Chapter Fifteen: The Ones Who Watched
The corridors of Red Echo were colder now.
Even though nothing had changed physically, something invisible had settled in the air after the voice. A weight. A presence.
We weren't alone.
Mira kept her weapon drawn, her back straight like a soldier trained for war. Elin stood closer to me now, her fingers twitching with nervous energy. I could hear her breaths—short, shallow.
I wasn't scared. I wasn't calm either.
I just was.
We followed the sound. It led us deeper—past ruined control rooms, data centers long dead, and broken glass that crunched beneath our boots. The base had been abandoned, yes—but not forgotten.
Every hallway was lined with cameras.
"Do you think they're watching us right now?" Elin whispered.
I nodded once. "They never stopped."
A door slid open ahead. Not from our touch—but from theirs.
Inside was a room that looked almost… normal. A table. Four chairs. A single light swaying overhead. I walked in first. Mira covered the door. Elin hesitated, then stepped in behind me.
A screen flickered on the wall.
A face appeared.
It was mine.
Or at least, what I could have looked like. The man on screen was older, sharper, colder. His eyes didn't carry any warmth. Just calculation.
"I am Kael Prototype Zero," he said.
I stared at him in silence.
"You are Kael Riven," he continued. "The defector. The anomaly. The one we couldn't predict."
Elin gasped softly.
"You weren't supposed to exist," the man said. "But you thrived. And we watched. Every step, every stumble. You became… curious."
Mira stepped forward. "Why now? Why speak to him now?"
He ignored her.
"You've shown something rare, Riven. Something we didn't program. Emotion. Attachment. Choice." His eyes narrowed. "We want to study you. Up close."
My fists clenched. "I'm done being a lab rat."
"I'm not offering," the man said. "I'm coming."
The screen cut to static.
A siren blared through the station.
"I think we just triggered something," Elin said, her voice trembling.
Doors began slamming shut across the hallways. The lights turned red. Emergency locks engaged. We were being trapped.
"Move!" Mira shouted.
We ran—through corridors that no longer welcomed us, down flights of metal stairs, ducking under half-sealed doors and leaping over debris. The station had become a maze—and we were the prey.
I kept thinking about the voice. About how he looked. How he sounded.
Was that what I was supposed to become?
Or worse—was that what I was slowly turning into?
We reached the dock just as the blast doors began closing. Mira threw her body between the seals, forcing them open with a scream of effort. Elin slipped through. I followed.
As the doors shut behind us, locking the nightmare inside, I turned one last time.
Some part of me wanted to stay.
To finish it.
To face the ghost of what I could've been.
But not today.
Today, we live.