Episode 11
Snow drifted around them like ash. The underground laboratory had collapsed into nothing but molten steel and shattered memory. But Iris couldn't stop shaking—not from the cold, but from the truth.
She wasn't just someone with amnesia.
She was something created. Engineered.
And yet—she had survived it all.
Lucien wrapped his coat around her shoulders as they stood by the wreckage.
"We need to move," he said softly. "They'll come looking."
"Who?" Iris asked. "Alec's dead. Crescent-1 is gone. Nightshade is destroyed."
Lucien hesitated.
"Iris," he said slowly, "Alec Draven wasn't the top of the chain. There's something darker behind Nightshade. Something older."
Iris narrowed her eyes. "What aren't you telling me?"
He pulled a flash drive from his pocket—the one he'd yanked from Alec's personal server before everything exploded.
"I found something in the control room. A file labeled Lazarus Protocol."
Her breath caught.
"I saw that name… before everything went dark."
Lucien nodded grimly. "It's not a file. It's a contingency."
---
The Truth Beneath the File
Back in Lucien's mountain safehouse—hidden beyond the Alps—they sat in front of a secure terminal. He plugged in the drive. A single encrypted folder appeared on the screen.
> Project Lazarus
Lucien typed in the decryption code he'd memorized in the lab.
The screen flickered.
Then lines of classified reports, images, and confidential documents exploded onto the monitor.
Iris leaned forward. "What is this…?"
"Lazarus," Lucien said, "was never about healing you."
The screen showed a fetal scan. It wasn't a normal fetus. It had two hearts. Enlarged brain lobes. A mutation in the neural cortex.
The date stamp was three years before Iris was even born.
Her stomach turned.
"That's… not me."
Lucien opened a file labeled Subject Alpha — Initial Trial.
A photo of a girl—maybe ten years old. Pale skin. Silver eyes. Black veins visible beneath her skin.
"Her name was Elara. She was the first."
"She looks like…" Iris stopped.
Lucien didn't answer.
The next file: Subject Theta — Memory Integration Failure.
It was Iris.
Strapped to a chair. Crying.
Lucien clenched his jaw. "They wiped you clean after every test. Inserted new memories. New roles. Some days, you thought you were a violinist. A soldier. A nurse. Even Alec's fiancée."
Iris's voice broke. "So I was never real?"
"You were. Just not in the way they wanted."
---
The Dead Come Back
Suddenly, the terminal glitched.
The screen turned black.
A voice filtered through the speakers. Cold. Metallic. Familiar.
> "Hello, Iris."
She froze.
"Alec?" Lucien reached for his gun instinctively, though it was useless here.
> "If you're hearing this, I'm dead. But my mind isn't. I uploaded fragments of myself into Lazarus. My consciousness now lives within the protocol."
Iris backed away from the screen.
> "I always knew you'd survive. That's why I prepared something for you. One final test."
A map appeared on screen. Coordinates.
Lucien cursed. "He planned this the whole time."
> "Come find me, Iris. If you dare."
The transmission ended.
Silence.
---
A New Threat
Iris paced the safehouse floor. Her reflection in the frosted window looked foreign—pale, haunted, burning with rage.
"He's not gone," she whispered. "He made a copy of himself. He's waiting."
Lucien didn't argue.
She turned to him. "I need to know everything. Every secret. Every experiment. You used to work for him, didn't you?"
His eyes darkened. "I was a handler. I was sent to monitor the failures—until I saw what they were really doing. That's when I took you."
"Why me?" she asked. "Why not just shut it down?"
"Because," Lucien said quietly, "you were the only one who felt human. The others—they were obedient, hollow. But you... you cried when you saw pain. You hesitated before you killed. You remembered music, not just missions."
"You saw me," she whispered.
"I always did."
Their eyes met—heat behind the cold truth.
---
The Lazarus Map
Later that night, Iris studied the coordinates Alec's AI left behind.
"Russia," she murmured. "Deep within the Ural Mountains. There's nothing there except frozen caves."
"Unless that's where Lazarus has been hiding," Lucien said. "And if Alec uploaded his mind into the system—he's not just a memory. He's a digital ghost."
Iris traced the map with her finger. "Then let's burn the ghost down."
---
Final Scene: Shadows Awaken
Elsewhere, in a dark room glowing with blue servers, a monitor buzzed.
A face formed on the screen—Alec's, flickering and fractured.
A voice echoed through the chamber.
> "Lazarus is online. Prepare Phase Two."
In the shadows, a figure stepped forward. Female. Clad in black.
Not Crescent-1.
Someone else.
A new creation.
A new nightmare.