The voice faded, but its final words rang in Lara's ears like a siren buried under her skin.
Reset Protocol Engaged.
"What the hell does that mean?" she whispered, stumbling backward from the console.
Behind her, Kaven's voice cut through the static of her thoughts. "Lara—look at this."
He stood near the center of the room, kneeling beside a raised floor panel he had managed to pry open. Inside was a sealed canister, matte black and labeled with a triangular symbol: a spiral within a spiral — the insignia they'd seen in Hartley's files.
Lara crouched beside him. "Is that…?"
"A memory extraction pod," Kaven muttered. "Outdated. But functional."
He glanced at her. "They didn't just reset you, Lara. They archived you."
Her throat tightened. "You think my real memories… are in that?"
"Or what's left of them."
Lara looked at the pod like it was a grave. Part of her wanted to open it. The other part — the part that remembered nothing beyond a handful of broken images and fractured dreams — wanted to run.
But she didn't move.
A soft hum filled the room.
The old screen flickered again — not static this time, but footage. Grainy. Surveillance-style. A corridor. Footsteps echoed down it, and then—
Her.
Not just her face.
Her voice.
It was Lara, maybe a year younger, walking with purpose in a white coat, swiping a clearance badge, laughing softly at something unseen on the feed.
Kaven stiffened. "It's you."
But the voice from the footage said otherwise.
"–Juliette Strand, head of synchronization trials. Room 4 is prepped for Subject Twelve."
Lara felt her knees give way. She caught herself on the side of the console.
"Head of… what?"
The footage blurred, skipped, then stopped. The screen blacked out again.
Kaven stared at her. "You weren't just a test subject."
She blinked at him, unable to breathe.
"You ran it."
Footsteps pounded above — not theirs.
Lara and Kaven both froze.
Someone else was in the building.
And whoever they were, they weren't trying to be quiet anymore.
---
End of Chapter 23