Chapter 7: Broken Memories

Light exploded.

Then the world went dark again.

Not the peaceful dark of night.

Not the protective dark of the cave.

A crawling, suffocating darkness — thick as wet cloth against her skin — dragged Kiera down into its depths.

Her ears rang.

Her pulse hammered.

Her mind spun out of control.

She tried to reach for something — anything — but there was no ground beneath her, no air in her lungs, no sense of up or down.

Just falling.

Endless falling.

Then—

A scream.

Her own.

Except she couldn’t scream.

Except she was screaming, the sound raw and tearing as it ripped out of her chest, echoing into the void. It didn’t make sense. She hadn’t made a sound in years. Her vocal cords were dead, scorched by whatever the lab had done to her.

But here, in this nightmare-space, she was shrieking until her throat bled.

“Bring her back.”

“Increase the voltage.”

“Watch the brainwave spikes……. fascinating.”

The voices surged around her, overlapping and mutating into distorted echoes.

Hands clamped down on her arms. Cold metal locked around her wrists. A blindfold tightened over her eyes. Her heartbeat sped into a frantic rattle.

“No,” she breathed — not aloud, not mentally, not in any way she understood. The word simply existed in front of her.

But the nightmare didn’t care.

The darkness warped — and formed the shape of a door.

The door she feared most.

White light leaked from the cracks like acid.

“Please not that room. PLEASE.”

Her legs sprinted backward on instinct.

But the darkness behind her solidified, forming walls.

A corridor.

A cage.

The door swung open.

A blinding white room yawned before her — empty except for a single metal chair bolted to the floor.

The chair.

Her chair.

Straps dangled from the armrests like dissected snakes. The cold metal gleamed as if waiting. Expecting.

Her breath stopped.

The walls pulsed like a heartbeat — too loud, too close. Her own pulse? The memory of their machines? She couldn’t tell.

“Kiera.”

Her eyes snapped up.

A figure stood in the doorway.

Not Hale.

Not a Hunter.

Ronan.

Except… wrong.

His eyes weren’t gold — they glowed a dead, burned-out black. His shape flickered, glitching like a corrupted projection. His voice came through distorted, warped by static.

“Kiera… come back.”

She staggered away, hands shaking. That wasn’t Ronan.

Couldn’t be.

Nightmares didn’t give comfort.

They only took.

Behind her, the walls of the white room rose higher, stretching into infinity. The chair dragged itself across the floor toward her, metal screeching.

Her chest convulsed.

She didn’t want to sit.

She didn’t want to go back.

She didn’t want to remember.

But the nightmare dragged her anyway.

Shadows clamped her wrists and ankles. Cold straps slithered around her skin. She felt the pressure, the tightening, the old bruises roaring back to life.

“No—! No, please—” Her voice cracked on the last word, raw and terrified.

The lights in the room blazed brighter. Pain flared across her skull as phantom wires tightened.

Then—

A roar.

Not in the room.

Not part of the nightmare.

A real roar — deep, furious, familiar — ripped through the darkness like claws tearing through fabric.

Ronan.

His voice carved its way through her spiralling terror:

“Kiera. Come back. I’m here.”

His real voice this time.

Warm.

Alive.

Desperate.

The nightmare-Ronan dissolved into smoke.

The walls trembled.

The straps loosened.

The white room flickered.

Her heart lurched toward the sound of him — the real him — even as terror clawed at her throat.

But the nightmare wasn’t finished.

Dr. Hale’s voice poured over her like ice water.

“You can run from me in the waking world, Subject 3. But in here… you still belong to us.”

Hands she couldn’t see seized her shoulders. She screamed silently as the chair’s metal restraints snapped closed with a deafening CLANG.

The world around her cracked.

White.

Black.

White.

A pulse of psychic energy exploded outward — too strong, too vicious, too tangled in memory and panic.

And then—

Ronan’s voice, ragged with fear:

“Kiera—STOP—"

Everything shattered.

She gasped awake.

Her back slammed against something solid.

The cave roof blurred above her — but the world pitched and swayed sideways. Her vision doubled.

The bear loomed beside her, panting, blood on its fur.

Ronan hovered over her, half‑shifted, trembling with adrenaline.

“Kiera,” he said aloud — the first time she’d heard his real voice, not the one in her mind.

Rough.

Low.

Terrified.

“You’re bleeding,” he whispered.

She blinked, dazed.

Her hands came up slowly.

Her palms glistened red.

Not from wounds.

From where her nails had dug so deeply into them that she’d torn her own skin open.

But something else was wrong —

Very wrong.

Because as Ronan stared at her, golden eyes wide with shock…

Her throat burned.

Her lips parted.

And a tiny, broken sound escaped her —

not in her mind,

not a scream,

just—

A gasp.

Ronan froze.

The bear stopped breathing.

Kiera’s heart plummeted.

She had made a sound.

For the first time in years.

And the Hunters weren’t the only ones who heard it.

From the forest outside the cave came a dozen answering shouts—

Human shouts.

Close.

Too close.

Hale’s voice cut through them all:

“There she is. Move in.”