2025-10-27 04:29:06The night deepened over Braxton Tower. Lightning danced across the skyline, its pale glow spilling through the lab’s fractured glass ceiling as Ethan stood motionless beside the central console, his gaze fixed on Elara. He could barely process what she’d said. My wife. The word echoed in his head, louder than the thunder above.
Leanna’s voice cut through the silence. “Ethan, you need to sit. You’ve lost a lot of blood and you’re still recovering from the procedure.”
He raised a hand, stopping her. “No. We need answers.”
Elara’s breathing was shallow. She leaned weakly against the pod, the faint glow beneath her skin fading as the serum’s effect began to wane.
“Answers won’t save us,” she whispered. “Voss has every reason to erase you again.”
Ethan turned to the console and connected the biometric interface. The system came alive, scanning his retina before flooding the glass display with data, encrypted files, patient records, and the label: Project Lazarus – Phase II.
Leanna frowned. “Phase II? How many phases were there?”
Ethan’s eyes moved rapidly across the screen. “At least five. Phase I was regenerative medicine. Phase II… neural imprinting.”
Elara’s voice trembled. “That’s what he used on me. He mapped consciousness like it was a design file. Memory, emotion, personality—copied, then transplanted into a new vessel.”
Leanna’s tone hardened. “You mean he tried to manufacture people?”
Ethan nodded grimly. “Bodies that don’t age. Minds that don’t forget. Immortality disguised as progress.”
He tapped a file labeled Lazarus Prototype Origin. The system demanded a password. Without hesitation, he typed one word: Elara. The file opened.
Lines of old journal entries appeared—his own handwriting, his own voice before the accident.
March 2nd — The human brain can be mapped through quantum resonance. Stabilization is near. Elara says it’s too dangerous, but she doesn’t see what I see.
March 6th — The first test failed. Neural rejection. Subject lost. Elara begged me to stop.
March 9th — Voss offered funding for shared control. I refused. He said he’d take everything from me.
March 12th — Elara is missing. Voss claims she’s in recovery, but I can’t reach her. I’m beginning to fear he—
The last line was cut off.
Ethan’s knuckles whitened against the console. His own words stared back at him like a confession from another lifetime. Guilt settled like lead in his chest.
Leanna’s voice softened. “He took her from you. Used your own work against you.”
Ethan’s reply was cold and steady. “Then he’ll die with it.”
Elara’s hand trembled as she reached for a secondary drive beside the terminal. “There’s more. He didn’t stop with me.”
She slotted it in. A holographic projection filled the room—surgeons in masks surrounding a restrained young man on an operating table, convulsing. Ethan froze as the camera panned. “That’s… me.”
Then another figure stepped into frame—a perfect copy. Two Ethans. One conscious, one barely alive. Voss’s voice narrated from the background.
“Replication achieved. Subject Alpha exhibits 87% neural similarity to Dr. Braxton. True success is close.”
Leanna’s eyes widened. “He cloned you?”
Ethan’s voice fell to a whisper. “Or tried to.”
Elara nodded weakly. “He wanted a version of you that would obey. The one who survived… was the one who refused.”
Ethan sank into a chair, running a shaking hand through his hair. “So the accident wasn’t an accident. It was cleanup.”
Before Leanna could answer, the lights flickered.
The main terminal beeped: INCOMING CONNECTION — INTERNAL SOURCE.
Leanna frowned. “Impossible. We’re on a closed system.”
Ethan opened the logs. The signal was coming from inside Braxton Pharmaceuticals. Someone was feeding Voss live data. “He’s got eyes in the building,” Ethan muttered.
The console beeped again, switching to a security feed—a figure in a lab coat moving across the upper levels, holding a tablet.
Leanna zoomed in. Her breath caught. “That’s Dr. Keane.”
Ethan’s jaw tightened. “Head of Diagnostics. My father’s protégé.”
Elara’s voice shook. “Voss must have gotten to him.”
The feed showed Dr. Keane entering an elevator—followed by two men in black suits. On one of their lapels gleamed the Voss Corporation insignia. Then static.
“Seal the exits,” Ethan ordered.
Leanna’s fingers flew across the board. “Already on it.”
Elara’s voice trembled. “Ethan, if Voss knows we’re here—”
“He does,” Ethan cut in, his tone steady. “And he’s coming.”
Another file appeared on-screen, triggered manually. Its title read: For Ethan. If you’re reading this, you found her.
He opened it. A pre-recorded hologram flickered to life—his past self, confident, composed, staring directly into the camera.
“If you’re watching this, Voss got to you. He’s going to erase you again, Ethan. Everything you’ve lost—he still holds. There’s a second key, hidden in the Northern Archive. Find it. And if she’s with you…” He smiled faintly. “…then it means I kept my promise.”
The hologram blinked out. Silence filled the lab except for the hum of machines.
Leanna turned toward him. “Northern Archive?”
Ethan nodded, jaw set. “A hidden data facility outside the city. If it’s still intact, it holds the last piece of Lazarus.”
Elara’s hand rested on his arm. “If we go there, you’ll see everything you tried to forget.”
He met her eyes, calm and resolute. “Then it’s time I remembered.”
Thunder rolled above the tower. Far across the city, a convoy of black vehicles sped toward Braxton Tower, their lights cutting through the rain.
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Chapter 208
The city did not announce Mara’s disappearance.It never did.Disappearances were absorbed the way rain was absorbed by cracked pavement,quietly, unevenly, leaving darker patches that no one wanted to step in. Leanna learned of it the way she learned everything now, indirectly, through absence.Mara did not answer her comms.Mara did not show up for the morning briefing.Mara did not argue when Leanna proposed rerouting supplies.At first, Leanna told herself it was caution,that Mara was lying low,that this was what survival looked like now silence, misdirection, patience.By noon, denial tasted like ash.Leanna stood in the small office behind the clinic, hands braced against the desk, staring at the empty chair opposite her. The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and old paper,outside, volunteers moved in low voices, their steps careful, as if sound itself had become dangerous.She replayed the last conversation with Korrin again and again, searching for the moment she might have mi
Chapter 207
The city did not react all at once,and that was what unsettled Leanna most.There was no riot after the Council’s announcement,no cheers either,just a slow, uneven ripple,conversations in doorways, pauses in broadcast chatter, eyes lifting from screens and then dropping again. People absorbed the news the way one absorbed a change in weather,warily, with the instinct to adapt before questioning whether it was deserved.Leanna Hale appointed Civil Liaison to the Council,temporary mandate,oversight of humanitarian coordination.Temporary.Everything dangerous was always temporary at first.She watched the broadcast from a quiet room above the clinic, the sound turned low,her name looked strange in official typography, stripped of context and blood and fear,cleaned,sanitized.Legitimized.Mara stood behind her, arms folded so tightly her knuckles had gone white.“You didn’t warn us,” Mara said.Leanna didn’t turn. “I didn’t know until an hour ago.”“You could have refused.”“Yes.”Silenc
Chapter 206
The city learned restraint the way a wounded animal learned stillness.Carefully,suspiciously,with flinches that never quite went away.Leanna felt it every morning when she walked through the lower districts,the pauses in conversation when uniforms passed, the way shopkeepers kept their hands visible, the way laughter died down too fast,peace had arrived, but it had not been welcomed,it sat heavy in the air, like humidity before a storm.She had stopped pretending this was temporary.That was the first lie leadership burned out of you.There was no until Ethan returns,no until Korrin overreaches,no clean turning point waiting just beyond the horizon. There was only now messy, compromised, fragile,and the question of what kind of damage you were willing to accept in order to keep it standing.Leanna stood in the clinic doorway and watched volunteers work in practiced silence. Bandages. Rations. Quiet reassurances murmured to people who didn’t ask for hope anymore just relief.Mara joi
Chapter 205
The city learned how to live without Ethan faster than it should have,and that was the cruelest part.Leanna noticed it in the small things first the way patrol routes stabilized, the way blackouts became scheduled instead of sudden, the way people stopped looking over their shoulders every time a rumor passed through the streets. Order settled in like dust, quiet and persistent, coating everything.Korrin’s order.She hated how efficient it was.Three days after Ethan left, Leanna stood on the balcony of the safehouse and watched the city breathed,morning traffic crawled below,vendors argued over prices,children ran across cracked pavement chasing something that looked like hope but might have just been boredom.Life went on.That should have been comforting.Instead, it felt like betrayal.She pressed her palms against the railing, grounding herself. Sleep had become optional these past nights,brief, shallow, full of half-dreams where Ethan was always just out of reach,not dead,not
Chapter 204
The city did not celebrate.That was the first thing Leanna noticed when they released her.No crowds,no cheers,no whispered legends rising up the way they always had when Ethan broke something that was supposed to be unbreakable,just streets moving at their usual pace, people stepping around each other with careful indifference, as if nothing monumental had happened at all.As if the world hadn’t tilted.She stood at the edge of the transport bay long after the guards unlocked her cuffs and shoved her forward,the metal doors slid shut behind her with a sound that felt final in a way she couldn’t explain,not imprisonment ending,but something else.Something quieter.Her wrists were raw,her body ached in the dull, exhausted way that came after fear had burned itself out,but it was her chest that hurt most tight, shallow breaths, like her lungs didn’t trust the air anymore.Ethan.That was the thought she couldn’t escape.Not where he was,but what did he do.She had seen the broadcast.
Chapter 203
Night did not fall in the city anymore.It descended.The kind of darkness that didn’t simply remove light but rearranged meaning,turning familiar streets into corridors of intent, every shadow a decision waiting to be made. Ethan moved through it without disguise, without haste. That alone felt like a provocation.People noticed.They always did now.Some turned away quickly, fear reflexive and sharp. Others stared too long, eyes burning with questions they would never ask out loud,a few inclined their heads, gestures small but weighted, like prayers offered to something they weren’t sure deserved worship.Ethan hated that most of all.He adjusted the strap of his jacket and kept walking.Korrin’s perimeter loomed ahead not a wall, not a gate, but a gradual shift in atmosphere. Surveillance density increased,patrol patterns tightened,the air itself felt watched. This was where the city stopped pretending it was shared.Ethan crossed the invisible line anyway.Immediately, his comm ch
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