LOGINThe Names We CarryThe detonator hovered in Vale’s hand like a decision no one wanted to own.Silence stretched, not empty, but heavy. The core pulsed softly, its light reflecting across the chamber like a heartbeat trying to steady itself.Lucas didn’t blink.“Where is she?” he said quietly.Vale’s eyes shifted, the slightest movement, but it was enough.“My mother,” Lucas continued, his voice steadier than his breath. “You said they’ll hunt everyone tied to this project. Including her. You didn’t say that by accident.”Derrick glanced between them, tension coiling in his shoulders.Natasha felt it too.A truth standing just outside the room.Waiting to be let in.Vale lowered the detonator slightly, not surrendering, but no longer advancing.“You were never meant to know,” she said.Lucas’s jaw tightened. “I was never meant to know a lot of things.”The core brightened, as if listening.Vale exhaled slowly.“Your mother was
When the Doors OpenThe tremor deepened.Dust drifted from the steel beams overhead. The tunnel lights flickered, then steadied again, as if the glacier itself was bracing for what was coming.Derrick checked the live feed on his tablet. “She’s breached the auxiliary shaft. Two floors above us. She knows exactly where she’s going.”Lucas’s brow hardened. “She’s done this before.”Natasha’s gaze shifted toward the corridor. Her body still felt light, almost unfamiliar, like standing in her own skin for the first time, but her mind was sharp.Not fractured.Not shared.Just hers.Amara hovered by the core, her faint form wavering, as if connected to the system by threads too thin to see.“She’s not coming for control,” Amara whispered. “She’s coming for erasure.”Derrick frowned. “Erasure of what?”Amara turned toward Natasha.“Me.”The floor shook again, louder this time.Boots.Multiple footsteps.No panic.No scrambling.A strat
The DivideThe light wrapped around Natasha like a tide that knew her name.Heat filled her chest, not burning, but clarifying. Every corner of her mind that Amara once slipped through was suddenly illuminated. No shadows. No hiding.Just truth.The platform steadied.The hum softened.Then the memories began.Not loud.Not chaotic.Just… fragments finding their way home.A hospital corridor.A child on a stretcher.Hands moving fast. Orders whispered. Fear disguised as science.Natasha’s breath faltered.“That’s me,” she murmured.Lucas froze beside the platform.Derrick’s tablet flickered, his face tightening as the scene sharpened.Natasha, younger, unconscious, fragile.Machines tracing thin threads of life.A surgical team gathered around her.Not strangers.Not monsters.Just people who chose obedience over mercy.A voice filled the chamber, steady, clinical, detached.“Project Mirror integration protocol. Patie
The Core That ListensThe glacier swallowed them whole.The tunnel opened suddenly, violently, as if the mountain itself had decided to let them through. Ice gave way to steel, ancient stone carved into precision architecture. The ladder ended at a narrow platform suspended above a vast, circular chamber glowing with low blue light.Natasha froze.Below them lay the Deep Mirror core.Not a room.A presence.Massive crystalline columns rose from the floor like frozen spines, veins of light pulsing slowly through them, synchronized, breathing. The hum she’d felt in her chest intensified the moment her boots touched the platform.Amara recoiled.Not in fear.In recognition.This place… Her voice was no longer sharp. It trembled. This is where I was shaped.Derrick stared, awestruck, horror bleeding into wonder. “This isn’t a server facility,” he whispered. “It’s… responsive.”Lucas’s eyes narrowed. “It’s listening.”As if summoned
THE BREACHThe engines grew louder, no longer a distant hum, but a closing threat slicing through the cold mountain air. Lucas dragged Natasha toward the exit tunnel as Derrick pulled up the system map, his fingers shaking over the holographic display.“They’re deploying convergent teams,” Derrick breathed, eyes wide. “Three units from the ridge. Two more from the valley road. Vale isn’t playing.”“She never does,” Lucas growled.Natasha felt Amara shifting inside her again, a quick, sharp recoil, almost like fear.Not anger.Not defiance.Fear.They’re here for me. Amara’s voice was thin, trembling inside her mind.Natasha steadied herself against the wall. No. They’re here for both of us.A scream of tires echoed above the bunker, closer now. Boots hit gravel. Orders barked. Metal cocking.Vale’s people weren’t hesitating.Lucas snapped his head toward Natasha and Derrick. “We’re moving. Now. Down the glacial shaft, take th
The Mother's CodeThe bunker hummed with a cold, metallic pulse, an old heartbeat wired into new systems. Natasha stood frozen, Lucas’s arm tight around her, as the holographic projection steadied into clarity.Evelyn Salvador.Alive.Not dying.Not fading.Not a glitch.Her presence filled the room with a quiet authority that didn’t belong to a ghost.Natasha barely felt her own breathing.Derrick was the first to find words. “This interface shouldn’t allow real-time projection unless…”“Unless the subject is conscious,” Evelyn finished calmly.Her voice wasn’t trembling. It wasn’t struggling.It was… aware.Lucas stepped forward, jaw locked. “Where are you?”A soft, sorrowful smile curved her lips, one that held a mother’s love and a scientist’s warning all at once.“Somewhere you cannot reach. Not yet.”Natasha felt Amara coil inside her, tight, hot, territorial, like a shadow bristling at being seen.Evelyn turned her







