The image on the data pad was a ghost, a relic from a world that no longer existed. A world of badly frosted cakes, paper party hats, and a little brother’s off-key serenade. For ten years, Ariana Thorne had existed in a sterile, logical reality defined by genetic sequences and survival probabilities. She had meticulously walled off her past, brick by painful brick, constructing a fortress of scientific detachment around her heart.Aria’s video file was not a battering ram; it was a single, perfect note of a tuning fork, struck at the precise resonant frequency of Ariana’s buried soul. And the fortress crumbled.The single tear was followed by another, then another. A choked, ragged sob escaped her lips, a sound of pure, heart-wrenching grief that was utterly alien in the cold, clinical lab. She stared at the laughing, gap-toothed boy on the screen, and saw not just her brother, but the ghost of the woman she used to be. The woman who had loved him more t
Last Updated : 2025-11-09 Read more