Chapter 12: The watchers

The Control Core of East Haven pulsed with low light and colder silence. Monitors displayed biometric feeds, drone visuals, and neural activity like ribbons of flame across a dark sky.

Coach Kasekende stood motionless, staring at the main screen — Lena crumpled in the mud, blood on her hands. Jovic's lifeless body fading into the mist behind her.

Behind him, Ms. Nalule calmly spoke into her mic. "Subject Jovic: terminated. Emotional fallout in Subject Lena — spike detected. Rage response climbing. Recommend escalation to Phase Three."

Kasekende didn't speak.

The air shifted.

From the shadowed observation tier above, a figure descended — graceful, deliberate, wearing a coat laced with sensor-thread. Silver glasses. A calm, unreadable smile.

Isaac.

The system architect.

"You're too eager," he said smoothly, walking past Nalule. "Stress them too early and the simulation fractures. Data warps. You'll burn your prize before the story's even halfway through."

Nalule arched an eyebrow. "This isn't a novel, Isaac. It's a behavioral weapon."

Isaac stopped at the central console, eyes locked on the screen. He zoomed in — not on Lena.

On Dora.

"She's close," he murmured.

Kasekende turned. "To what?"

Isaac's voice dropped, just above a whisper. "To remembering."

"Remembering what?" Nalule asked, her tone suddenly tight.

Isaac didn't look at them.

"Her real name," he said. "And what she did to Subject Eight."

Kasekende's face went pale. "That file was sealed."

"I sealed it," Isaac replied softly.

The weight of it hung in the room.

Kasekende studied him for a long moment. "You knew him, didn't you?"

Isaac didn't answer.

But his fingers clenched the edge of the console.

Only once.

Then he turned away, voice controlled.

"I knew his heart rate when he died. I watched it flatline. Right here."

Nalule frowned. "You're letting personal history interfere."

Isaac looked over his shoulder, something raw in his eyes — just for a second.

"No," he said. "I'm making sure the right person pays for it"

The fire crackled low.

Jace sat apart, hunched over a cracked compass, pretending to fix it. Dora lay curled in a fetal position, sweat beading on her forehead. The dart wound had turned an angry shade of red.

Lena hadn't said a word in hours.

She just stared into the flames, Jovic's scarf clenched in her hands.

Her mind kept looping: the look on his face. The suddenness of it. The way the fog swallowed his body like it was never there.

She hadn't even said goodbye.

"Lena," Jace said softly, but she didn't look up.

He moved beside her. "He'd want you to keep moving."

"Don't," she whispered.

"Don't what?"

"Use his name to make me feel better. You didn't know him."

Jace frowned. "That's not fair."

"You're not fair," she snapped, voice shaking. "You disappear. You lie. You keep secrets. Why the hell should I believe you care about anyone but yourself?"

His jaw tightened. "I cared about Emma."

The name silenced her.

He stood slowly, voice lower now.

"I cared more than you'll ever know."

Lena looked at him, trying to see what was behind the anger — and saw, for just a second, grief.

And guilt.

She stood and walked away, deeper into the trees. Leaves crunched beneath her feet. The fire's light faded.

A branch snapped.

She turned, heart racing — but no one was there.

Then a voice, low and cracked, whispered behind her:

"You're her, aren't you?"

She spun.

A boy stood half in shadow, hood over his head, face smeared with dirt.

Older than her, maybe seventeen. Skinny. Pale.

And familiar.

"You were in the file," he said, stepping closer. "The girl from the lake. The one they all watched."

Lena froze.

"What file?"

The boy smiled faintly.

"I was in the rooms, too. I saw the tapes. I saw what they did to us. And I know who you really are."

He reached into his coat and pulled out a photo.

Faded. Blurred.

But unmistakable.

Two children. Her and… someone else. A boy with silver eyes.

The boy looked at her.

"My name's Mulinzi," he said. "Subject Eight was my brother."

They never found the wires he pulled from his spine.

That's how he knew they weren't as perfect as they pretended to be.

East Haven thought it erased everything — the test days, the chambers, the voices behind the glass. But the brain doesn't forget pain. It just... folds it.

He remembered the first time he bled for them.

He remembered the second time he begged for his brother.

And he remembered the girl with the scar under her eye — the one who laughed before she pulled the switch.

Dora.

They called her something else then. "Bloom-3."

Not a name. A model number.

She was supposed to be a prototype. But she changed. Broke protocol. Got too close to Subject Eight.

And in the end, she was the one who brought him down.

Mulinzi had watched it happen — not in person, but through a screen. From a locked room. While he screamed into a microphone no one turned on.

And now she was here.

Alive. Breathing. Pretending.

Mulinzi watched Lena staring at the photo in her hands.

The girl from the lake. The one his brother had trusted. The one he was told to find if everything went wrong.

Now it had.

He crouched by a stump, clutching a cracked data drive in his hand — the last memory bank from Subject Eight's neural backup.

It pulsed softly, like a dying heartbeat.

"I waited a long time to find you," he said quietly. "But I need you to know—if she remembers everything... Dora becomes dangerous."

Lena looked up, alarm rising.

"Why?"

Mulinzi looked toward the campfire glowing faintly through the trees. He could see Dora's silhouette hunched over.

"Because she wasn't just his friend," he said.

"She was the one ordered to kill him."