Lucia stared at the email until the screen dimmed. She blinked, heart pounding. The image was still there. The cold body on the table. Mark’s face. Pale, still, unmistakable.She tried to trace the email. Nothing. No IP. No metadata. Just static, as if the message had been written from nowhere. She hit Reply. Who are you?Delivery failed. Address not found.Lucia cursed. She tried forwarding it to her tech contact, but the file corrupted the moment it left her inbox. Vanished.She was left alone in her darkened room, one hand clenched tightly around the edge of the desk.Who did we bury six years ago? And why did that corpse look exactly like her husband?Downstairs, Mark stood in the garden beneath a tree heavy with night blossoms. His hands were bare, palms open to the moonlight. The scent of jasmine was thick in the air, but his mind wasn’t on flowers. “She's close to the truth,” came a voice from behind the hedges.Mark didn’t turn. “Then feed her just enough to keep her walking

Lucia barely slept. The memorial room haunted her, rows of the dead, standing behind glass, reborn but broken, and Mark, Mark wasn’t just one of them. He was the first. Prototype Null. Unstable. “Wake him, and you risk the world.”The words Elara didn’t say screamed louder than the ones she did. By sunrise, Lucia had made a decision. She would confront her husband.Back at the Mansion, Mark was in the sunroom, dressed in black slacks and a linen shirt, trimming bonsai trees with a level of calm that only made Lucia’s nerves fray more. She didn’t waste time. “I know what you are.”He paused. “Do you?”“I saw the memorial room.”Silence. The snip of scissors. “I saw the photos. The names. The version of you marked Unstable.”He looked up. “And did you see what came before that?”Lucia stepped forward, voice trembling. “You died. That’s what came before.”Mark nodded. “Yes. I did.”Flashback, 12 Years Ago. A war zone. Not with bullets, with viruses. A village ravaged by a strain known on

The silence in the room felt suffocating. Mark’s eyes locked onto Lucia, his chest tightening. She stood there, a mix of disbelief and uncertainty etched across her features. Every step he took towards her felt like an eternity, each moment pregnant with the weight of everything they had both lost. “Lucia,” Mark said hoarsely, his voice trembling. “It’s really you. After all this time, it’s really you.”But she didn’t answer. Her eyes darted between him and Subject Zero, her hand still hanging mid-air. “I don’t know who you are anymore,” Lucia whispered, her voice quivering. “The man I knew, he’s gone. The man standing in front of me now,” She swallowed hard, her gaze flickering between Mark and Zero. “He isn’t who I remember.”Zero’s lips curled into a smile, as though relishing every moment of this confrontation. “You see, Lucia,” he said, his voice low and mocking, “you’re caught between the truth and your memories. But I’m here to remind you what you forgot.”Mark felt his pulse

The creature’s massive form loomed in the doorway, its body seemingly made of shadows, its eyes glowing a sinister red. Mark could feel the air grow heavy with every step he took, each one sending a ripple of fear through his chest. The walls around them groaned under the pressure as the beast’s monstrous silhouette filled the hallway, its hunched frame bending low as it stalked into the room.Zero’s hand tightened around the hilt of his blade, his usual bravado replaced by a rare look of dread. “This isn’t what we signed up for,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else.Lucia’s face was pale, her lips trembling. “I didn’t think it would really work. I never thought it could become this, this thing.” She shook her head as if trying to deny the reality unfolding before her. “I only wanted to fix things, to stop it from going wrong.”Elara, standing in the far corner of the room, looked eerily calm. “The beast was never meant to be a success. It was a failure, a mistake that sho