LOGINElena barely remembered how she got back to her suite only the echo of Alex’s voice in the hallway and the way her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.Her mind replayed the moment over and over: the encrypted folder, the classified stamps, the clinical descriptions of “Subject E-47.”Her.Her entire childhood, rewritten into a project.She didn’t even realize she was pacing until a knock sounded on her door.“Elena, open up.” Alex’s voice was low, urgent.She hesitated. He’d seen too much downstairs her panic, her fear. The one thing she’d always protected.Another knock. Softer this time.“Elena… please.”She opened the door.Alex stepped inside, closing it behind him. His eyes swept her face, then the room like he was checking for threats. Or maybe just looking for the pieces she was trying desperately to hold together.“I shouldn’t have let you see that alone,” he said quietly.“You didn’t let me,” she whispered. “I went. I needed the truth.”He took a step closer. “And what truth are you
Clara didn’t look back as she dragged me down the dim corridor, her fingers locked around my wrist with desperate strength. The emergency lights flickered in sickly red pulses, painting her face in an eerie glow that reminded me too painfully that this was my sister… and yet not the girl I remembered.“Clara,” I whispered breathlessly, my heart thundering. “You have to tell me what’s going on.”“No,” she said sharply. “Not here.”Her voice trembled. Clara was terrified no, she was haunted. And that frightened me more than anything Dahlia could ever do.We burst through a side door into an old service stairwell. The air smelled of dust and disuse, the kind of place forgotten by the world. Clara leaned against the wall, chest heaving.That’s when I saw it.The tiny tremor in her hands.She was scared of me knowing the truth.“Clara,” I said again, softer this time. “I need answers. How are you alive? Why did Dahlia come after us? Why”She lifted her head, eyes glassy with something clos
Elena’s POV Silence is the loudest sound in the world when the person you love might be dying on the other side of a door.The moment the steel panel sealed shut, it felt like the entire world vanished with it. One second Adrian was in front of me alive, fighting, bleeding. The nextA gunshot.A thud.Then nothing.“ADRIAN!” My scream tore my throat raw. I punched the metal door with both fists, frantic, desperate. “Adrian answer me! Adrian!”Silence.Cold. Absolute. Cruel.I dropped to my knees, palms stinging, tears blurring everything. My heartbeat was a hammer, hitting harder and harder until I felt sick.No. No. No.He couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t.Not when he’d fought so hard to get me here.Not when he’d promised he wouldn’t leave me.Not when I hadn’t even told himThat I was falling in love with him.My breath choked. “Adrian… please…”I pressed my forehead to the cold metal, hoping praying for even one sound from the other side.Nothing.The safe room lights flickered on a
Elena’s POV Silence is the loudest sound in the world when the person you love might be dying on the other side of a door.The moment the steel panel sealed shut, it felt like the entire world vanished with it. One second Adrian was in front of me alive, fighting, bleeding. The nextA gunshot.A thud.Then nothing.“ADRIAN!” My scream tore my throat raw. I punched the metal door with both fists, frantic, desperate. “Adrian answer me! Adrian!”Silence.Cold. Absolute. Cruel.I dropped to my knees, palms stinging, tears blurring everything. My heartbeat was a hammer, hitting harder and harder until I felt sick.No. No. No.He couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t.Not when he’d fought so hard to get me here.Not when he’d promised he wouldn’t leave me.Not when I hadn’t even told himThat I was falling in love with him.My breath choked. “Adrian… please…”I pressed my forehead to the cold metal, hoping praying for even one sound from the other side.Nothing.The safe room lights flickered on a
The darkness fell so suddenly, so completely, it felt alive.One second Elena was staring at the space where Clara had disappeared.The next blackout.Then the sounds hit.A scream.A crash.Glass shattering.Gunfire ripping through the night like lightning tearing the sky.“Elena down!” Adrian’s voice snapped through the chaos.He shoved her behind the heavy marble counter just as bullets tore into the walls behind them. Sparks burst where metal met stone. Elena hit the ground hard, her heartbeat slamming against her ribs like it wanted out.She gasped. “Adrian what’s happening? Who”“Stay low,” he ordered, already drawing the pistol hidden beneath his jacket. “There’s more than one intruder. They cut power.”Another boom shook the house something slamming through a door, then footsteps pounding toward them.Elena swallowed a cry. “Clara said they were close, but this”“I know.” His voice softened for half a second. “I’m getting you out of this alive. I swear it.”Shadows moved in th
For a moment, Elena couldn’t breathe.The world narrowed to the woman standing in the doorway the impossible, living shadow of her past.Clara.Her sister.Her grief.Her guilt.Her ghost.Except she wasn’t a ghost at all.She was here. Alive. And smiling like resurrection was a game she enjoyed winning.“Hello, Elena,” Clara said softly, stepping fully into the light.Elena’s stomach knotted. The face was the same same eyes, same cheekbones, same scar on her chin but the expression was wrong. Cold. Mocking. Hollow in a way that made Elena’s skin crawl.“You’re alive,” Elena whispered, voice cracking. “How how is this possible?”Clara tilted her head. “Did you miss me?”Elena stepped forward before her brain could stop her. Adrian caught her arm gently, his fingers tightening in warning.“Don’t,” he murmured. “You don’t know what she is now.”Clara laughed at that. A laugh that didn’t belong to the sister Elena grew up with. “Oh, Adrian. Still playing the protective husband? How cute







