In the year 3050, the world was a silent masterpiece of gleaming white steel and transparent glass. It was a time when technology didn't just assist life; it defined every heartbeat. For Evelina, however, life wasn't found in the neon-lit sky-cities or the virtual playgrounds of the elite. Her life was lived under the cool, flickering glow of laboratory holograms and the rhythmic, heart-like hum of bio-scanners.
She wasn't just a scientist; she was a legend whispered about in both high-society galas and the darkest corners of the global government. While other women her age were out enjoying synthetic luxuries and digital dreams, Evelina had spent the last six months locked in a private, high-security lab. She was hunting a ghost—a pathogen that shouldn't have existed.
A plague from three thousand years ago had resurfaced from the melting permafrost of the old world. It was fast, it was lethal and it was intelligent. It didn't just kill; it adapted. Evelina was the only mind on the planet capable of outsmarting it.
"Ninety-five percent stability," she whispered, her voice echoing slightly in the sterile, white room. She watched a blue liquid bubble softly inside a pressurized glass tube. It was beautiful—a shimmering sapphire solution that held the power to save millions.
But Evelina was a woman of many layers. To the public, she was the brilliant Dr. Evelina, the genius who saved lives. To the secret branches of the Government, she was something else entirely: a top-tier assassin known as Ghost. She was the one they called when a target needed to disappear without a single footprint left behind.
She knew exactly where to strike a man to stop his heart in three seconds. She knew which plant extracts could mimic a natural death so perfectly that even the most advanced 31st-century autopsies would find nothing but "heart failure." She used her knowledge of biology not just to heal, but to survive in a world of shadows.
To finish her cure, she needed one last ingredient: the Sun-Glow Fern. It was a plant thought to be extinct for centuries, but her satellite scans had found a small cluster growing on the highest, most dangerous mountain peaks of the Forbidden Range.
"Evelina, the weather patterns are shifting," her AI assistant, Lyra, flickered on her wrist watch in a pulse of blue light. "The probability of a fatal fall is sixty-eight percent. I suggest waiting for the drone recovery team."
"Drones can't distinguish the potency of the leaves, Lyra," Evelina replied, her voice calm. She didn't need a team. She didn't trust people. People were variables; science was a constant.
With her lightweight tactical gear and expert climbing skills, she reached the highest cliff just as the sun began to set. It cast a bloody orange glow over the clouds below, looking like a sea of fire. The air was thin and freezing, the kind of cold that turned a human's breath into jagged ice, but Evelina didn't feel it. Her focus was absolute. She crawled across a narrow ledge, her fingers, protected by grip-tech gloves, just inches away from the glowing, golden fern tucked in a rocky crevice.
Suddenly, the world went quiet. The wind stopped howling.
In that silence, she felt it—a heavy, violent shove against the center of her back.
It wasn't a gust of wind. It was the distinct, solid pressure of a human hand. Evelina's assassin instincts flared. She tried to twist her body in mid-air, her hand reaching for her emergency grappling line, but the force had been too precise, too calculated. As she fell backward into the sea of white clouds , her last thought wasn't fear. It was cold, sharp confusion.
Who could have reached me up here? I was alone.
Darkness didn't come immediately. Instead, the sensation of falling turned into the sensation of floating. She found herself standing in a world made of silver mist, where the ground felt like water but held her weight like stone.
In front of her stood a girl.
The girl looked exactly like her—the same eyes, the same nose—but she looked incredibly fragile. She was like a piece of fine porcelain that had been broken and glued back together one too many times. She wore a long, old-fashioned silk dress with flowing sleeves. Her eyes were red-rimmed, filled with a deep, hollow sadness.
"Evelina," the girl whispered. Her voice sounded like a dying echo. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry to pull you here."
"Who are you? And where is 'here'?" Evelina asked. Even in this dream, her muscles were tense. She was already looking for exits, looking for weapons.
"I am the 'you' from this world," the girl said, her form beginning to flicker like a dying candle. "I have lived this life twice, Evelina. The first time, I was a ghost in my own home. The second time... I tried to be brave. I tried to change things. But I was too weak. I was poisoned, mocked and left to die in a cold, dark room while they laughed at my misery. My soul is tired. I cannot do it a third time. I cannot watch them win again."
The girl reached out and touched Evelina's hand. The contact felt like an electric shock, sending a jolt of pure, agonizing emotion through Evelina's chest. Memories that weren't hers began to burn into her brain.
"Please," the girl pleaded, her voice growing faint. "Help him. Help Lucius. He is a kind man, a hero who will be destroyed by the same snakes who killed me. Save him... and in doing so, you will save this life. You have the strength I never had."
"Wait! Who is Lucius? What snakes?" Evelina demanded, but the girl turned into a cloud of shimmering starlight. The silver mist began to spin until the world became a blur of light and noise.
"Young Lady! Wake up! For goodness' sake, you're going to be late and I'll be the one who gets punished for it!"
The sharp, grating voice of a woman snapped Evelina's eyes open.
She wasn't on a mountain peak. She wasn't in her high-tech lab. She was lying in a massive, four-poster bed draped in heavy, dust-caked velvet curtains. The air hit her lungs and it felt heavy. It didn't smell like the sterilized oxygen of the 31st century. It smelled of old wood, dried lavender and a cloyingly thick, expensive perfume.
Suddenly, her head throbbed. A massive wave of memories crashed into her brain.
She saw her father—the Finance Minister—who looked at her with the same coldness one might look at a broken chair. She saw her step-mother, Lady Elena, a woman who wore a smile like a mask while giving Evelina "daily tonics" that actually made her limbs heavy and her mind dull. She saw her younger sister, Isabella, a girl who acted like a saint in public but spent her private time tearing up Evelina's books and stealing her mother's keepsakes.
She saw the "second life" the ghost-girl had mentioned. In that life, the original Evelina had tried to refuse the medicine, only to be locked away and labeled "insane" before being quietly disposed of.
I've transmigrated, Evelina realized, sitting up slowly. Her body felt different—lighter, thinner and alarmingly weak. I'm in the body of a forgotten noble daughter in a primitive world.
"Young Lady! Did you hear me?"
A young maid stood by the bed, her hands on her hips. She didn't look like a servant; she looked like a bully.
"Lady Elena is waiting in the garden. She wants to talk to you about your engagement to the General's son. Honestly, you should be grateful anyone wants to marry a sickly thing like you. Now, drink your tea—it's good for your 'weak' heart."
The maid pointed to a steaming porcelain cup on the nightstand.
Evelina didn't need a molecular scanner to know what was in that cup. As she leaned closer, her nose—trained by years of identifying rare toxins—caught a faint, bitter scent hiding behind the smell of honey.
Arsenic. A slow, steady dose.
A small, cold smile touched Evelina's lips. It was a look that had no business being on the face of a "weak" girl. It was the look of a hunter.
"The engagement?" Evelina asked. Her voice was soft, but it held a new, crystalline edge—like a razor blade hidden inside a silk pillow.
"Yes! To General Valerius's son. The war hero's son! Now hurry up and get dressed!"
Evelina stood up. Her legs felt like jelly, but she forced her muscles to obey. She walked over to a large potted plant near the window and, with a steady hand, poured the tea directly into the soil. Within seconds, the green leaves of the plant began to curl and turn black.
The maid gasped, her face turning pale. "Young Lady! What are you doing? That's expensive medicine!"
Evelina turned to the maid. She didn't shout. She simply looked at the girl with eyes so cold and ancient that the maid instinctively stepped back.
"Go tell Lady Elena I will be there shortly," Evelina said quietly. "And tell her... I've never felt better. The 'medicine' worked wonders."
As the maid scrambled out of the room, tripping over her skirts to escape the strange aura coming from Evelina, the scientist walked to a polished bronze mirror.
The face looking back was stunning—pale, with large, dark eyes. But behind those eyes was the mind of a woman who had mastered a thousand ways to kill.
"Lucius," she whispered, the name feeling strange. "I don't know who you are yet. But if you're the one I'm supposed to save, you're in luck. Because back in my world, I was very, very good at getting rid of snakes."
She picked up a long, sharp hair needle from the vanity. She tested the point against her thumb, feeling the bite of the metal.
In this world, they had treated the original Evelina like an animal. They had poisoned her and stolen her life—twice.
"Don't worry, little ghost," Evelina said to the empty room, her eyes flashing with lethal intelligence. "I'm going to make them pay a thousand times more than you ever suffered. And I think I'll start with the tea."
She began to dress, her mind already calculating the chemical composition of the plants she had seen in the garden. She didn't need a lab to make a poison.
She was the lab.