The woman in the mirror wore her face, but not her posture.
Lana stood with her arms crossed as Kraven walked her through Noctis's lower-level wing—a corridor so sanitized it smelled like powdered bleach and scorched ozone. The walls were lined with embedded sensors instead of cameras, and the floor was made of seamless steel, so smooth her heels made no sound.
"Debriefing," Kraven said, not glancing back. Her heels clicked with a rhythm too perfect to be human. "Standard protocol."
The door at the end opened without touch. Inside: a glass-walled room. One chair. One table. One screen.
And no scent.
It hit Lana like a punch. The absence of scent. No sweat. No perfume. No Kieran. Just sterilized nothing.
She was being observed.
Kraven gestured. "Please."
Lana didn't move. "Interrogation?"
"Clarification," Kraven said. "Observation confirms your emergence as Alpha-compatible. Classification: Variant Prime."
The screen flared.
Grainy footage played: her in the panic room. Her back arched. Her claws extended. The kill. Her breath ragged.
The howl.
Lana watched herself become something else.
Kraven spoke without inflection. "This level of cellular metamorphosis usually takes months. Your response occurred in under twelve hours. Do you know why?"
"Because you made me this way," Lana said.
"Incorrect." Kraven blinked slowly. "We guided a process that was already unfolding. You are not a creation. You are an evolution."
Lana's nails bit into her palms. "What's the point of this theater?"
"To offer you clarity."
Kraven leaned in, just slightly. "And a choice. Join the line. Or end it."
The lights dimmed. The door slid open.
Dismissed.
Lana left without a word.
Her suite smelled wrong.
Something in the air had changed. The temperature dropped by a few degrees, and the lights responded to her presence before she touched them. The Noctis phone on her desk buzzed with an alert she hadn't triggered.
She tapped the screen. Nothing. Locked.
She connected it to the console hidden beneath the wall panel—the one Jason had shown her and told her not to touch unless she was ready. The override key was still burned into her memory: EVELYN-LC-917.
It worked.
Dozens of files. Surveillance logs. Medical reports.
One folder pulsed red: LOCKDOWN_PROTOCOL_EVE01
She opened it.
The screen blinked. Video began to play.
A child. No more than five. Screaming. Not words—sounds. Howls.
Claws scratched the inside of a transparent holding cell. Her eyes shone gold. She wasn't wearing hospital clothes. Just a faded red hoodie with a cartoon wolf. Lana remembered the hoodie. It had been her favorite.
Outside the cell: Evelyn Carter. Frantic. Beating on the glass with both fists, her lab coat soaked in blood. Guards holding her back. The audio was muted, but her mouth moved.
Let her out.
The little girl screamed again—not in fear.
In fury.
Lana closed the file. Her hands shook.
She had no memory of that day.
But the rage in her child-self's throat burned in hers like a brand.
She didn't hear Kieran enter.
She turned, and he was already inside the suite, his presence shifting the air. He was clean-shaven. Rested. In a charcoal suit with no tie. He looked like power restrained by silk.
"You're awake," he said.
She didn't answer.
"You've seen Evelyn's files."
Still, silence.
"And Lysander?"
Lana turned slowly. "He offered me a box. Told me to open it when I stopped trusting you."
Kieran exhaled. "Did you?"
"Not yet."
He stepped closer, not quite closing the distance. "I never changed your DNA. I never asked to be part of her experiment. I only... protected the file."
She studied him. "Why?"
"Because you weren't a mistake. You were proof."
"Proof of what?"
"That evolution could be... beautiful."
His voice caught slightly on the last word. The vulnerability flickered too fast. Then it was gone.
"Did it feel good?" he asked quietly. "The kill?"
Lana stared at him.
And said nothing.
The sirens cut through their silence.
A staccato wail. Not fire. Not evacuation. Something deeper.
Kieran turned to the console embedded in the wall.
"Sub-Level 9 breach."
He grabbed her arm.
"You're staying here."
"No."
He pushed her toward the elevator. The doors hissed shut, and his palm hovered over the lockdown panel.
"You don't understand what's down there."
"Try me."
He didn't answer. He hit the panel. The doors began to seal.
She lunged.
Claws out.
Steel screeched as she tore through the door panel before it could lock.
She dropped into the shaft.
The lower levels stank of wet fur and ozone.
She passed through a broken access door marked: RESTRICTED - EVE WING
Inside: cages.
Human-sized. Steel reinforced. Scorch marks on the floor.
They moved as she passed.
Figures inside. Female. Twisted. Half-formed. One hissed. One whimpered. One crouched in the corner, hands over her ears.
Then one spoke.
"Lana."
The voice was hoarse. Familiar.
The girl behind the bars looked seventeen, maybe. Her features were half-wolf, half-frozen in transition.
"You came back," she said.
Lana froze.
"Who are you?"
The girl stepped into the light. Her eyes were gold. Her left arm ended in a paw. Her right was human.
"Sister."
The word landed like a stone.
Kieran appeared behind her.
He was breathing hard.
She didn't turn.
"How many of me are there?"
He didn't answer.
She looked back at the girl.
And her claws clicked into place.
"There were nine," the girl said. "I'm the second. You're the first. The only one who left."
A scream echoed through the corridor. One of the other cells had shattered its lock. A girl—no, a thing wearing the shape of one—burst through, half-crawling, half-lurching, bone splitting through the skin of her back.
Lana stepped forward. She didn't hesitate.
She moved fast, faster than she knew she could. A clean swipe of her claws across the throat, and the creature dropped.
Blood sprayed. Lana didn't flinch.
The other girls—her sisters—fell silent.
Then one began to cry.
The second girl, the one who called her sister, touched the bars.
"She didn't mean to hurt you. She just couldn't hold it in anymore."
Kieran reached for Lana's shoulder.
"We have to go."
She shrugged him off.
"I want them released."
"No."
"They're not weapons. They're people."
Kieran's voice dropped to a snarl. "They were prototypes. Flawed. You saw what she became."
Lana met his eyes. "So was I. And yet here I am."
The second girl whispered through the bars: "You're the only one who got out. The rest of us... we just kept failing."
Lana turned to the keypad on the wall beside the cage.
Kieran grabbed her wrist. "If you open that, you'll never be able to close it."
"Good."
Her claws punched through the lock.
The door opened.
And the other Eves stepped into the light.