Silence weighed on the cell like a leaden shroud. Mayu stood over the slumped form of Subject 45, unconscious on the metal floor. Around her, the cold walls echoed her every breath like a threat. She knew that in this place, moments of calm were never harmless. Every stillness was a trap waiting to snap shut.
She crouched beside 45, hands trembling. Beneath layers of hatred and pain, beyond the horrors they had endured, he remained one of her own—another clone, a brother in experience. And somewhere, perhaps, lay a shard of shared memory warped by the Professor's manipulations.
> "You didn't deserve this…" she whispered.
An echo answered her murmur—not a sound, but a vibration. Mayu lifted her gaze. It wasn't an alarm or a voice. It was… within her. A cold wave radiating through her chest.
She staggered back—one step, then another—as her vision blurred.
Suddenly, images exploded in her mind: torn bodies, steam-shrouded labs, faces contorted in agony beneath electrodes, syringes, and blades.
She saw… herself. No—another version. A Mayu without pupils, her entire eyes glowing azure, screaming in a glass chamber, fists bloodied against the walls.
> "WAKE UP!"
The voice didn't come from the room. It reverberated inside her skull. But it wasn't her voice, nor the Professor's.
It was Akira's.
Mayu collapsed to her knees, seized by a fierce vertigo. Her forehead nearly struck the floor. Her breathing sped as foreign data, memories, and sensations engraved themselves upon her mind.
> "This isn't real… This isn't me…"
> "Yes. It is. Or a part of you—the part they stole."
She snapped her eyes open. Subject 45 was awake, watching her, gasping, fully conscious. His widened pupils trembled in sudden spasms. He had felt it, too.
> "You… you've connected… to the resonance…" he rasped.
Mayu said nothing. She retreated further, her body drenched in cold sweat, the back of her neck still crackling as though electricity surged through her veins.
> "You are not alone, Mayu. They did not destroy you—only scatter you. Come back."
She wanted to reply, but her throat tightened. Akira—why now? Why his voice? And why this link, this strange, intimate sensation like a memory of another life?
Suddenly, the alarm blared—
A piercing siren, followed by a red light flashing at steady intervals.
Footsteps, raised voices: the containment system activated.
Mayu gritted her teeth. Time to move.
She helped 45 to his feet. He wavered, weak but alive.
> "Can you walk?"
He nodded, voice hoarse: "We have no choice."
She supported him toward the corridor—only to be met by gunfire the moment they stepped through the door.
Soldiers—armored clones with helmets, weapons raised, ready to shoot without question.
Mayu reacted on instinct. She slid 45 behind a pillar, lunged forward, snatched a baton from the floor, and attacked.
Her first strike snapped the first soldier's neck. She blocked the second's shot with an overturned metal table, then vaulted toward the third.
Her movements were precise, lightning-fast—more so than ever before. It was as if that strange connection, this "resonance," had unleashed buried reflexes, a foreign yet familiar muscle memory.
A soldier tried to flank her.
She spun, seized his arm, wrenched it viciously, and used his weapon against his comrades—bullets ripping through a pipe, sending a scalding steam cloud across the corridor.
Mayu used the steam as cover, sprinting through it, eyes set with unyielding resolve.
No shot found her. She had become a shadow, a blue spark in a world of ash.
When she returned to 45, he stared at her, stunned.
> "You weren't like this… before."
> "I don't know what I am now," she replied, "but I won't run anymore."
They fled down the twisting passages. The facility appeared to disintegrate around them—alarms flashing, doors slamming shut, frantic lab technicians racing past.
And all the while, that inner voice whispered:
> "You approach the end, Mayu. Prepare yourself. You will have to choose."
She clenched her fists.
At last, they emerged into a vast circular hall. Cables dripped from the ceiling; a massive screen loomed at its center. On it, the Professor's face flickered into view.
He was smiling.
> "Mayu. There you are at last."
She advanced slowly; 45 hovered at the edge of her vision.
> "Why do this? Why turn us… break us?"
The Professor's laugh was a muffled rumble.
> "Because you are the future. Humanity is weak—and you are the perfected version."
> "You cannot force evolution."
> "I do not force it. I guide it. And you, Mayu… you are the key. You were the first to awaken the resonance."
His grin widened.
> "Do you really think that was an accident?"
Mayu felt her blood freeze.
> "You… knew?"
> "Of course. You were designed for this—to connect every fragment of the Project. You are their link. Their echo."
Mayu recoiled. A searing pain stabbed through her skull. Images flashed: clones, death, birth, and her own face—over and over.
> "You were never alone."
She dropped to her knees.
Then she screamed.
And the resonance shattered.