Fracture Point
Selene
The girl in the photo wasn't screaming.
She was sobbing.
Her eyes—my eyes—were wide and glassy, pupils dilated like prey frozen in headlights. I was strapped down in a hospital bed, hair damp with sweat, throat red from the restraint across it.
I looked... drugged.
But aware.
The kind of awareness that only comes when you know you're about to be broken.
And then I remembered.
The sound.
That awful, whirring hum from the fluorescent lights above the bed. Always too loud. Always too wrong.
"You were there too long, Selene."
The words on the back of the photo weren't a threat.
They were a reminder.
I sat on the edge of the bed, barely noticing Lucian kneel in front of me. His hands were on my thighs, grounding me, but his voice was far away.
"I'm here," he said. "Whatever it is, I've got you."
But the walls were already peeling back.
The floor dissolving.
And suddenly, I was *fourteen* again.
The room had no windows. No clocks.
Just sterile white walls and that steady, mind-melting hum.
There was a nurse—maybe two. Always faceless in my memory. Always wearing gloves.
They'd take my vitals. Shine a light in my eyes. Ask questions I didn't understand.
And then he would come.
Dr. Nathan Kearse.
He never yelled. Never hit me.
Just smiled.
Like the devil learning how to pray.
"You're responding beautifully," he'd whisper. "We're going to try something deeper today."
And then the mask would come down.
The oxygen.
The sweet scent.
The flicker of light patterns projected on the ceiling.
That voice in my ear.
"Think of the sea. Let the waves in your mind crash. Let the memory fold. That's it, darling girl. Now break."
I gasped.
Back in the motel. Back in Lucian's arms.
He was holding me now, arms wrapped around my shaking frame, trying to piece me back together.
I couldn't speak for a full minute.
Then:
"Liora," I whispered.
Lucian pulled back. "What?"
I swallowed hard. "I wasn't alone in there. There was another girl. Her name was Liora."
A pause.
He stood slowly.
"Say that again."
"I… I think she was in the room next to mine. She used to hum songs at night. Through the vent. I thought I'd imagined her. But I didn't. Lucian—she was real."
His jaw tensed, gaze sharpening like a knife unsheathed.
He moved across the room, phone in hand.
"Who are you calling?"
But he didn't answer.
He just pressed a number and waited.
The moment the line picked up, his voice dropped into something cold.
Lethal.
"I want everything on a girl named Liora. Black site, undocumented. Tied to Kearse or anyone in his old network."
"No, not later. Now. You wake up the people I pay to not sleep."
Then he hung up.
And for the first time since I'd called him... I saw it.
The hunter.
Lucian Wolfe wasn't reacting anymore.
He was calculating.
"What are you going to do?" I asked, barely recognizing my own voice.
He stepped closer, brushing a thumb under my eye.
"Whatever I have to."
Somewhere Else.
…Unknown…
Monitors flickered in the darkness.
The same image of Selene—bare, fractured, folding.
Another figure stood in the back of the room now. Not the gloved hand. Not the man from the first feed.
This one was taller.
Feminine.
Hair like ink. Eyes like stone. A scar tracing the curve of her jaw.
She watched Selene scream in the recorded footage. Not with cruelty.
With familiarity.
"She's remembering," a voice muttered.
The woman spoke at last. Calm. Low.
"Good."
"What do we do now?" the voice asked.
She stepped closer to the monitor, watching Lucian in the background.
"Let the wolf off the leash."
"It's time to see what he does when we dangle a ghost in front of him."
"Let her look like Liora."
A pause.
Then a chilling smile.
"And then vanish."
---
Lucian
I left her sleeping. Still trembling. Still fragile from what the photo had peeled open.
But I couldn't stay.
Not tonight.
Because the memory wasn't just a trigger.
It was a signal.
Someone was waking ghosts.
And I had a name now.
Liora.
The girl who'd shared Selene's trauma.
Or maybe… the girl they'd replaced her with.
It didn't matter.
If she was alive, I'd find her.
If she was a threat, I'd end her.
But if someone had used her—used that name—to hurt Selene?
There wouldn't be a safe place left on this planet for them to hide.