The Unseen Miracle

Chapter 3

Lucia sat in the private garden behind the mansion, the glow of the moon painting silver across her skin. She hadn’t eaten the food Mark cooked. Not a bite. She couldn’t trust him. Not now. 

The man she married under legal pressure, the man she planned to divorce in six months, had a corpse with his face. And he didn’t even deny it.

Worse, he’d said the people who sent the photo were after her, too. She clenched the velvet seat cushion. Was he warning her, or threatening her?

Meanwhile, in the city’s business district, a sleek skyscraper pierced the clouds, Marvin Industries, the largest private company in the world. 

Its glowing M logo was recognized across continents, yet no one truly understood what it did.

On the 78th floor, a door opened with a soft hiss. “Sir,” said Elara, Mark’s personal assistant, dressed in a dark blazer and glasses, “Phase Two of the Lazarus Protocol has activated. DuPont has connected with her inside contact at Eastbridge Memorial.”

Mark stood at the window, watching the skyline as lights flickered below like fallen stars. He didn’t turn around. “Let it play out.”

Elara hesitated. “If DuPont connects Marvin with the Eastbridge trials.”

“She won’t,” he said. “Not unless someone inside helps her.”

Elara stepped forward. “That’s what worries me.”

Mark finally turned. “Assign a mirror team to trail her. Discreetly. If she uncovers anything that breaches Protocol Sanctum, ghost her trail. We can’t afford exposure yet.”

“And your wife?”

A flicker of something unreadable crossed Mark’s face. “Lucia, is the reason the Protocol exists.”

Two Days Earlier at Eastbridge Memorial Hospital, Archives Vault. A figure moved silently through the underground corridors of the hospital’s oldest wing. 

The walls were damp with time, the air thick with antiseptic and secrets. Lena DuPont clicked open a rusted door with a stolen key card.

Inside: rows of patient records, physical files, some red-tagged and marked "Unclaimed." "Experimental," or just "X."

She pulled out a file labeled Project Lazarus, Subject M.L. Her brow furrowed.

Subject condition: Deceased.

Cause: “Neurological hemorrhage post-cellular resuscitation attempt.”

Disposition: “Facility shutdown following incident. Records sealed.”

Recovery agent: Elara Wynn.

Lena’s lips tightened. “Wynn, you snake.”

She turned the page. Attached was a photo. The same corpse. The same face. Mark Lewis, but below it, in red marker: Status: Reanimated (Unverified)

Back in the present, Lucia was preparing for bed when she noticed something odd: the walk-in closet light was on.

She hadn’t turned it on. She stepped forward slowly. Inside was an envelope sitting neatly on a shelf. No label. No stamp. Just her name, handwritten in looping script.

She opened it. Inside: a Polaroid photo. This time it was a photo of her that was taken from behind while she sat in the café with Lena.

Beneath the photo, a note: You’re being watched. Trust no one, especially not him. Lucia locked her bedroom door that night. But that didn’t stop her mind from racing.

Not when Mark’s words echoed like a warning. Not when her own face showed up in surveillance.  Not when everything pointed to a web bigger than she imagined.

In an unmarked facility outside city limits, a group of hooded figures stood before a thick metal vault, whispering in a dialect lost to time.

Inside that vault? A body, preserved in glass. Identical to Mark Lewis. A tall man approached. His badge read Dr. Saul Kramer, Lead Biogeneticist.

He tapped the glass with a pen. “Still asleep,” he muttered. “But not for long.”

He turned to the others. “It’s time. Activate the next phase.”

One of the hooded figures stepped forward, voice dry as parchment. “What of the wife?”

Dr. Kramer smiled. “She’s the key to unlocking the rest.”

That night, as Lucia finally drifted into uneasy sleep, she didn’t see the shadowed figure outside her window.

He stood there for hours. Watching. Waiting. Until, just before dawn, he whispered a single word, “Soon.”

...

Lucia’s morning began with a chill, though the sun outside was blazing; she awoke to find her phone wiped clean. No photos. No messages. No history.

As if she’d never taken that picture at the café. As if the Polaroid had never existed. She rushed downstairs, fingers trembling around the bannister.

Only to find Mark sipping coffee like he hadn’t buried a corpse or carried a thousand secrets behind those soft brown eyes. “I made eggs,” he said. “Thought you might be hungry.”

She didn’t respond. Her eyes locked on his, searching for cracks. Finally: “Did you go through my phone?”

Mark blinked. “No.”

“I think you’re lying.”

He calmly set down his cup. “Then call the police.”

Her breath caught. Mark smiled slightly. “If I’m so dangerous, call them. Tell them I erased your phone. Tell them a dead man’s walking and made you breakfast.” 

“I didn’t think so,” he said. “You’re not ready to find out the truth. Not yet.” Lucia turned and stormed out.

Later That Day, at Marvin Industries HQ, Lucia’s contact badge, a spousal visitor pass she never expected to use, granted her limited access to Marvin’s skyscraper. 

She entered under the pretense of meeting Elara for lunch, but her goal wasn’t lunch.

She was here to find the locked room, the one her father once mentioned. A place on the 31st floor where even board members couldn’t step inside. The door that doesn’t open, unless you have a pulse-level key. 

She timed her steps carefully, ducking past security cameras and faking elevator overrides with a signal-jammer Lena gave her two weeks ago, “just in case you want to dig,” she’d said.

31st floor. A long hallway. Dead quiet. Lights hummed, and there it was: a matte black door with no handle, no nameplate, only a small circular scanner glowing blue.

She pressed her thumb to it. Nothing. She pressed the Polaroid against it. Nothing, then, she whispered: “Mark Lewis.”

A small beep. The scanner blinked green. The door opened. Inside the Locked Room. It wasn’t a lab. It wasn’t a server room. It was a memorial.

Lucia stepped into a low-lit chamber filled with hundreds of glass panels, each containing a name, a photo, a cause of death, and a second photo beside it.

Each pair showed the same person. One dead. One alive. Like twins. But not twins. She scanned the walls, heart pounding.

Michael J. Reardon.  Died in 1999 in a car crash. Reanimated 2005, Stasis: Lock Alpha. Status: TERMINATED.

Serena Holt. Died in 2003 of cancer. Reanimated 2009. Status: Active (Marvin Biotech Research)

She kept walking, then, at the end of the room, a larger panel, darker than the rest.

Mark Lewis. Died: Unknown. Reanimated: Unknown. Project: L-0 / Prototype Null. Status: UNSTABLE.

Lucia gasped. Her knees almost buckled. Behind her, the door slid shut. She spun around. Elara stood there, arms crossed. “Didn’t think you’d find it this soon.”

Elsewhere in an abandoned Biolab, Sector 12, Dr. Saul Kramer looked over fresh intel dropped by the mirror team. “She's inside,” his assistant said. “The wife. She breached Memorial Room Alpha.”

Kramer’s eyes gleamed. “Then it begins.”

He turned to the cryo-chamber. “Wake Subject Zero.”

Back at Marvin, Lucia’s mouth was dry. “What the hell is he?”

Elara didn’t blink. “A miracle. A mistake. A prototype. Take your pick.”

“You reanimated him?”

“No,” Elara said. “We found him.”

Lucia stared at the glass, at the two photos. The living Mark had warmth, soul, but the other? The corpse? Something about it looked wrong. “Why is it here?” she whispered.

Elara stepped beside her. “Because if he ever breaks, if the ‘man’ you married ever loses control, this room is your warning.”

Lucia turned slowly. “What do you mean, loses control?”

Elara met her gaze. “There’s a version of Mark Lewis that doesn’t care about you. Or anyone. And that version is starting to wake up.”

That night, Mark stood in his study, staring into the fire. His reflection in the glass blurred, then, just for a moment, his eyes changed. Not brown. Not human, but silver. Cold. Unblinking, and he smiled.