The library was still.
Dust hung in shafts of late afternoon sunlight slicing through the tall, arched windows. The air smelled like old paper and forgotten ink—quiet, ancient, like time itself had settled here and refused to leave. Emma stood frozen in the aisle where she had seen the girl just seconds before. The spot was empty now, but her heart wouldn't stop pounding.
"She was right here," Emma whispered, her voice barely rising above the creak of the aging wood beneath her shoes.
Nathan stepped beside her, his eyes scanning the long row of shelves. "The girl?"
Emma nodded slowly. "She was just standing there, staring at me. And then… gone. Like she dissolved into the air."
Nathan's voice was skeptical, but gentle. "You sure it wasn't just—"
"I'm sure," she said, cutting him off. "It was her."
They stood there a moment longer in silence. Then, almost instinctively, they began to move. Something in the atmosphere had changed—like the library itself had shifted, revealing secrets it had long kept buried.
Emma led the way deeper into the far wing of the library, into areas few people ever visited. This section wasn't part of the main catalog system—it held books with no barcodes, no record in the school's digital archives. The shelves here sagged with weight, full of local history, donated collections, and decades of forgotten knowledge.
"This place feels… off," Nathan muttered.
Emma agreed. "It's like it's waiting for something."
They reached a far corner, where a short stairwell led to a storage-level reading room, half underground. Emma hesitated before descending.
At the bottom, the air was colder. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead. A long table stretched across the center of the room, surrounded by metal chairs. Shelves lined the walls, labeled with crumbling stickers: Faculty Records, Yearbooks, Archived Facility Blueprints, Unsorted.
Something about that last section pulled at Emma.
She walked toward the shelves, her hand trailing the metal edge. Then she stopped—there was a box, shoved awkwardly behind two broken binders. It looked out of place. She slid it free.
Nathan helped her carry it to the table. Inside were yellowed documents, brittle and water-stained. Some were photographs. Others were handwritten notes in looping cursive.
Emma froze as she pulled one out.
It was a sketch of her.
Or someone who looked almost exactly like her. The drawing was labeled Subject E-005. The resemblance was undeniable.
Nathan leaned in. "That's… that's you. Or…?"
Emma's throat tightened. "No. It's someone like me. One of them."
She kept digging. Beneath the sketch was a report. It detailed neural mapping experiments conducted in 2003, inside the same school building before renovations. The report mentioned early attempts to store memory fragments outside of the brain using artificial containment. The phrase Cognitive Preservation and External Transfer was underlined in red ink.
"This wasn't just an experiment," Emma said quietly. "It was a program."
She pulled another paper free—and this time, she saw a familiar signature at the bottom.
Dr. Alistair Sinclair.
"Dave was here," she whispered. "Before he ran. Before he helped me."
Nathan was flipping through a small booklet. "Emma… some of these test subjects were students. Young ones. They had access to school records. They picked kids who wouldn't be missed."
Emma's hands trembled as she picked up a faded photo tucked inside the binder. It was the girl. The same girl she had seen minutes ago.
Only now, in the photo, she was strapped into a chair, wires snaking from her temples.
Behind her stood two men in lab coats.
Emma turned the picture over. In smudged pencil was written:
Project Keeper. Failed containment. Subject still linked to original host. Phase terminated.
"Phase terminated," she read aloud.
Nathan's face paled. "They tried to erase her."
"They didn't just erase her," Emma said, barely above a whisper. "They buried her. But she's probably still here. Part of her... maybe trapped. And she reached out to me."
Before Nathan could respond, the overhead lights flickered again—then went out completely.
They froze.
Then—footsteps. From above. Slow and deliberate.
Emma shoved the papers back into the box and clutched the photo tightly.
Nathan whispered, "We need to move."
They hurried back up the stairs, but Emma paused, looking one last time into the dim reading room. She felt the presence before she saw it.
At the far edge of the room, the girl was there again.
Still. Watching.
No words. No sound. Just those eyes locked on Emma's.
Emma stepped forward without thinking, but Nathan grabbed her arm. "Emma—there's no time!"
She blinked—and the girl vanished again.
They made it up the stairs, weaving past bookcases, back through the main hall. The front desk was empty. The security guard was gone.
Emma's mind was racing. "She's not trying to haunt me. She's leaving a trail."
Nathan pulled her toward the exit. "Whatever she's doing, we need to get out before whoever's upstairs finds us."
They burst into the cool afternoon air, the library doors creaking behind them.
As they hurried away, Emma looked back.
In the second-floor window, the girl stood again.
Watching.
Waiting.