Damian’s eyes snapped open to a ceiling he didn’t recognize—corrugated steel streaked with rust, lit by a flickering strip light that hummed like an insect. Every muscle in his body screamed. His ribs burned with every breath, and his left arm felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. The air smelled of antiseptic and cold metal.He tried to push himself up, but his vision spun. The last thing he remembered was the fight—the flurry of blows, the wet sound of flesh giving way, and the glint of Subject 818’s blade before everything went black.Now, the fight was over. And he was still alive.“Stay down,” a voice ordered.Elara knelt beside him, her sleeves rolled to her elbows, her face streaked with grime and worry. The pale light made the sharp angles of her face even sharper, her eyes like two hard chips of ice.“You lost a lot of blood,” she said. “I stopped it from killing you, but you’re not out of danger yet.”Damian swallowed hard. “Noah?”She didn’t answer immediately. Her gaze fl

Lucian’s private laboratory was colder than the rest of the Citadel. Not because of the temperature regulators—though they were tuned to an unwelcoming chill—but because of the silence. The kind of silence that seemed engineered to swallow sound, to make anyone stepping inside aware of the weight of every breath.The walls were a seamless metallic black, laced with faint silver veins pulsing with power. The low hum of energy conduits ran through the structure’s bones like a heartbeat. At the center, on a raised platform, sat the containment pod—an elongated, coffin-like cradle of alloy and reinforced glass.Inside was Damian.Or at least… something wearing Damian’s face.Lucian approached with measured steps, the click of his boots on the steel floor oddly loud in the vast, hollow space. He stopped at the foot of the pod and regarded the figure inside. Same broad shoulders. Same angular jaw. Same faint scar along the right eyebrow from a mission years ago.But there was a stillness to

Damian’s head was a storm of white noise and phantom whispers. The machine’s clamps dug into his temples, cold metal leeching heat from his skin, and the restraints bit into his wrists and ankles as if they were welded into his bones. Tubes pulsed with neon-blue fluid at either side of the chair, feeding something into his bloodstream that left his body heavy, yet his mind unnervingly alert.Above him, Lucian stood like an executioner waiting for the axe to fall, his coat brushing against the frost-covered floor. The laboratory was colder than any Arctic blizzard outside, and the only warmth came from the faint, sickly hum of the Mind Overwrite machine.“Phase Two,” Lucian said softly, like he was announcing the opening act of an opera. “Let’s erase the ghost you were, Damian, and make something better.”A flick of Lucian’s wrist, and the flood began.Damian’s vision filled with a searing light. The machine pulled at his mind—not like a hand tearing pages from a book, but like a whisp

The alarms still hadn’t stopped screaming. Red strobes painted the black-site lab in pulsing waves, every flash catching the gleam of fractured stasis tanks and the slick sheen of condensation dripping from ruptured containment lines. The smell was sharp—ozone, coolant, and the faint copper tang of blood.Lucian’s voice was absent, but his presence was everywhere—through the sterile hum of surveillance drones drifting along the ceiling rails, the biometric scanners on every exit, the armed soldiers stationed at the perimeter. He didn’t have to be here in person to be watching.At the far end of the chamber, two figures—identical in every visible way—circled each other. Both Damian. Both dangerous.Elara’s pulse hammered in her ears as she moved between shattered consoles, trying to keep a visual on them. The clone’s blows were as precise as the real Damian’s, his footwork just as disciplined, but there was something in the cadence—a fraction too measured, too… rehearsed. The real Dami

Chapter 20 – The ShotThe clone’s finger tightened on the trigger.Elara’s breath caught—her last thought was Damian’s name—A thunderclap exploded in the narrow corridor.The clone’s expression froze mid-sneer, confusion flickering in his eyes. For a fraction of a second, it was almost human. Then a spray of crimson fanned out across the white-walled bulkhead, his knees buckled, and he collapsed sideways with a heavy, wet thud.Elara blinked, half expecting to see her own blood. Her chest still rose and fell—no burning hole, no sudden collapse. She looked up.Standing at the far end of the corridor, framed by the lingering haze of gunpowder and the harsh overhead lights, was a woman in matte-black tactical gear, her long rifle still smoking. Her blonde hair was tucked under a snow-hood, goggles pushed up onto her forehead.The Huntress.“Target down,” she said, her voice steady, like she’d just finished a routine shot at a range.The Arrival of The HuntressCole groaned from the floo