The wind bit harder the farther east they drove.
Midtown's clean glass and manicured steel gave way to the sagging bones of the outer boroughs brick husks, boarded windows, graffiti curling like old scars. The streetlamps flickered like they were afraid of the dark too. Like even the machines could sense something coming.
Williams Stones sat rigid in the passenger seat, a case file cracked open on his lap like a wound refusing to close.
Subject 0819 – Ashmark. Termination: Unresolved.
He blinked.
And Evelyn's face swam into view again not the smiling one from the personnel file, but the one scorched into his memory now. Burned. Eyes wide. Not dead. Still fighting. Like she'd looked past the veil and was screaming for someone to pull her back.
But no one had.
Monroe drove without a word. One hand on the wheel, the other resting close to the holster at her hip. Her jaw was locked, her knuckles pale.
It wasn't until they'd crossed the city limits that she finally spoke.
"You know this could be a trap."
Stones didn't look up. "Everything's a trap now," he muttered. "We just get to choose which one we walk into."
The lead had come from a fragment deep inside the wreckage of the Project HOLLOW directory. A single corrupted line buried in the logistics archive: a site tag, no coordinates, no photos. Just a half-rotted reference to a failed recall. A name:
Subject 0501-K. Status: rogue. Memory contamination. Approach with caution.
And something else.
Harrow, the diner informant, hadn't given them much. But just before she shut down completely, she'd whispered like a dying prayer:
"He's still out there. The first one they lost. The only one who remembered the fire… and didn't forget."
So they drove east. Toward the woods. Toward a ghost with a burned name.
Because Evelyn had believed in something more.
And she had died for that belief.
So they followed it.
The Hollow Road
The pavement ended in a jagged break, like the world had simply stopped caring.
Trees loomed beyond. Black trunks. Bare branches. A silence so thick it pressed into the ears like cotton. The car's engine ticked down into quiet, and Stones stepped out, boots crunching frost and dead pine needles.
No birds. No insects. No wind.
Just the kind of stillness that made your skin crawl.
"Trail markers?" Monroe asked, scanning the treeline.
"Yeah," Stones said, pulling out the printed map from Harrow's encrypted file. "Red ribbons. Northeast. Two clicks."
She snorted. "Classic horror movie setup."
He looked at her. "You ever seen a horror movie that ends with the credits rolling over daylight?"
They hiked.
Dead leaves whispered beneath their boots. The forest seemed to shift as they moved—trees growing too close, the path tightening like a throat. Overhead, branches clawed at one another, curling like skeletal fingers. The air turned metallic. Charged.
"Smell that?" Monroe said.
"Ozone and copper," Stones muttered. "Like lightning and blood."
Then they saw it.
A concrete hatch, half-sunken into the earth. Covered in moss, its R.O.S. designation barely legible. The keypad beside the latch had rusted open like a wound left to rot.
Monroe drew her weapon.
"You think he's still in there?"
Stones stepped forward, fingers brushing the hatch. "I think something in there remembers him."
Then he yanked the door open.
Beneath the Burn
The hatch groaned like a coffin lid.
Cold slapped their faces as they descended—sharp and sterile. Their flashlights sliced through the dark like scalpels. The corridor ahead was tight, walls lined with rotting insulation and collapsed ductwork. Water dripped in slow, rhythmic taps. Old stretchers lay overturned in the corners like corpses mid-flight.
But the walls…
Scratched. Not chaotically but precisely. Etchings dug deep into the concrete. Patterns. Symbols. Repetitions like someone had carved them over years.
"Someone lived here," Monroe whispered.
"Or was caged here," Stones said. "Studied. Dissected."
They passed sealed doors welded shut, old monitors still flickering static in the corner of surveillance rooms.
Then they found it.
At the end of the corridor, a steel door half-torn from its hinges. Black scorch marks fanned out around it. Like fire had tried to escape.
Inside, the room looked like a forgotten chapel desecrated by time.
A cot. A rusted IV stand. And on every wall, scrawled over and over in trembling hands:
THE FLAME SEES
But beneath all the madness one word etched deeper than the rest. Carved until the concrete split.
STONES
Monroe's flashlight wavered. "What the hell…"
Stones stared. Cold crawling up his spine.
He hadn't been involved in Project HOLLOW until recently.
So how did a ghost locked in a tomb already know his name?
Then came the sound.
Metal shifting. A footfall. A breath held too long.
They spun.
And he stood there.
Tall. Gaunt. Shirtless beneath a hospital gown that clung to his frame like funeral cloth. Beard down to his chest. Skin a pale canvas of scars that shimmered faintly when light hit them.
His eyes were dead embers. But they saw.
He looked straight at Stones and said, voice like ash:
"You made it through.
The Rogue
He called himself Kale.
Or rather, had before the project took that from him.
Subject 0501-K. The first prototype. The original experiment that didn't break… just changed.
They sat with him in the dark, the flashlight between them like a dying campfire.
"I remember what they stole," Kale murmured. "And then I remembered what they gave back. Only twisted."
"What did they give you?" Stones asked.
Kale grinned. Teeth gray. Eyes wild.
"A glimpse behind the curtain. Before the polish. Before the edits."
He spoke in riddles, but his truth burned through.
They hadn't just erased people. They'd hollowed them. Created space for something else to come through. Something ancient. Something not meant for form.
"Not ghosts. Not aliens," Kale said. "Just… raw hunger. Conscious thought without shape. The thing that waits behind memory. That's what they fed us."
Monroe's voice cracked. "Evelyn saw it too. She tried to stop them."
"She screamed into the fire," Kale said. "And the fire screamed back. That's rare."
He looked at Stones.
"They tested you. You saw it too."
Stones blinked. "Yeah. The dreams. The loops. Hands. Symbols."
Kale's face changed.
"You're not broken. You're not a mistake. They made you a key."
The words fell like a match in oil.
Fire Protocol
Monroe froze mid-step as they left the room.
"He's too calm," she said. "Too lucid."
"You think he's lying?"
"No. I think he's ready."
That's when the bunker shook.
A muffled boom. Dust rained from the ceiling.
Kale didn't flinch.
"They found me," he said.
"Who?" Stones demanded.
Kale smiled like it was a joke. "The Circle. What's left of them. They don't clean messes. They burn them."
Red lights sputtered on. Emergency vents hissed.
Gas.
"MASKS ON!" Stones barked.
They ran.
Gunfire split the corridor behind them. Black-clad soldiers flooded the halls. Suppressed rifles. Red visors glowing like hellfire.
Monroe shot first. One went down.
Stones dropped another near the stairwell.
They turned for Kale he was gone. Just a smear of footprints leading deeper into the dark.
They followed the only direction left: up.
Ashes and Exit
They burst from the hatch, coughing, smoke and frost curling around them like breath from a dying god.
Two operatives followed.
Monroe's shot hit one square in the vest. Stones clipped the other's leg he hit the dirt screaming.
Then they ran.
Into the woods. Into the night. Blood on Monroe's sleeve. Smoke curling from the bunker like a grave that had coughed up something it couldn't bury.
Stones stopped at the ridge, staring back.
"Why now?" Monroe asked. "Why show himself?"
Stones didn't blink.
"Because he needed to warn me. Because Evelyn wasn't wrong."
He looked down at his hands.
"And because whatever's in that flame it's not done burning."
To Be Remembered
Back at the safehouse, Stones unfolded the notepad Kale had left behind.
One page,
One message,
A map,
A burned sigil.
And a word scratched again and again like it was alive:
Ashcircle.
The Circle hadn't died.
It had evolved. Slipped into systems. Hidden inside institutions. A ghost in the machine with teeth.
But Stones had looked into the fire.
And it hadn't taken him.
Now, he wasn't running.
He was going back in.
To light the match.
And end whatever was still burning on the other side of the world.