The Cipher Knight

Chapter 5: The Subject Chief

The following day Jay was sent by the company he works for to do a strange task with a co worker going to an unknown location with a helicopter. The helicopter sliced through the sky like a silver blade. Jay sat strapped in the backseat, staring out the window as forests blurred below. The wind roared outside, but inside, it was silent too silent. Halden sat across from him, arms crossed, eyes hidden behind black tinted lenses. She hadn't spoken much since they took off.

Jay could feel her mind like a ticking clock constant, steady, unreadable. Prism had warned him: Halden is the original weapon. But Jay couldn’t run now not without knowing what she knew.

“Where are we going?” he finally asked.

Halden didn’t look at him. “To see your future.”

Jay clenched his fists. “I thought I was just a junior analyst.”

She smiled faintly. “You’re much more than that. You just don’t know it yet.”

The words sat heavy in his chest he’d heard them before from Prism. From the Rebellion about subject "Chief".. a name buried deep in Virexon’s encrypted files. A name tied to something darker than he was ready to admit.

The helicopter descended onto a black landing pad hidden in the forest. Trees surrounded them like guards. A tall chain link fence glimmered with barbed wire. Behind it stood a square building, metal and concrete, windowless and cold.

Jay stepped out into the wind, heart pounding. “This place isn’t on any map.”

Halden smirked. “Exactly.”

They walked through security, past guards with blank expressions and retina scanners with words just green lights and cold stares. Inside, the halls were dim cameras tracking every movement. The walls had no numbers just symbols with spirals, eyes and circuit patterns. Halden finally stopped at a steel door.

She placed her hand on the scanner. “You asked to understand Project Echo. This is where it begins and where it ends.”

The door opened with a hiss inside, the room was white. Too white like a hospital without life and machines lined the walls with neural scanners, cryo chambers, memory sync pods. But Jay's eyes locked on the person in the middle. A boy maybe seventeen foating inside a glass tank filled with blue fluid. Wires in his head with scars on his arms.

Jay stepped forward. “Who is that?”

Halden’s voice dropped. “That... is Subject Chief.”

Jay’s breath caught.

“He looks like me.”

Halden turned to him. “Because he is you.”

Jay’s world spun.

“What, what are you talking about?”

Halden walked slowly around the tank. “Eight years ago, you died in a hospital bed. Brain hemorrhage from a viral fever but your brain didn’t shut down. It... rewired and you woke up days later, different.”

Jay shook his head. “No, I recovered my mom said—”

“She lied. We all did,” Halden said, voice sharp. “Your mother was on our payroll. She agreed to the trial. Said she was desperate. Said your mind deserved a second chance.”

Jay stumbled back.

“No. You’re lying. That can’t be me.”

Halden nodded toward the tank. “That’s your first version. We cloned it. Studied it. But your consciousness—your real self—was too unstable. So we extracted the neural code and uploaded it into a secondary host.”

She stepped close, eye to eye.

“You.”

Jay's knees weakened with his memories—the voices, the fever, the strange power—it all made sense now.

“I’m not... real?”

Halden smiled coldly. “You're more real than anyone else here. You’re the only subject that didn’t break.”

[ “Jay—get out now. She’s triggering you.”] One of the Neural Rebellion's voices whispered in his earpiece.

The voice rang in his head it was Prism's voice. Static flickered across his vision as the disk implanted behind his ear pulsed hot.

Halden narrowed her eyes. “Ah. So they’re already inside you.”

Jay grabbed his head. “What did you do to me?”

Halden pressed a button.

The tank drained the boy inside opened his eyes.

Jay staggered backward as the boy floated upright.

His own face.

Younger. Paler. Hollow.

The boy opened his mouth and spoke in a perfect copy of Jay’s voice:

[“Terminate the clone. Initiate overwrite.”]

Jay screamed as pain shot through his skull. His legs buckled. His hands gripped his temples as two minds collided inside him the boy’s and his own.

[“Jay, fight it! She’s trying to merge you!” ]The Rebellion’s voices cried.

Jay dropped to his knees. “What... is this?!”

Halden knelt beside him, whispering into his ear. “We don’t need your body, Jay. We need your mind. The world needs a perfect soldier. You were just the test.”

[ “Jay, override the neural core—use your thoughts. You are stronger.”] said Prism.

Jay forced his eyes open he looked up at the tank with the clone boy stepping out, barefoot, dripping blue fluid smiling. Jay reached inside himself into the fire that had woken when he was thirteen. Into the voices he had learned to control. He reached past Rebellion's signal, past the Rebellion’s tech and into something deeper.

His own mind.

His real mind.

“Get... out... of me!” he roared.

Energy exploded from his body in a psychic pulse. The tank shattered ,lights blew out, alarms screamed. Halden was flung across the room, crashing into a steel wall. Jay’s clone collapsed, shaking violently and just like that, silence fell. Jay stood up, breath ragged, eyes glowing faintly with light.

[“System integrity restored,”] Prism’s voice echoed in his head.

Halden groaned from the floor. “Impossible…”

Jay turned to her. “I’m not your weapon.”

She smiled weakly. “No. But now they’ll come for you.”

Jay stepped toward her. “Who?”

Halden’s eyes gleamed. “The ones above Virexon. The true architects. They know what you are now. And they’ll never let you live.”

Jay ran.

Past guards who now stared in fear.

Past the cameras that went blind the moment he looked at them.

Outside, the helicopter was gone. The sky thundered above, and far behind, the building shook from inside as backup systems failed.

[ “Jay, extraction team is two clicks west,”] Echo said. [“We’re coming. Just hold.”]

Jay looked over his shoulder one last time.

The lab was burning.

But something had followed him.