All Chapters of Forbidden never felt this good : Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

The moment she said it, the air in the chamber changed.Not because the room was alive though it was.But because she was.My sister, Mary, not Cassie stood before me, and every instinct in my body screamed that she was no longer the person I knew.She was something else.Something built.Something controlled.And yet…Her eyes still had that softness.That look of the girl I used to know.The one who used to laugh at stupid jokes.The one who used to call me by my real name.The one who used to protect me.I couldn’t breathe.I couldn’t think.I couldn’t move.Because the truth was too heavy.The truth was too real.The truth was…I wasn’t the only one who had been changed.She had been changed too.And she had been waiting for me to find the spine.To unlock it.To free her.Or to destroy me.I swallowed hard.“You said the spine saved you,” I whispered.Mary nodded slowly.“It did,” she said.I stared at her.“How?” I demanded. “What did it do?”She looked at me like she was choosi

Silence after danger is never quiet.It hums.It presses against the skin, against the ribs, until every breath feels borrowed. The shelter hadn’t been breached, not fully but the warning was enough. Enough to remind us that exposure had consequences. Enough to make the walls feel thinner than they were.I stood near the reinforced door, arms folded tight around myself, trying to slow my pulse. Outside, voices murmured in clipped tones. Plans. Routes. Contingencies.Inside, it was just me and him.I hadn’t realized we were alone until the air shifted.“You’re shaking.”His voice was low. Too close.I didn’t look at him immediately. If I did, I knew my control would slip in ways I couldn’t afford. “I’m not scared.”“I didn’t say you were.”That was the problem. He never did. He just noticed things, things no one else caught. The way my shoulders tightened when his presence filled the room. The way my breath changed when he said my name.Cassie.Not loud. Not possessive. Just… intention

The situation wasn’t loud.That was what made it dangerous.Everyone stood too still in the command room, eyes locked on the single screen pulsing faintly with encrypted data. Marcus hovered over the console, jaw tight, fingers frozen mid-air as if touching the wrong key might set the world on fire.“This isn’t an attack,” he said finally.Elliot frowned. “Then what is it?”“A message,” Marcus replied. “Old. Buried deep. Activated by Cassie’s biometric signature when she crossed the western checkpoint.”All eyes turned to me.My stomach dropped.“That system shouldn’t even exist anymore,” Adrian muttered. “It was dismantled years ago.”“No,” Marcus said quietly. “It was hidden.”The screen shifted.A single line of text appeared.IF YOU ARE SEEING THIS, IT MEANS YOU SURVIVED.The room went silent.My pulse thundered in my ears.“That’s my father’s encryption,” I whispered. “No one else writes like that.”Elliot stepped closer. “Cassie… what does it mean?”“It means,” I said slowly, dr

The east corridor did not welcome travelers.It tolerated them.The moment she stepped fully inside, the air changed, thicker, heavier, as though the space itself carried memory and resented being disturbed. The metal beneath her boots was older than it looked, worn smooth by decades of use and abandonment, layered with a history no system had bothered to erase.Her footsteps echoed twice.Not once.Twice.She slowed immediately.That wasn’t panic. Panic was loud and reckless. This was instinct, the kind that had kept her alive when erasure had been a sentence instead of a rumor.Twelve hours, Marcus had said.Twelve hours of silence, no cameras, no active surveillance, no biometric sweep strong enough to flag her.That had been the promise.Promises, she had learned, were fragile things.She adjusted the strap of the bag slung across her shoulder, fingers brushing the thin band wrapped around her wrist. The identity band was light, almost weightless but she felt it constantly, the wa

The darkness wasn’t empty.It was waiting.The silence was not calm. It was heavy, like a held breath that had nowhere to go.My wristband vibrated again, harder this time, like a pulse trying to break through my skin.The corridor had turned into a tunnel of black.And in that black, something was already moving.I could hear it.A soft whisper of footsteps.Not frantic. Not rushing.Slow.Deliberate.Like a predator that didn’t need to hurry.My lungs felt too small.My heart felt too loud.I swallowed, forcing myself to breathe evenly.The man’s voice had still been in my ear:“Decide. Be invisible. Or be necessary.”I squeezed the mirror device in my palm so tightly it hurt. It was cold and light and wrong, like it didn’t belong in my hand.But I knew what it was.A single-use reflection.A way to transfer my biometric imprint to somewhere else.A way to make me disappear.A way to make Cassie vanish.I didn’t want to vanish.I wanted to live.I wanted to fight.But my voice came