The Outcast Genius

CHAPTER 4 — THE MEMORY TRIGGER

Rain tore through the night like static, swallowing Ethan as he hit the water. Cold. Black. Silence. Then, air. He broke the surface, coughing, his hands clinging to a rusted ladder on the bridge’s underside.

Footsteps echoed above. Voices. Flashlights slashed through the mist. “Target overboard! Search downstream!”

Ethan pressed his forehead to the metal, breathing hard. “Not tonight,” he muttered. He climbed down into the shadowed underbelly of the city, following a drainage pipe until the world narrowed into concrete silence.

The syringe throbbed in his pocket, its silver cap gleaming faintly even in the dark. He pulled it out. The label was blank. No logo. No formula. Just the note: “When you’re ready to remember.”

“Remember what, Vivian?” he whispered. “What the hell did you put in me?”

A voice echoed back, faint, almost a whisper of his own: “Not what, Ethan. Who.”

He spun, heart hammering. “Who’s there?”

Silence. Just the steady drip of water. He exhaled. “I’m losing it.”

Then a figure emerged from the tunnel’s dark mouth, thin, soaked, wearing a hood. A woman’s voice, rasped and uncertain: “You shouldn’t be here.”

He froze. “Elara?”

She stepped closer, lifting her head, pale face, eyes haunted. “Do I look like Elara to you?”

“Depends on which part of the night this is,” he said carefully. “Who are you?”

“Someone who used to be part of the same experiment.”

His stomach dropped. “Helix?”

She nodded slowly. “You’re C-0-L-E, right? I was M-4-Y-A.”

“Maya.” The name sparked faint static in his brain, a memory flicker, a voice in a lab, someone screaming his name before a blackout.

She took another step. “They’ll track you. The serum in your pocket, it’s not memory restoration. It’s activation.”

Ethan frowned. “Activation of what?”

“Of him,” she said softly. “The version of you they made.”

He stared at her. “What do you mean, made?”

She pointed at his chest. “The real you died six months ago, Ethan. The thing standing here is the backup.”

Ethan’s pulse thundered. The backup. The word lodged in his chest like shrapnel. “That’s not possible,” he said, forcing a laugh that sounded more like disbelief. “I was at my wedding six months ago. I ”

“Were you?” Maya cut in. Her voice was calm, too calm. “Can you prove any of it? What’s the last thing you actually remember before you woke up in that lab?”

His mouth opened, then closed. Images swam, Vivian’s perfume, the flash of a camera, a champagne glass slipping from his fingers, then nothing but white noise.

Maya stepped closer, eyes glinting under the tunnel light. “They uploaded your cognitive pattern before the serum trials. Insurance. The first Ethan didn’t survive the hemorrhage.”

“That’s insane,” he muttered, backing up. “I’m not some… program.”

“Then don’t take the injection,” she said. “Because once you do, you’ll meet him.”

“The other me?”

She nodded. “The one who remembers everything.”

Rainwater hissed through the drain above them. Ethan stared at the syringe, heart stuttering. Vivian’s note burned in his mind: When you’re ready to remember.

Maya’s tone softened. “You think she loves you? She loves her experiment. We were all expendable.”

He swallowed. “Then why warn me?”

“Because,” she said, voice trembling, “I’ve heard the other voices. I think one of them wants out.”

Ethan’s skin prickled. “Voices?”

She nodded. “Every subject carried fragments, echoes of failed copies. We call it ghost-code. If you inject that serum, you’ll let the ghost in.”

He looked at her, then at the syringe gleaming in his hand. “Maybe that’s exactly what I need.”

Maya stepped forward, panic flashing in her eyes. “Don’t !”

Too late. Ethan plunged the needle into his arm. The tunnel tilted. Light exploded behind his eyes. A whisper, deep and familiar, crawled through his mind: Finally awake, are we?

Maya’s scream echoed down the concrete walls as Ethan dropped to his knees, eyes glowing with a light not his own.