The Unseen Miracle

Chapter 5

Lucia hadn’t said a word since returning to the safehouse. Lena, her assistant turned confidante, watched with growing concern.

As Lucia sat on the floor, the mysterious locket open in her hand, the photo inside still trembling between her fingers. “Lucia,” Lena said gently. “You need to tell me what happened.”

Lucia looked up, eyes haunted. “He found me.”

Lena stiffened. “Mark?”

Lucia shook her head. “No. The other one. The Phantom.”

Lena’s face paled. “He’s supposed to be locked under the ice vaults at Site Zero.”

“He’s not anymore.”

Lucia stood and handed the photo to Lena. “This was us, before. Before Marvin. Before my memories were altered.”

Lena stared at the photo. “Lucia, that woman is you. But the timestamp, this picture is thirteen years old.”

Lucia nodded slowly. “Exactly. I wasn’t supposed to meet Mark until three years ago.”

Meanwhile, Marvin HQ, Bio-Systems Division, Elara, stood before the board, all twelve members masked, silhouetted behind frosted glass. 

None of them spoke except for the central figure, a synthesized voice calling itself Axiom. “Subject Zero has breached containment,” Elara said coldly. “He’s active. Engaging with the wife.”

“And Subject Null?” Axiom asked.

“Still stable. But showing signs of neural bleed. He’s beginning to remember the shared past.”

A pause, then: “It’s time to activate Eden.”

Elara froze. “That protocol was buried.”

“Then dig it up. If the girl begins to remember who she was before her reset, we lose the leverage. Eden was designed for this exact breach scenario.”

“And Mark?”

“If he tries to intervene, eliminate him.”

Mark paced across the marble floor, his thoughts a vortex of confusion and anger. Since Lucia’s departure, his headaches had worsened. But now, it wasn’t just physical.

Memories were returning. Scenes that weren’t his. Words he’d never spoken. But a face he knew, Lucia. Always Lucia.

He stopped in front of a mirror, but the man staring back wasn’t him. It was the Phantom. “Get out of my head,” Mark hissed.

But the voice inside laughed. “You borrowed my body. You never asked who owned the soul.”

Lena brought out an encrypted drive. “There’s something you need to see.” Lucia plugged it into her laptop. A hidden subroutine decrypted a long-forgotten video file.

The footage played: A laboratory. White walls. Blinding lights.  Lucia, older, hardened, stood over a body on an operating table.

Mark. Dead. Next to him, a tank, holding another Mark. “Subject 0 is decaying. We need a cleaner imprint.”

Lucia’s voice on the video was colder, clinical. “Upload from Subject Zero. Give it to the new host. I’ll handle the psyche partitioning myself.”

Lucia’s hand moved. She injected a serum into the body. “Don’t let him remember her. Not yet. Not until the failsafe activates.”

Lena covered her mouth. “Lucia, you made him.”

Lucia collapsed into a chair, shaking. “I made both of them.”

Elsewhere, A Train Station. Subject Zero stood at the edge of the platform, coat billowing, ignoring the frightened eyes of those around him.

He pulled out a coin. Flipped it. It landed in his palm. Tails. He grinned. “Time to pay Daddy a visit.”

Mark broke the seal to a vault he swore he’d never enter. Inside, a preserved capsule. A diary. And a ring, charred black.

He flipped open the diary. The name inside: Lucia Elara Cross, and beneath it, a code phrase: Project Eden. He whispered, “What the hell is Eden?”

The room answered with a low hum. Behind him, a voice that wasn’t human anymore said: “Eden is you, brother.”

Mark turned. Subject Zero stood in the doorway. Alive. Whole. And very, very angry. Gunfire rang out at the safehouse.

Lena tackled Lucia behind the couch as masked agents stormed in. On Lena’s phone, a message blinked in from Elara: “Tell her to run. Project Eden is being erased.”

...

The gunfire was like thunder. Lena had barely enough time to pull Lucia to safety behind the couch before the agents flooded in, moving like a coordinated wave of darkness, their masks gleaming in the dim light.

Lena’s hand shot to her belt, but her weapon was gone, taken by Elara’s men before she could make any move to defend herself.  “Stay down,” Lena hissed, her eyes darting to the window. “We need to move.”

But Lucia didn’t respond. She sat, unmoving, staring at her hands, the locket still gripped in her fingers. “I can’t run, Lena.” Her voice was faint. “I made them.”

Lena froze, her breath catching in her throat. “What? Lucia.”

“I designed him. Both of them,” Lucia whispered, her eyes glazed with the weight of her own words. “Mark was never real. He was a copy. An imprint of him. The Phantom.”

Lena took a step back, her eyes wide with disbelief. “That’s impossible. You wouldn’t.”

“I did. I thought I was saving him, but I used him. I didn’t think,” Lucia trailed off. The distant thud of boots grew louder.

Lena grabbed Lucia’s arm. “We don’t have time for this! We have to go. Now.

Outside, the Mansion Grounds, Mark stood frozen as Subject Zero stepped into the dimly lit corridor of his mansion’s vault. 

The air shifted as a cold chill swept through the room. "You," Mark’s voice was hoarse. “What are you doing here?”

Subject Zero smiled, but it wasn’t the smile Mark remembered. It was sharp, cruel. “I’m here to finish what you started, brother.”

Mark’s fists clenched. “You were never supposed to be here. You were never meant to exist.”

“Funny,” Zero said with a cold laugh. “I feel like I’m the one who was never meant to die.”

Mark took a step back. The sound of his breath was harsh in the stillness. “You killed me.”

Subject Zero raised an eyebrow. “Did I? Or did you just fall asleep in the wrong bed?”

Mark’s heart skipped a beat. “Fell asleep in the wrong bed?”

The memories were coming back faster now, flashes of lab coats, steel tables, the serum. He’d been awake once, before everything had turned to dust. Before she had been erased. “No,” Mark said slowly, realization dawning. “You were the first.”

“I was the one,” Zero corrected, his voice laced with poison. “The one who never forgot. The one who still remembers. You were a placeholder, Mark. A defective copy.”

Mark’s chest tightened. His own reflection seemed to mock him; the man he had become was just a shadow, an imitation of the one who had been real. 

He reached for his sidearm, but his hand trembled as his thoughts raced. This wasn’t just about survival. This was about truth. “Why now?” Mark demanded. “After everything.”

“You wanted to forget me,” Zero interrupted, voice cutting through Mark’s thoughts like a blade. “But I’ve never forgotten her.” He took a step forward. “Lucia. She was never meant to remember what she did. What we did.”

Mark’s blood ran cold. “She doesn’t.”

“Oh, but she does.” Zero smiled again, more wicked this time. “She just doesn’t know yet.”

Lucia’s hands shook as Lena grabbed her by the shoulders, dragging her toward the back exit. “We need to go! Now!” Lena’s voice was urgent, frantic.

But Lucia couldn’t move. She stood frozen, her body shaking as fragments of memories, long buried, slammed into her mind.

Flashes of a lab. Her hands were covered in blood. Mark’s face, his real face, was lying lifeless on a table. A needle. The syringe. “Lucia!” Lena shouted. “We don’t have time to.”

“I killed him,” Lucia whispered, her voice breaking.

Lena turned, taking Lucia’s face in her hands, forcing her to meet her eyes. “No. You didn’t kill anyone. You were manipulated, used. We’ll fix this, but we need to move. Now.”

The blast of gunfire erupted from the front of the building, sending shockwaves through the walls.

Lena pulled Lucia to her feet, but Lucia stood unmoving. Lena cursed under her breath and pulled out a small communicator. “Delta team, we need backup.”

A voice crackled through the line. “Lena, they’ve already breached the perimeter. It’s too late. Get out of there, now!”

Lucia’s eyes glazed over. She could hear the sounds of footsteps, voices, but there was something else. Something that cut through the chaos. Mark’s voice. “Lucia.”

She froze. “Lucia, I need you. Come back to me.”

Lena pulled her into the hallway. “Lucia, snap out of it! We need to go.”

But Lucia’s feet remained rooted to the floor, her heart beating louder than the sounds of chaos around her. Then, a faint noise, a scrape of a chair against the floor, caught her attention.

It was coming from the door. Someone was inside. She turned toward Lena. “It’s him.”

Back at the Mansion, Mark and Subject Zero’s stand-off was interrupted by the shrill sound of a door opening.

Mark’s eyes flickered to the side, and his heart seized. Lucia stood in the doorway, but she wasn’t alone.

Mark’s gaze locked with hers. But something was different. He was standing. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so human.

Lucia’s eyes were wide with recognition. “Mark, or,” Her voice trailed off, her hand reaching for him.

Zero stepped forward, a twisted smile on his lips. “It’s too late for either of you,” he sneered. “The truth is already out. And I’m just getting started.”