Naya couldn't feel her body.
She heard the words. She saw the signature. She saw her mother's name, her handwriting, her deliberate pen stroke—but it didn't feel real. It couldn't be.
Helena Dane.
She had buried that name a long time ago. Along with the image of a woman with dark hair, warm eyes, and lullabies that made monsters disappear.
Now that woman had reappeared—not as a ghost, but as the architect of her own erasure.
"She signed it," Naya whispered, staring at the red ink like it could somehow rewrite itself. "She knew what they'd do to me."
Zairen didn't answer. There was nothing to say. Silence had a weight to it now—a cruel acknowledgment of the betrayal that was deeper than anything Kael had ever done.
"She's alive," Zairen said finally. "In the Red Sector."
Naya clenched her fists. "Then that's where we go."
⸻
The escape route wasn't easy.
The compound had shifted. Entire wings had collapsed. Smoke still clung to the air, a reminder that the world above was burning. But below? Below was worse. Below were the tunnels that only doctors and monsters traveled.
They climbed through vents, bypassed sealed doors, and when they reached the elevator shaft, they descended the old-fashioned way—grappling wire and bare hands.
Zairen led. Naya followed. The other Naya—her shattered mirror—trailed silently behind, eyes hollow, lips stitched shut by trauma.
They didn't speak. They couldn't. The truth had changed something in them, and that silence filled every second with the echo of a question Naya couldn't ask out loud:
Why would a mother destroy her own daughter?
⸻
The Red Sector wasn't marked on any map.
It lived beneath the labs, hidden behind blast-proof doors and biometric locks. It was where subjects vanished. The place people whispered about and never visited twice.
And it was guarded.
Zairen spotted the sentries first—two men, heavily armed, standing in front of a door rimmed with white light. They wore no insignias. No names. Just black.
"I can take one," he murmured.
"No," Naya said. "I'll do it."
He blinked. "You?"
"She taught me," Naya said, bitterness slicing through her throat. "Might as well show her what I learned."
⸻
She waited until the lights flickered. The system was still glitching from the explosion above.
Then—she moved.
Low, fast, precise. Like instinct.
The first guard never saw her coming. A crack of bone, a twist of her arm, and he was on the floor. Unconscious. Not dead.
The second lunged—but Zairen was already there, slamming him into the wall with a muffled grunt.
They dragged both bodies out of sight.
The scanner glowed red, waiting for a thumbprint.
Naya hesitated… then pressed the hand of one unconscious guard to the pad.
The door hissed open.
⸻
Inside, the Red Sector wasn't what she expected.
There were no bloodstains. No cages. No screams.
It was cold.
Pristine.
Silent.
Like a hospital that had forgotten how to heal.
Fluorescent lights buzzed. Cameras watched. Doors lined both sides—each labeled with nothing but numbers.
Zairen checked the folder again. "Helena Dane. Room 07."
They passed 03. 04. 05—
And then stopped.
7.
The door was already open.
⸻
Inside, a woman sat in a chair, back turned to them. Long, dark hair. A straight spine. A silver bracelet glinting on her wrist.
She didn't move when they entered.
"Helena Dane," Zairen said.
She turned.
And Naya's heart stopped.
The woman was older. Worn. Paler. But it was her. The shape of her jaw. The eyes Naya had stared into as a child. The mother she remembered in fading dreams.
"Naya," Helena said calmly. "You found me."
The words weren't warm. They weren't cold. They were… clinical.
Like she was observing her daughter, not greeting her.
Naya couldn't breathe.
"You're alive," she said, voice cracking.
"I am."
"You signed it."
Helena nodded once. "Yes. I did."
⸻
Rage rose like a tide inside Naya.
"You let them erase me."
"I was them," Helena said simply. "I helped create the program. The suppression. The simulations. You were the perfect candidate."
"I was your daughter."
"You were a subject. One with potential. Love makes people weak, Naya. And weakness doesn't survive here."
Naya's fists trembled.
Zairen stepped forward. "Why now? Why stay here?"
Helena met his gaze. "Because I have one last task to complete."
"What task?" Naya asked, trembling.
Helena stood.
She reached into her coat.
And pulled out a syringe.
"I have to finish what I started," she said softly.