The dawn light slashed through Eva’s nursery windows like a sword through silk, cleaving the room in shafts of golden clarity and shadowed stillness. Dust particles hovered in the air—tiny ghosts caught mid-waltz. The scent of lavender lingered faintly, a residue of bedtime rituals now broken.Savannah hovered by the crib, breath caught in the delicate snare of fear. Her eyes scanned the room—still and hushed, yet somehow not quiet. Something vibrated beneath the surfaces, something old and aching. The plush wolf lay face-down on the floor like a fallen sentinel, and beside it, the drawing pad lay open, its last image unfinished.A single rose.Half-inked.One petal bled with shadow—its edges heavy, blackened, as if some unseen hand had pressed too hard, like a wound being etched instead of healed.Eva sat on the edge of her small bed, knees drawn up beneath a quilt of stitched moons and stars. Her eyes were vacant, not from sleep but something deeper—a tearless exhaustion that hollow
Mira-Eve hovered under the silvered shards of rain as though she belonged in them. Outside, trees bowed beneath droplets like nervous dancers. Lightning split the sky, thunder rolled as if testifying. Smoke curled from the lamplight. And Mira-Eve’s stillness anchored them all.Savannah watched helplessly from the doorway. Savannah understood stillness. She also knew it could be obsidian.“She remembers the place,” Julian said behind her, voice low, edged with dread. “Not as Mira-Eve. As Magnolia.”Savannah’s heart cracked. She turned slowly, voice dry. “That’s not possible.”Julian reached out with trembling hands and handed her the neurological printout—dense charts and colored swirls, mapping peaks of memory clusters in forgotten areas of child cognition.“You told me about the blackouts,” he reminded her quietly. “Now I’m telling you this is worse.”Magnolia’s neural signatures had somehow patterned inside Mira-Eve’s brain: exact structural congruence, origin labels… codes engraved
The hallway was too quiet for a house full of the living.Savannah stood in the open doorway, paralyzed. Mira-Eve sat upright on the edge of the bed, pale, humming something that made the air around her feel too still. The overhead light flickered once. Then again.Her eyes didn’t move—not like a child’s. They were too sharp. Too knowing. Watching Savannah like one would a secret remembered too late.“Mira?” Savannah’s voice cracked. “Sweetheart, are you okay?”But the girl didn’t answer to that name. Not yet.Instead, she tilted her head the way Magnolia used to when she was bored during board meetings. The precise, feline tilt. “You wear too much perfume when you’re hiding something,” she murmured.Savannah flinched.That sentence—those exact words—Magnolia had whispered once at Colton’s charity gala, a private barb meant only for her. How could Mira-Eve know that?“Come here,” Savannah said, inching forward. But her heartbeat turned to thunder.“I don’t like the blue pills. They ma
The Parisian academy burned behind them—a husk of tradition consumed by flashing lights and shattered protocol. Helicopters throbbed above the ivy-laced rooftops, casting red shadows across cobblestone. Sirens screamed like wounded ghosts.Savannah limped across the square, her coat half-torn, one heel missing. Blood painted her palm from a graze she didn’t remember earning. Beside her, Colton moved like a wolf still braced for ambush—head low, eyes sharp, hand glued to the small of her back. Every few steps, he looked behind them, as if Mira-Eve might vanish again into smoke.The girl had slipped through a side exit, pulled by handlers or perhaps by instinct. She had spoken only once in that cursed ballroom, and yet the entire world had heard: “The dream lady.”Savannah’s heart beat to those words now—relentless, pulsing. Every corner they turned might mean her daughter slipping further into Weston’s grip. Every hesitation might mean it was already too late.Julian’s voice broke thro
The world had narrowed to flickering screens, red warning strobes, and the thin, glassy air of helplessness. In the darkened command room, Rhett stood in front of a wall of monitors, pale with horror. His finger traced a glowing schematic: the layout of Echo’s hidden pediatric lab—code-named “Nest.” Savannah stood behind him, arms tightly wrapped around herself as if bracing against a cold that lived in her blood.“They call it Cascade V-2,” Rhett muttered, almost to himself. “It’s not a vaccine. It’s a reprogramming agent.”He tapped the screen. A series of notes scrolled upward—handwritten scans with Weston’s signature at the bottom.Subject: Mira-EveProtocol: Empathic OverdriveGoal: Emotional influence and memory fusionViability: 67% with maternal sedation factor. Consent obtained (see Delaney signature, file #0047)Savannah’s knees gave slightly, but she didn’t fall. “Fusion? What does that mean?”“They want to take what’s in her mind and amplify it—make her feel too much, so m
The academy grounds slept under a silvery moon, statues of angels bending over fountains that whispered. Savannah stood beneath an arched trellis, holding MiraEve’s sketchbook—a leather-bound relic of dreams and loss.She flipped through page after page: Savannah’s face—eyes wide, hair wild—as though carried on a gust of memory; Eva in diapers; tangled hallways of Echo laboratories; geometric corridors she’d never shown her daughter. The faces were precise, skeletal, unmistakable—but drawn by a child’s hand.She pressed her palm to the page again and again, watching the lines begin to blur. MiraEve’s hand had trembled across the page, yet each stroke bore intent, as though drawn in sleep and half-memory.Behind her, Colton tread softly. “Do you see her in there?” he whispered.Savannah inhaled, nails grazing the paper as if making a contract with fate. “It’s how she sees us. How she lived us.”Eva came up behind them, plush wolf hanging off one arm. She slid into Savannah’s side and