The silence after the screen went black felt long.
Joe was still sitting in his chair, staring at the reflection of his own face in the black monitor.
Something hummed inside his skull—slow but constant, like electricity refusing to die down.
Between the hum, there was another sound.
Soft.
A little laugh.
"Dad, don't forget to smile. Mom always likes it when you smile."
Instantly, Joe's chest felt tight. The image of a little girl with pigtails appeared in his mind—June, running in the yard of their old house in Ashford. Then the image burned in smoke and sirens that kept spinning in his head.
He looked down, staring at his own hands—cold, trembling, but not because of fear.
There was something moving inside him, something he couldn't control.
The fog outside began to thin.
And before dawn truly arrived, Joe realized one thing:
The part of him that was human… was starting to fade.
Morning came slowly in Blackridge. A thin fog hung between the old buildings, swallowing the sound of vehicles from a distance. Inside the cramped garage, only the rapid sound of typing broke the silence. Rick hadn't stopped working since last night.
The aroma of black coffee and metal mixed in the air. A ceramic mug steamed on the messy work table full of cables and circuit boards.
"You finally woke up," Rick said without turning his head.
Joe blinked, rubbing his tired face. "What time is it?"
"A little past eight. You were snoring like a dying man," Rick replied flatly, then sipped his coffee.
Joe approached. The computer screen reflected the name repeatedly—
MARCUS.V.
"Him again?"
"Marcus.V," Rick muttered. "I thought it was just a login name, but it's not. This is a real person."
He pressed some keys, and the screen changed to display a black-and-white archive: a photo of a crew-cut man with a scar on his right cheek. Marcus Vale, a former security officer at the hospital where Clara used to work—two years ago he disappeared without a trace.
"Now he's known as The Cleaner, the person assigned by Harlow Industries to erase traces of failed experiments. People like him never appear in official reports."
Joe leaned back in his chair, his gaze empty. "And that flash drive... has his data in it?"
Rick nodded. "Clara didn't store this information to be opened—she hid it from the people chasing her. Including Marcus."
The words hung in the air. Joe looked down, both hands gripping his knees. He remembered Clara's last days—restless, often waking up in the middle of the night, staring at something on her laptop she never allowed Joe to see.
"Before that fire," Joe said softly, "Clara often told me I had to 'trust her', no matter what happened. I thought… she might just be afraid the side effects would appear."
Rick stopped typing. "Side effects?"
Joe stared blankly. "I was in a coma for a year. Because of a work accident when we still lived in Ashford. I nearly died… the doctor said my brain was severely damaged. But somehow, Clara brought me to the hospital where she worked. After that, I woke up—that's all I remember."
He stopped, staring at the concrete floor wet with water dripping from the leaky roof.
"Now I'm starting to understand. I wasn't just saved, Rick. I was… like, repaired."
Rick didn't answer immediately. He knew that expression—between anger, confusion, and fear of something not fully understood yet.
"Clara probably had no choice, Joe," he said eventually. "If you were really on the verge of death… maybe she just wanted you to live, by any means."
The atmosphere froze. Rick put out his cigarette in a used oil can. "Shit."
A few seconds later, he stood up and walked to a steel drawer in the corner of the room. He pulled out a black Glock-19 pistol, with a few small boxes of bullets underneath it.
"If you want to find Marcus, you need this. I've kept it forever. It was my dad's when he was still in the dock guard force."
Joe stared at the pistol for a long time, then looked at his reflection in the barrel. A stranger's face, cold and stiff, stared back. For a moment, he wasn't sure who was really staring back.
"Where is he now?" Joe demanded, his voice sharp, no longer hesitant.
Rick pointed to another screen. "There is a digital path I used to track Marcus' last connection. He often accessed the old medical network in Port Daven. An old harbor, now a storage place for smuggled pharmaceutical ingredients."
Joe stared at the map on the screen—red coordinates on the edge of the sea line, surrounded by old warehouses and half-collapsed piers. He stood up, putting the pistol into his jacket pocket.
"I'm leaving now."
Rick held his shoulder. "Joe, listen. If he is indeed the Cleaner, he's not just a mercenary. He's the person sent to erase everything—including people who know about the project. If there's any strange activity around the west district or you need fast help, I'll let you know through this radio." He threw a small radio towards Joe.
Joe caught it. "Then it's better if I go and say hello."
Rick snorted softly, giving up.
Before Joe left, he looked at the screen one more time—the last data from the drive he managed to open. A few snippets of text appeared, like the result of a corrupted encryption. Among the rows of letters and numbers, Rick read a sentence he hadn't had time to show Joe:
[NEURAL OPERATIVE INTEGRATED RESONANCE – SUBPROGRAM: RECALL PROTOCOL]
Rick froze. "NOIR… This isn't just about repair, Joe. Clara, what exactly have you done?"
Meanwhile outside, the sound of Joe's car engine disappeared behind the fog.
On the monitor screen that was still on, one message appeared automatically, as if the system came back to life on its own:
[SUBJECT 07 – REACTIVATION STABLE]
[TRACKING INITIATED]