat of silence passed between them, thick as smoke.

Then Carl said, “We need to move.”

Ophelia’s gaze sharpened. “To where?”

He walked toward her slowly, voice calm but edged with steel. “If they’re tying up loose ends… we’re next.”

Inside the Headmistress’s office, the lights had already been dimmed. The room felt colder than usual, her signature blue orchid now wilted in the corner.

Carl and Ophelia broke in just after midnight.

Lilith stood watch outside, fingers already glowing with static in case of an ambush.

Carl cracked the lock on the data cabinet. “I know she kept physical backups. She never trusted the system.”

Ophelia pulled open a drawer. “Found it.”

Inside — a velvet-lined case with a drive encoded in blood signature. Only one person could’ve opened it.

But apparently, the Headmistress had prepared for her death.

A second drive sat beneath it. This one labeled in elegant cursive:

“To Subject 01, in case of betrayal.”

Ophelia stared at it. Then slid it into her reader.

The hologram glitched for a second… then the image of Rhea Voss flickered to life.

Her voice was calm, but her eyes were tired.

“If you’re watching this, then I am dead. And you already know part of the truth. You were never meant to discover it… but I knew you would.”

Carl leaned in. “She left this for you.”

“Ophelia… You were the first of us. The prototype. And you were supposed to end it all. But somewhere along the way… you became human.”

“Don’t let them erase that.”

The message cut out.

Carl looked at Ophelia, but she was staring straight ahead.

She didn’t cry.

She didn’t shake.

She just said: “Now I know who I am.”

And it wasn’t a victim.

It was a threat.

Velgrave locked down every hallway after the Headmistress’s death.

Security patrols doubled. Camera sensors went thermal. Classrooms were suspended. Trials were postponed.

But chaos always created gaps.

And Ophelia had never been better at finding cracks in the system.

She, Carl, and Lilith moved underground — into the forgotten chambers beneath the Old Wing.

Long ago, before Velgrave became an academy, it had been a fortress. The foundation was laced with secret passages, half-finished tunnels, and power-dampening walls.

They set up base beneath the original observation dome — now overgrown with vines and shielded from detection.

Carl dropped a heavy duffel on the floor. “We’ve got enough equipment to tap the central comms system. We can broadcast if we need to.”

Ophelia didn’t respond.

She was scanning the map — tracing routes toward a mysterious, heavily-guarded chamber labeled “S3-X.”

“What’s that?” Lilith asked, leaning in.

Carl frowned. “That’s… not on any of the official layouts.”

Ophelia exhaled slowly. “Then that’s where the truth is.”

And she was going to find it — with or without permission.

The door to S3-X required dual retina scans, a blood sample, and a coded phrase.

But Ophelia didn’t need access.

She remembered it.

The phrase echoed in her mind before she even touched the panel: “Order before freedom.”

The door hissed open, revealing a dark chamber lined with cases.

Each case contained a person.

Not a body — a suspended, breathing person in cryo-freeze.

Subjects.

“God,” Carl muttered. “They were making more of us.”

Ophelia stepped forward, eyes wide.

They weren’t just copies of her.

Each one had different traits: enhanced perception, aura manipulation, memory theft, time-lapse perception…

She recognized one face in the glass.

“Ezra…” she whispered.

Her older brother.

She thought he’d died when she was nine.

But he hadn’t.

He’d been put on ice.

Carl stood beside her, voice quiet. “What are we walking into, O?”

She turned slowly, eyes burning with fury and fear.

“A war.”

They didn’t make it out clean.

One of the cryo-units triggered an alert, and within minutes, the walls lit red.

Security flooded in from the west wing — armed with stun spears and psionic blockers.

Ophelia and Carl fought back to back, a violent dance of memory illusions and power disruptions.

Lilith arrived mid-battle, storm energy crackling across her arms like a tempest goddess.

“Remind me never to skip a sparring session again,” she panted, blasting two guards into the wall.

They made it out, barely.

Ophelia’s leg was cut. Carl had a gash on his temple. Lilith’s power was burning low.

But they had the files. The truth. The proof.

And now, they had a decision to make.

Expose everything — and risk war with the Authority.

Or run.

Ophelia looked at them, breath ragged.

“Let’s go all in.”

Carl nodded.

Lilith smirked. “Burn or bust, baby.”

And they vanished into the shadows — fugitives, heroes, rebels.

Velgrave had created them.

But it would never control them again.