In the dark, Aeris dreamed of fire.
But not of the night she killed her mother.
No, that memory never returned.
She had purged it.
The fire that haunted her dreams was older—colder.
A silent inferno of needles, wires, and glass.
Children screaming. Metal doors slamming shut. Her mother's voice echoing, clinical and cruel.
And across the glass wall—a boy with gold-flecked eyes, watching her like she was holy.
---
Aeris awoke at 3:47 AM. No alarm.
She never needed one.
Her neural implant tracked her REM cycles to the second. She slipped out of bed without sound. Barefoot. Silent. Controlled.
She entered the secure chamber beneath her private floor—a space no one else had ever accessed. Not her board. Not her guards. Not even Zero had full clearance here.
Rows of servers blinked in a cold hum. Wall-to-wall data streams. And in the center, a sealed glass vault.
Inside: her mother's original research.
Dozens of black volumes. Digitized neural maps. Blood-inked notes. And a red folder labeled: Project Sovereign.
She hadn't opened it in years.
Tonight, she did.
---
Inside: photos. Recordings. Experiment logs.
Subjects K-01 through K-23.
Children taken from prisons, orphanages, war zones. Reprogrammed. Modified. Abandoned. Killed.
Except for two.
K-09: Lucien Kael
V-13: Aeris Vale
The last two standing.
Opposite ends of the same nightmare.
Aeris stared at a still image—Lucien as a boy, no older than nine, staring blankly at a kill-switch collar strapped around his neck. He wasn't screaming. He wasn't crying.
He was watching her.
Even then.
---
"You should have told me."
Her voice was flat—but low. Almost human.
Lucien stood at the edge of the vault chamber, hands behind his back.
He had no access code. No clearance.
And yet, he was here.
"You knew this existed," she said.
He didn't deny it.
"I did."
"You were in my mother's lab."
"You were the reason I stayed alive in it."
---
She turned, eyes sharp, unreadable.
"And you've been following me since?"
"Not following. Protecting."
"From what?"
"From the ghosts you wouldn't let yourself remember."
---
Aeris stepped forward. Close enough to smell him—cold skin, gunpowder, and something faintly chemical.
"You kept this from me."
"Because you weren't ready to see yourself."
"You think you know me?"
"I do know you," he said, voice steady. "I watched you build yourself out of pain. I watched you burn the cage and make a throne out of the ashes."
"You worship me."
"I belong to you."
---
She slapped him.
Fast. Hard. Unapologetic.
His head turned slightly from the force—but he didn't move, didn't flinch.
Just smiled.
"Thank you," he whispered.
Aeris stared at her hand. The one that had struck him.
And for the first time in years, she felt something.
Not rage. Not fear.
But heat.
---
She turned away again, forcing her voice into ice.
"I should have you executed for trespassing."
"You won't."
"No?"
"Because I'm the only person alive who knows who you really are… and still wants to stand beside you."
"That's not loyalty."
"No," Lucien said softly. "It's obsession."
---
He walked away without waiting for her response.
And Aeris remained in the vault, surrounded by blue light and static memories, pulse quickening beneath her skin like a ticking bomb.
She wasn't afraid.
But she was no longer alone in the dark.