The elevator descended into the bowels of the earth with a mechanical groan. It wasn't like the modern lifts in the city's skyscrapers. This one was a cage of rusted steel and flickering lights. Every floor we passed felt like a layer of my sanity being stripped away.
David stood close to me. His shoulder brushed against mine, and even through my thick jacket, I could feel the heat radiating from him. He was tense, like a predator ready to pounce. His hand rested near the holster at his waist, but his eyes never left mine.
"The Red Room isn't just a location, Zoya," he whispered as the lift shuddered to a halt. "It's a graveyard of thoughts. Everything my father and Arthur stole from people is kept here."
The doors slid open. I gasped.
The room was vast, stretching out into the darkness. It looked like a library, but instead of books, the walls were lined with thousands of small, glass jars. Each jar emitted a soft, crimson glow. Inside the jars, thin strands of silver smoke swirled in endless loops.
"Memories," I breathed, stepping out onto the cold stone floor.
"Not just memories. Lives," David said, his voice hollow. "Arthur found a way to extract the essence of a person—their experiences, their loves, their fears—and store them as data. He used these to program the prototypes. He used them to build you."
I walked toward the nearest shelf. I saw names etched into the metal beneath the jars. Dates. Places. It was a museum of stolen souls.
"Where is she?" I asked, my heart hammering. "Where is the woman from the tank?"
David led me deeper into the hall. The air grew colder, smelling of salt and electricity. In the very center of the room stood a massive glass cylinder filled with a thick, red liquid.
Inside the cylinder was the woman.
She was suspended in the fluid, her long dark hair floating around her like seaweed. She wore a simple white gown. Her eyes were closed, her face peaceful. She looked so much like me that it felt like I was looking into a mirror that showed the future.
"Eleanor," David whispered.
,
I looked at him. His expression was a mix of pure devotion and agonizing guilt. He reached out and pressed his palm against the glass. "I spent twenty years trying to wake her up. I thought if I created a perfect vessel—you—I could transfer her consciousness. I thought I could have my sister back."
"But I'm not her," I said, a lump forming in my throat.
"No," David said, turning to look at me. His eyes were dark with an emotion I couldn't quite name. "You became something else. You became someone I couldn't let go of. And that was my biggest mistake."
Suddenly, a bright light flooded the room. I shielded my eyes as the sound of clapping echoed through the chamber.
"Beautiful. Simply poetic," a voice boomed.
Arthur stepped out from behind a row of memory jars. He wasn't alone. Six soldiers stood behind him, their rifles aimed directly at us. But Arthur didn't look like a scientist anymore. He looked like a king returning to his throne.
"Zoya, my darling. You look radiant," Arthur said, ignoring David. "The shadow suits you. It's finally stabilizing your core."
"Let her go, Arthur," David growled, stepping in front of me.
"Or what, David? You'll shoot me?" Arthur laughed. "You're a failure. You fell in love with a ghost. You couldn't even finish the project because you started seeing her as a woman instead of a weapon."
Arthur turned his gaze back to me. "Do you want to know the secret, Zoya? The one your 'mother' whispered to you? She didn't tell you that you were a lock. She told you that you were the Trigger."
He pressed a button on a small remote in his hand. The red liquid in Eleanor's tank began to bubble.
"Zoya, run!" David yelled.
He pulled out his gun and fired at the soldiers, but they were already moving. One of them tackled David to the ground. I tried to use the dark power, but a high-pitched frequency suddenly filled the room.
I fell to my knees, clutching my head. It was the kill switch again, but stronger. It felt like my brain was being rewritten in real-time.
"Don't fight it," Arthur said, walking toward me. "The shadow inside you isn't a sister. It's a bridge. It connects your mind to Eleanor's. Once the transfer is complete, Eleanor will wake up in your body, and the world will finally see the first immortal being."
"No..." I gasped, my vision blurring.
Through the haze, I saw David fighting the soldiers. He was covered in blood, but he kept moving, trying to reach me. He managed to break free and lunged at Arthur, but a soldier fired a shot.
The bullet grazed David's shoulder, sending him spinning to the floor.
"DAVID!" I screamed.
The pain in my head reached a breaking point. But then, something snapped. Instead of the darkness taking over, I felt a surge of cold, focused rage. I remembered the little girl on the road. I remembered the burning cottage.
I didn't let the shadow take me. I took the shadow.
I stood up, the purple energy exploding from my body. The memory jars on the shelves began to shatter, releasing thousands of silver strands into the air. The room became a whirlwind of stolen memories and glass shards.
"You want a miracle, Arthur?" I asked, my voice echoing with the power of a thousand souls. "I'll give you one."
I raised my hand, and the silver memories began to flow into me. I saw a thousand lives in a second. I saw birthdays, funerals, first kisses, and final breaths. I took them all.
Arthur stepped back, his face pale with horror. "That's impossible! No vessel can hold that much data!"
"I'm not a vessel," I said, walking through the storm of glass. "I am the storm."
I pointed my hand at the soldiers. A wave of pure energy hit them, knocking them unconscious instantly. I turned toward Arthur, but he was already scrambling toward the main console.
"I'll destroy it all!" he screamed. "If I can't have her, no one can!"
He slammed his hand onto the self-destruct sequence. A deep alarm began to blare throughout the facility.
"The Red Room is rigged with thermite," David shouted, struggling to stand. "Zoya, we have to get out! Now!"
I looked at the tank. Eleanor's eyes were still closed. She was the woman who had caused all of this—the source of my life and my curse. I felt a strange urge to break the glass and save her, but I knew the truth. Eleanor was gone. Only the ghost remained.
I turned back to David. He reached out his hand, his eyes pleading.
"Come with me," he said.
I took his hand. It was the only thing that felt real in a room full of ghosts.
We ran for the elevator, but Arthur blocked our path. He held a small, glass vial in his hand. Inside was a liquid so bright it was blinding.
"The original serum," Arthur whispered. "The one that started it all. If I drink this, I won't need you, Zoya. I will become the god this world deserves."
"Don't do it, Arthur!" David warned. "The serum was never stable!"
Arthur didn't listen. He smashed the vial against his mouth and swallowed the contents.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, Arthur's body began to convulse. His skin turned a sickly gray, and his eyes glowed with a frantic, pulsing red light. He let out a sound that wasn't human—a shriek of pure agony.
"Run!" David yelled.
We dove into the elevator just as Arthur's body began to expand, his flesh tearing apart to reveal something dark and monstrous underneath. The doors slammed shut, and we shot upward toward the surface.
The building shook as the first of the thermite charges went off. I collapsed against the wall of the elevator, my energy spent. David pulled me into his arms, holding me like I was the most precious thing in the world.
"It's over," he whispered into my hair. "It's almost over."
"It's never over," I replied, looking at the floor numbers as they climbed.
We reached the ground floor. The industrial building was empty, the staff having fled when the alarms started. We ran out into the cool night air. The city was quiet, oblivious to the war that had just happened beneath its streets.
We didn't stop until we reached the black sedan. The driver was gone, but the keys were in the ignition. David took the wheel, and we sped away from the docks.
A few minutes later, the ground beneath the industrial park collapsed. A massive plume of red fire shot into the sky, lighting up the Thames like a second sun. The Red Room was gone.
I sat in the passenger seat, staring at my hands. They were still trembling. The silver memories I had absorbed were settling into my mind, and I realized I knew things I shouldn't. I knew the codes to the Watchers' bunkers. I knew the locations of the other prototype labs.
But I also knew something else.
I turned to David. He was focused on the road, but his jaw was tight with stress.
"David," I said quietly.
"Yeah?"
"In the memory bank... I found a jar. It was labeled with your name."
David's hands tightened on the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.
"I saw why you burned the manor twenty years ago," I continued. "It wasn't an accident. And you didn't do it to save Eleanor."
David didn't answer. He kept driving, his eyes fixed on the horizon.
"You did it because Eleanor asked you to kill her," I said, the truth feeling like a knife in my chest. "She didn't want to be a masterpiece. She wanted to die. And you couldn't do it. You burned the house to hide her, but you kept her alive in that tank."
David slammed the brakes, and the car skidded to a halt on the edge of a dark bridge. He turned to me, his eyes filled with tears and a dangerous, desperate hunger.
"I couldn't let her go, Zoya! I loved her!"
"You didn't love her!" I shouted back. "You loved the idea of her! And you did the same thing to me! You kept me in a cage of lies because you were too cowardly to be alone!"
David grabbed my shoulders. For a moment, I thought he was going to hurt me. But then, he leaned in and kissed me.
It wasn't a gentle kiss. It was desperate, angry, and full of twenty years of buried pain. It was the kiss of two broken people who had nowhere left to go.
I fought him at first, but then I gave in. I kissed him back with all the rage and longing I had inside me. We were monsters, both of us. Created by greed and kept alive by obsession.
But as we pulled apart, gasping for air, a voice came through the car's radio.
It wasn't the driver. It wasn't the Watchers.
It was a woman's voice. A voice I had just heard in the Red Room.
"Zoya... David... did you really think fire could kill a god?"
We looked toward the rearview mirror. Behind us, rising from the smoke of the destroyed docks, was a figure. It was Arthur, but he wasn't human anymore. He was a giant of shadow and red light, walking through the fire as if it were water.
And he wasn't alone. Standing beside him was the little girl from the road.
"Mommy is coming," the girl's voice echoed in the car.
I looked at David. He looked at me. We both knew the truth now. The Red Room wasn't the end. It was just the beginning of the real nightmare.
"Where do we go?" I asked.
David looked at the map on the dashboard, pointing to a small island in the North Sea.
"To the place where the original Eleanor is buried," hesaid. "Because she's the only one who can stop him."
[To be continued in Chapter 14...]