The van's tire hiss over wet asphalt as they emerged from the tree line.The rain hadn't let up, and the wipers struggled to keep pace. No one spoke. The weight of the girl's last words"They made me a mirror," hung in the air like smoke.
Ethan sat beside her, watching her chest rise and fall under the blanket. She wasn't trembling anymore. But she wasn't calm either. Her eyes kept drifting, not to anything in particular,just drifting, like she was trying to stay in control of something no one else could see.
Harper guided the van onto a back road that curved toward Midtown's forgotten edge. Derelict buildings stood like ghosts, their windows boarded or broken, alleys flooded with runoff. It was Brinlake's underbelly.
"We're close," Liam said over the comms. "You'll see an old maintenance shed with yellow graffiti. That's the surface entrance. I'll open the access hatch remotely."
Maxwell glanced out the window. "You sure it's secure?"
"Triple-checked," Liam replied. "EMP net around the perimeter. Once you're in, nothing's getting in or out without us knowing."
Harper spotted the shed and killed the headlights. They rolled to a stop, engine idling. Ethan stepped out into the rain first. He helped the girl down carefully, shielding her with the blanket. Maxwell swept the area, rifle ready. Harper followed, glancing over her shoulder every few seconds.
The shed door groaned open, revealing a metal staircase descending into the dark. At the base, a heavy vault-style door waited,already unlocked.
Ethan looked at the girl. "You good?"
She nodded once.
They stepped into the dark.
The facility had once been part of Brinlake's subway extension project,a failed attempt to modernize the city's infrastructure decades ago. Now, it was a safehouse buried under concrete and secrets.
Liam was waiting in the main chamber when they arrived, surrounded by monitors and servers powered by an independent grid. The room smelled like cold steel and dust, but it was warm, dry, and quiet.
"Welcome to the basement of nowhere," Liam said. "Signal blockers are active. She can rest here."
The girl walked forward slowly, scanning the space. "It's clean."
Ethan raised a brow. "Clean?"
"No noise," she said. "No pulses. No static in my head."
Liam blinked. "She can sense wireless signals?"
"Maybe she's a relay"Ethan said quietly. "Remember? They she said they were feeding something through her. Maybe they weren't just transmitting, they were also receiving."
Maxwell leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "So what are we dealing with? A psychic antenna?"
The girl sat on the edge of a cot in the corner, clutching the blanket to her chest. "I don't know what I am. But when I was in that place, it felt like my head was splitting open every second."
Harper knelt beside her. "Do you feel safe now?"
The girl met her eyes. "Not yet. But safer."
Liam tapped a few keys on his console. "I'll scan the neural chip she pulled. If it's intact, maybe we can pull data from it. Learn how she was made."
"Or why," Ethan added.
A low hum filled the air as Liam inserted the chip into an isolated system. Lines of code spilled across the screen. He narrowed his eyes. "It's encoded in layers.
Harper stood. "How long?"
"I'll need a few hours," Liam said. "Maybe more. It's not just encryption. Some of this… looks biological."
The girl's voice was almost too soft to hear. "Because it is."
They all turned to her.
"They didn't build me with code alone. They used memory strands,live neurons. I remember flashes that don't belong to me."
Ethan approached. "Whose memories?"
"I don't know. But they feel… fractured. Like they were ripped out of someone else and shoved into me."
Harper's jaw clenched. "That's not just science. That's torture."
The girl didn't disagree.
Hours passed.
The storm moved on, but the tension inside the safehouse only deepened. Ethan sat across from the girl, sipping stale coffee while she traced patterns on the blanket's edge.
"Do you have dreams?" she asked suddenly.
He blinked. "Sometimes."
"I didn't. Not until recently. And now they won't stop."
He leaned forward. "What kind of dreams?"
"Empty rooms. Screaming through glass. Hands reaching for me,but they're mine. And there's always a shadow. Watching."
Ethan nodded slowly. "You think it means something?"
She shrugged. "I think it's real. A part of me they didn't erase."
Footsteps echoed down the hall. Liam entered, holding a small drive. His face was pale.
"I got through the first layer," he said. "And you're not going to like it."
He plugged the drive into the projector.
A blurry video played.
A hospital room. A child,maybe six or seven sitting on a bed. Electrodes on her temples. A voice off-screen: "Subject 01-A initiating upload sequence."
The child screamed.
Then the screen glitched.
Another flash: the same child, older now, eyes wide in terror. "Stop putting them in me!" she cried. "They're not mine!"
The screen went black.
Silence.
The girl's hands were fists.
"That's me," she whispered.
Ethan looked at Liam. "Where was this filmed?"
"No location tag. But the file is timestamped… twelve years ago."
"She hasn't aged a day," Harper said.
Maxwell stood slowly. "They didn't just create her. They froze her."
The girl looked at all of them, eyes burning.
"They wanted to keep me pure. Untouched. A clean slate. Every time I remembered who I was, they started over."
Ethan stepped forward. "But this time, you fought back."
She nodded. "And I won't go back."
Liam pointed to the last frame of the video,a logo in the corner. A new one.
It wasn't Caligo.
It was something else.
Harper stared. "What is Astra Division?"
Ethan's heart dropped.
"This isn't over," he said. "It's just beginning."
The girl stood up beside him.
"Then let's finish it