Chapter 15
The wind carried ash and snow across the mountaintop as Kaelyn watched the last of the smoke curl from the ruins of Site 0. The buried horrors of her past were gone—but in their place, something new had ignited. She wasn’t just fighting for herself anymore. There were others out there—others like her. Some scared. Some angry. All lost.
Sebastian adjusted the earpiece nestled under his hood and turned toward her. “We’ve got movement near Grid 14. Intercepted comms say Tamar’s scrambling to secure any remaining sites.”
Kaelyn nodded. “Then we get to them first.”
Back at their base, Kaelyn spread out a map across the war table. Red pins marked destroyed labs, blue ones indicated known survivors, and a new cluster of green ones signified potential leads from the Site 0 files.
“Most of them are ghost sites,” she said, tracing a line between two remote facilities. “But if even one has survivors… we have to reach them.”
M-2 leaned over the map. “This one,” she said, pointing at a green pin in a desolate northern tundra. “I recognize the name. It was a lockdown facility. They used to take the… unstable ones there.”
Kaelyn looked up sharply. “How unstable?”
M-2’s eyes darkened. “Unstable enough that Tamar couldn’t control them. Not killers. Just… people they broke too far.”
Sebastian frowned. “Sounds like a trap.”
Kaelyn shook her head. “Maybe. But it could also be a sanctuary for the forgotten.”
They left that same night, traveling light and fast. The helicopter buzzed low through a blizzard, the terrain beneath them jagged and untouched. Hours passed before the shape of a compound appeared through the snowfall—an old weather station long since decommissioned.
But inside, it was something else entirely.
The doors were unlocked, rusted but functional. The halls were eerily silent. Broken machinery lay scattered like bones.
Then they found her.
A girl sat in a chair in the middle of the room, a tattered coat wrapped around her thin frame. Her hair was white as snow, eyes glassy and unfocused. When Kaelyn approached, she didn’t move. She just whispered, “Are you one of them?”
Kaelyn knelt beside her. “One of what?”
“Shadows,” the girl murmured. “The ones who come at night. The ones who scream.”
Kaelyn took her hand. “No. I’m not a shadow. I’m Kaelyn. What’s your name?”
The girl blinked. “They called me 6F. But I liked the name Mara.”
M-2 watched from the doorway, arms crossed but visibly tense. “She’s one of us. But she’s been alone too long.”
Sebastian scanned the compound. “There’s more. Three other life signs in the lower level.”
They moved fast, careful. In a locked chamber beneath the main floor, they found them—two teenagers and an older woman. All with the same telltale features. Copies. But none quite like Kaelyn.
The older woman spoke first. “We thought we were the last.”
Kaelyn stepped into the room. “You’re not. And you don’t have to hide anymore.”
Mara clung to her coat, eyes wide. “Will they come for us?”
Kaelyn nodded slowly. “They might. But they won’t win.”
That night, as they huddled around the fire in the bunker’s main hall, Kaelyn looked around at the faces surrounding her. Each one different. Each one a survivor. Some scarred, some silent. But alive.
Sebastian leaned in close. “This is bigger than you thought, isn’t it?”
Kaelyn stared into the flames. “Much bigger. Tamar didn’t just create us. They scattered us, hid us… maybe even feared us. But now we know.”
M-2 sat nearby, cleaning her blade. “We should strike first. If Tamar thinks we’re weak, let’s prove them wrong.”
Kaelyn considered it. “We’ll need allies. Resources. A plan.”
Sebastian cracked a small grin. “So… a war, then?”
Kaelyn’s eyes gleamed. “No. A reckoning.”
Outside, the storm howled. But inside, there was warmth. A new kind of fire. Not of destruction, but of rebirth.
Kaelyn wasn’t running anymore.
She was building something.