The aftermath The rain wouldn’t stop. It came down in heavy sheets, swallowing the forest in a wet hush. Smoke still curled from the remnants of the ambush — the blackened shell of what was once their shelter, the soft hiss of fire dying in the mud.Clara knelt beside the body.Her fingers trembled as she brushed mud from Victor’s cheek. His eyes were half-open, as if caught between words he never said. The hole in his chest was small but deep, his shirt soaked dark red.“Help me,” she whispered.Ethan stood behind her, his arm still bleeding through the bandage she tied earlier. “Clara—”“Don’t. Just help me.”He hesitated before stepping closer. Together, they lifted Victor’s limp body to the edge of the clearing. The rain did the rest — washing away the blood that trailed behind them, erasing the violence like it wanted to hide what happened here.They didn’t speak again until the grave was done. Shallow. Uneven. The soil turned to thick, sticky mud under their hands.When they we

The wrestling hearts The night had teeth. It bit into Clara’s skin as the wind screamed through the cracks in the safehouse walls. The storm outside was relentless—like something alive, furious, as if the world itself had decided to tear open everything they’d tried to keep hidden. Inside, though, there was a silence that felt sharper than the storm.Clara sat by the small fire Ethan had managed to build, its glow painting her skin gold and shadow by turns. Her hands trembled even though she tried to hide it, pressing her palms together like she could hold herself in one piece. The words from Kane’s files still echoed in her head—sentences that didn’t belong to any sane reality.Subject 07: viability confirmed. Neural response to the serum exceeded projection. Emotional retention: intact. Memory: suppressed.She could still see her name—Clara Bernett—in neat black ink, at the top of the report. Her stomach twisted every time she remembered it.Across the room, Ethan stood by the wind

Echoes Rain lashed against the fractured glass dome of the abandoned communications outpost, the sound sharp and relentless—like the earth itself was mourning something lost. Inside, Clara and Ethan crouched beside a flickering terminal, the dim blue light casting hollow shadows across their faces. The system hummed weakly, its circuits corroded by time and stormwater, but it was the only working link they had left to the outside world.Ethan’s fingers hovered over the cracked keyboard. His shoulder was still bound from the last encounter, movement restricted, yet his focus was unbroken—intense, surgical. “If Kane rerouted the satellite frequencies, he’s masking movement within a fifty-mile radius,” he said, voice rough from exhaustion. “We’re blind out here unless I can decode his firewall.”Clara knelt beside him, her damp hair clinging to her skin, the chill biting through the fabric of her worn jacket. “You shouldn’t be doing this with one arm,” she murmured, reaching to steady t

The Pull of SilenceMorning came slow. The light filtered through pale curtains, falling across the small living room in fractured shapes. The city outside moved as if nothing had changed , buses growling, people shouting, the rhythm of normal life continuing without pause. Inside, Ethan and Clara stayed in the hush between breaths, caught in the kind of quiet that came only after too much had been lost.Clara woke first. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was — the unfamiliar ceiling, the muted hum of city noise — but then it came back. The forest. The escape. The narrow streets of the city. The apartment Ethan had found for them, its walls still smelling of dust and detergent.She sat up, rubbing her arms against the faint chill. The blanket slipped to her lap. On the small counter, two mugs sat where they had left them last night, untouched.Ethan wasn’t asleep. He never was. He stood by the window again, blinds half-open, his eyes scanning the alleyway below. A dark shirt cl

Fracture LineThe storm didn’t stop that night.It rolled through the city in waves—lightning tearing across the clouds, thunder crawling deep into the bones of the apartment. The sound was steady, relentless, and somewhere between each rumble, Clara heard her own pulse.She hadn’t slept. Neither had Ethan.He was by the window, shoulders tense, eyes tracing the city lights through sheets of rain. The glow from the skyline cut across his face in uneven lines, throwing one side in light, the other in shadow.Clara sat on the couch, her fingers wrapped around a mug gone cold. Every so often, she glanced toward the desk—toward the chip now silent, as if the images it had shown them had burned out its last breath.The words Project Genesis wouldn’t leave her mind.Her father’s handwriting.That voice.She whispered, almost to herself, “It was her… wasn’t it? The woman on that table.”Ethan didn’t turn immediately. “Yes.”He finally faced her, and for a moment his expression softened—just