For a second, the world was soundless.
The beam from the cube faded, and silence swallowed the corridor.
Amelia staggered backward, eyes wide, heart hammering. Kestrel voice echoed in the hollow of her memory like the last toll of a funeral bell.
"Your true memory."
But the truth was a curse.
Images slammed into her brain like glass shards — too fast, too vivid, too cruel to be fiction.
A lab. Screams. Hers. Another girl identical to her. No — not another.
Her.
Her hands trembling. A needle forced into her arm.
And Kestrel watching behind the glass, younger, hungrier, less polished.
Dominic, there too. Not just a rescuer. A participant.
Amelia dropped to her knees.
"No," she breathed.
Kestrel took a step closer, eyes gleaming. "This is what they took from you. What he took."
Dominic's jaw tightened. "He's manipulating you, Amelia. Those are spliced memories. Fragmented. Implanted—"
But Amelia wasn't listening.
Because another memory bloomed now. One of her lying in Dominic's bed, post-mission. His voice low, reading Neruda against her skin. His hand clutching hers after her first blackout. The way he said her name when he thought she was asleep.
"Don't," she whispered, standing slowly, eyes locked on him. "Don't lie to me anymore."
Dominic lowered his gun. "I didn't lie. I protected you. The truth would've killed you then. I waited until you were strong enough."
"You don't get to decide when I'm strong."
The air between them crackled like a live wire.
Kestrel smiled. "He's always been like this. Controlling. Calculated. Even when we trained together in the program. You were his soft spot. And he hates soft spots."
Amelia turned to him slowly. "And you don't?"
Kestrel's smile faded.
"You used me, Kestrel," she said quietly.
"Gutted my memories and tried to make me something I'm not. You made me believe I was a ghost."
"You were more than that," he replied. "You were perfection. Untouched by pain. Until he found you."
The cube pulsed again.
And then — she crushed it beneath her boot.
It sparked and died.
Kestrel's face went still. Cold. Hollow.
"You ungrateful little—"
He lunged.
Dominic fired.
The bullet caught Kestrel's shoulder, spinning him back into the wall with a snarl. Amelia grabbed a stun rod from the fallen guard and jabbed it into Kestrel's side before he could recover. His body convulsed, collapsed.
Eris slid beside them, panting. "Are we done playing chess with sociopaths, or is there another boss level I missed?"
Amelia looked down at Kael's unconscious body.
"No," she said. "This one's personal."
They dragged Kestrel into the vault room and locked the door.
Dominic sealed the access panel with his handprint. "This'll buy us ten minutes."
"Not enough," Eris said. "This place will reboot soon. We need to be gone before that."
Amelia's hands were still shaking. Blood on her sleeve. Her heart bruised and raw.
She leaned against the wall, breathing hard.
"I don't know who I am," she said.
Dominic stepped closer. "You're Amelia Kaine. You survived. You chose not to be a weapon."
"Then why do I still feel like one?"
He touched her arm gently. "Because healing isn't the same as forgetting."
She looked at him then, really looked — not as the man who lied, or saved her, or betrayed her — but the man who loved her in his own broken way. And she realized she still loved him too, even if it scared her.
"After this," she said, "I don't want to run anymore."
"Then don't."
His voice was soft, but steady.
"We can expose Kairox," he said. "Everything they've done. You've got the memory traces. We just need a secure line."
Eris tilted her head. "And I know someone with the right kind of enemies."
They moved quickly. Out the north wing, down a smuggler's shaft only Eris could've known.
Outside, the wind hit them like absolution.
Snow fell in soft spirals.
Amelia looked back once — at the compound that had haunted her for years.
Then she took Dominic's hand.
"Let's burn them to the ground," she whispered.
He smiled, and for the first time, it wasn't laced with guilt.
"Together."
Meanwhile, in a secure Kairox facility…
A man watched the footage of the escape. Lean, sharp-eyed, dressed in all white.
He tapped the screen where Amelia's face froze in mid-sprint.
"Activate Protocol ECHO," he said.
The assistant hesitated. "Sir, that protocol was never—"
"It's time," the man said.
Outside the room, cryo-tanks flickered to life.
Inside each one: a version of her.
Or what used to be.
Clones. Variants. Failed echoes.
But one tank remained sealed.
Unmarked.
Inside it, something opened its eyes.