The flames had barely died down when the sky broke open.
Rain poured over the smoldering wreckage of Blackmoor Orphanage, the ashes of decades of secrets bleeding into the dirt. Elira stood in the mud, the braid still clenched in her hand, dripping with soot and rain. Her throat ached with unsaid screams.
Azriel's jacket was wrapped around her, blood from his shoulder wound blooming into the fabric, but he didn't flinch. His eyes were locked on the girl standing beside Caelum — the Blue-coded ghost.
"Name?" he asked quietly.
She looked up. Her voice was hoarse. "Thalia."
Elira stepped forward, heart pounding. "I thought you were in Syria."
"I was. They moved us. Twice. I escaped two months ago."
Caelum arched a brow. "With help."
"Whose?" Azriel asked.
Thalia's gaze shifted. "Yours."
Azriel's jaw tightened.
Elira narrowed her eyes. "That's not possible. He never—"
"No," Thalia said. "Not him. Someone using his name. Someone on the inside."
Azriel's face darkened. "That means there's a traitor."
"No," Caelum said softly. "That means there's more of us."
---
The safehouse wasn't safe anymore.
They relocated to a new site: an abandoned train yard in the outskirts of Duskbridge, where shadows ran thicker than blood.
Talon had gone ahead to scout. Elira sat on a rusted metal bench inside the control tower, braid still in her grip. She hadn't let go of it since the blast.
Azriel approached, bandage fresh on his shoulder. He didn't speak immediately, just stood there, letting the silence breathe between them like something alive.
"You haven't said anything since we left."
She looked at him. Rainwater clung to her lashes. "What am I supposed to say?"
"That you're still breathing."
She dropped the braid on the table. "That wasn't a message. That was a threat."
Azriel tilted his head slightly. "Which means we're getting close."
"I'm tired of getting close," she snapped. "I want names. I want faces. I want the people who did this buried."
Azriel's voice was low. "Then let's unearth them."
He placed a new drive in front of her.
Thalia had brought it. Extracted from a secondary facility before it was burned. Inside were files from another wing of Chimera. But this one was different.
It wasn't about children.
It was about the ones who ran it.
Council members. Political shadows. Sponsors.
And at the center: a name redacted in every document.
One line remained beneath the blur:
**"Father to the Project. Blood to the Empire."**
Elira stared at the line. "I want to find him."
Azriel met her gaze, unreadable. "Then we start with the list of locations mentioned in these logs. We go in. We take what we need. We leave no trace."
Caelum walked in, tossing Talon a bulletproof case. "Too late. We've been traced."
Talon cracked his neck. "How long?"
"Ten minutes. Maybe less."
Azriel looked at Elira. "You said you didn't run."
"I don't."
"Then fight with us."
Her eyes were fire.
"Always."
---
The first facility was underground — a data archive hidden beneath a private estate masked as a vineyard.
They broke in at midnight.
Thalia and Caelum cut the perimeter. Azriel and Elira moved in through the servant tunnels. Talon watched the roof.
Inside, they met resistance immediately.
Two guards. Then six.
Elira moved like a phantom. One guard lunged for her throat — she side-stepped, gripped his arm, and drove her dagger under his sternum. As he collapsed, another charged with a rifle. She dropped low, slicing across his hamstrings, then swept his legs out and cracked his skull against the steel floor.
Another guard aimed for her. She ducked, rolled beneath the shot, and embedded a throwing knife in his collarbone, pinning him to the wall. His scream barely echoed before she silenced him with a flick of her wrist.
But then came the heavy hitters.
One of the elite guards tackled her into the wall, knocking the breath from her lungs. She twisted in his grip, elbowed his jaw, and clawed at his helmet. He slammed her down. Her ribs screamed.
She kicked off the wall and flipped, grabbing the pipe overhead to regain balance. Blood dripped from her lip. She grabbed a stun baton from a fallen guard and jammed it into the attacker's gut, holding it until he dropped.
Another swung a steel baton at her temple. She ducked — too late. It clipped her forehead. Blood spilled down her cheek as she staggered back.
Azriel moved like a storm. One shot to the chest. Another to the head. He vaulted over a console, pistol still smoking, and tackled a man wielding a stun baton. They grappled — Azriel slammed the man's face into the wall, crushed his knee, and pulled the trigger into the side of his neck.
Another enemy tried flanking. Azriel turned in time, parried the strike with a metal clipboard, and delivered a brutal roundhouse kick to the guard's ribs, sending him crashing into a server rack.
He saw Elira stumble.
A guard tried to shoot her in the back.
Azriel intercepted — took the hit in his vest, spun, and returned fire point-blank.
Elira wheeled around, hair stuck to her bloody forehead, fury in her eyes.
"You think I needed your help?" she hissed.
Azriel's eyes glinted, voice cool. "No. I think you need to stop bleeding before you pass out."
"I've bled worse."
He stepped closer. "That doesn't make you invincible."
"No. It makes me dangerous."
Their faces were inches apart — breath hot, energy coiled like wires set to spark.
"You think you're the only one with scars?" he asked, voice dropping.
"No. But I wear mine better."
A smirk ghosted across his lips, brief and dark. "You're impossible."
"Good. Stay out of my way."
They moved through the facility like mirrored blades — never aligned, never soft, but lethal when near.
Inside the vault, they found backups. Thumb drives. Cryo storage tubes labeled with code names. Some bore familiar tags — BLUE, RED, OBSIDIAN.
Elira froze when she saw a new one: **ONYX**.
"What is this?" she asked.
Azriel's brow furrowed. "New generation."
"Not just subjects," Talon muttered. "Soldiers."
Thalia pulled a drive marked **ONYX-01**. "Someone's trying to start it again."
"Someone never stopped," Elira said.
They downloaded what they could.
Then the alarms screamed.
Talon shouted, "Out. Now."
Gunfire echoed as they fled.
A sniper clipped Thalia.
She stumbled. Azriel hesitated — then stayed behind cover.
Elira didn't. She dragged Thalia with her, teeth gritted. "We don't leave ghosts behind."
But a stray bullet nicked Elira's side — just beneath her ribs.
She choked on the pain, kept running. Didn't stop until they reached the car.
---
By the time they reached the getaway car, Caelum was hotwiring it.
The estate behind them burst into flames — not from their doing.
From someone else.
A message had been carved into the garage wall:
**"Come home, C-027."**
Elira stared at it, pressing a hand to her bleeding side.
And this time, she didn't tremble.
"I'm comi
ng," she whispered.
Azriel looked at her, expression unreadable.
She didn't look back.
She touched her collarbone where the old number used to be.
And smiled like a wolf.
**To be continued...**