The first breath came with fire.
Elara Venn's lungs seized as fluid rushed out of her throat, spilling across cold, cracked stone. Her spine arched. Every nerve screamed. She clawed at the ground—metal, slick with something glowing. She wasn't supposed to be alive.
She remembered dying.
The explosion. The fall. The blue light swallowing the sky. Cassian's face the last thing she saw, lips moving—but the sound had vanished. Silence had welcomed her like a grave.
Now, it was sound that tore her awake. Screeching alarms. Distant shrieks. Something metallic groaned above her.
She coughed violently, then opened her eyes—and froze.
This wasn't Earth.
Or maybe it was, but not the one she knew. Jagged roots of some alien structure coiled above, pulsing with a soft, rhythmic light. The walls breathed. She was inside something alive—or used to be.
Her body felt… wrong. She sat up slowly, fingers trembling as she touched her bare arm. Gold lines etched into her skin glowed faintly, pulsing with her heartbeat.
"What the hell did you do to me?" she whispered to no one.
"Resurrected you," a voice said.
Elara whipped around. No one.
The voice came from inside her head. Smooth. Genderless. Familiar in a way that chilled her bones.
"You are Elara Venn. Project Vow. Subject Zero. Resurrection protocol complete."
"No. No, that mission failed. I—" Her voice broke. "I died."
"Correct. You died. We rebuilt you."
She pushed herself up, swaying. Her boots—tattered. Her tactical vest—gone. Only a thin layer of something synthetic and gray clung to her body. Her holster was empty.
A mirrored panel flickered into life across the chamber. She staggered toward it.
The face looking back was hers—but it wasn't.
Elara Venn had dark eyes. This woman's eyes glowed faintly gold. The scar across her collarbone was gone. Her hair was the same—short, black with silver threads—but even that shimmered unnaturally under the biolight.
"Where am I?"
"Substructure 19-B. The Seedfather's Vault."
She stumbled back. That wasn't possible. Vault 19 had been destroyed. She'd made sure of it. She'd died in the collapse.
"You succeeded. But the cost was your life. We took your remains. Rebuilt your neural pattern. Restored what could be recovered."
Elara touched the side of her head. "What couldn't be recovered?"
"We estimate 13.7% memory loss. Emotional instability. Latent corruption from seed exposure."
She cursed.
They'd turned her into one of them.
Panic clawed up her throat. She needed to get out. Find the Resistance. Cassian. Someone.
She bolted through the first archway, feet slapping against biotech floors that vibrated faintly. The halls branched in endless directions. She had no weapon. No sense of time. Her heartbeat roared in her ears.
Then came the sound of footsteps—not mechanical. Heavy. Human.
She flattened against a curved wall, heart thudding.
A flashlight beam cut across the dark. A man's voice shouted. "There! Contact—"
She sprang before he could aim, driving her elbow into his throat. He crumpled with a grunt, but the second figure raised a weapon—too late.
Elara kicked the rifle aside and slammed the woman into the wall.
"Who are you?" Elara hissed.
"Resistance—Vega Command—don't shoot!"
Elara froze. Resistance?
Another figure ran in—tall, armored, familiar.
"Elara?"
That voice.
She turned slowly.
Cassian.
He looked the same. Maybe older. His armor was scratched and scorched. His face was gaunt, eyes haunted. His rifle lowered as he stared at her like a ghost.
"Elara?" he said again, softer.
Her vision blurred. "You left me," she whispered.
"I thought you were dead," he said. "We buried you."
"I was dead."
He took a slow step forward. "How are you here?"
"I don't know."
She collapsed into his arms before she could stop herself. His scent—so familiar. The feel of him. Real.
But something inside her screamed.
"Danger," the voice whispered.
"Do not trust him."
Back at Citadel Vega
They kept her in a containment wing under constant guard.
She didn't sleep.
Doctors scanned her. Scientists whispered. General Marrin refused to see her. The whispers said she might be a seeded infiltrator. That the resurrection wasn't natural.
Cassian stayed nearby. He wouldn't look her in the eye.
And every night, she dreamed of fire and a face that looked like hers—but wasn't.
Lyra.
She remembered her name like a ghost echo. The twin that never existed. The one they said died at birth.
But in her dream, Lyra was alive. Standing in the vault. Smiling.
And whispering, "I'm coming for you sister"
Elara sits alone in her cell. The lights flicker. She hears a soft voice whisper her name from the shadows.
"Elara…"
She turns—no one's there.
The wall behind her pulses, and for just a second, the surface shifts—revealing a woman's face in the biotech flesh.
Identical to her own.