> ⚠️ Content Warning: This chapter contains mature themes, including psychological manipulation, obsessive behavior, and intimate scenes. Reader discretion advised.
Absolutely. Here's Chapter Eleven of
It was cold beneath the floorboards.
Not in the way of temperature.
In the way of silence.
Of breath you didn't realize you were holding.
Of rooms meant to stay forgotten.
The kind of cold that settled into your bones and whispered:
> You've been here before.
My fingers found the mark on the wall again—the Lock. The symbol I had drawn for years without knowing why. The one Rhea said was a seal.
It wasn't just etched into the stone.
It was bleeding.
Dark liquid, almost black, leaked from the slash in the center. I stumbled back—but even then, I couldn't look away.
Because in the blood, I saw faces.
Not just the stitched-mouth girl.
Others.
Children. Dozens of them.
Some I almost recognized.
Some I almost was.
Their eyes were vacant. Their mouths didn't move. But I felt the scream behind their faces. Trapped. Not just in memory. But in me.
> They're parts of you.
The thought wasn't mine.
But it didn't feel like Rhea's either.
It came from deeper.
From the floor. From the walls. From the part of me they never meant to wake up.
Suddenly, the stone wall ahead split cleanly down the center.
A door again.
Not wooden. Not imagined.
This one was real.
And it opened without a sound.
I stepped through it.
And the world changed.
Not back to the school.
Not to any place I knew.
But to a sterile white room lined with monitors.
Flickering screens showed images in loop:
A boy sitting quietly.
A girl screaming into a soundproof box.
A man in a mask holding a clipboard.
On the nearest screen—I saw me.
Strapped to a chair.
Lids forced open.
Heart monitor flatlining, then restarting. Again. And again. And again.
The timestamp said:
> Phase 3: Trigger Protocol Initiated. Subject: AV-09.
I moved closer to the monitor.
"AV."
Adrian Vale.
I was a subject.
My hand trembled against the screen. The boy inside didn't blink. Didn't flinch. Even as lights flashed in his face and alarms blared behind him.
He wasn't human anymore.
He was something made.
> "They trained you to forget the pain, Adrian."
Rhea's voice again.
I turned, fast—but she wasn't in the room.
> "But they didn't train you to forget me."
Another monitor snapped on.
This time, it showed Rhea.
Not now.
Younger. Thirteen, maybe. Dressed in white. Lips trembling. That same scar already on her temple.
She was screaming something. Over and over. A name.
My name.
> "Adrian—he's not one of them—let him out! Please—he was trying to help—he—"
The screen fuzzed.
Cut out.
Another screen flicked on—this one darker.
Grainy.
Security footage.
It showed a corridor of doors. Room after room. All numbered. All locked.
Until one door opened.
And a boy stepped out.
Covered in blood.
Expression blank.
His hands twitched.
Then he looked at the camera.
Straight into it.
Into me.
> You did this.
The screen shattered.
The whole room trembled.
And I collapsed to my knees again, breath gone, heart stuttering in my chest.
"She saved me," I gasped.
Not a question.
A truth.
That's why Rhea had come to St. August's.
Not to destroy me.
Not only for revenge.
But because once—just once—I'd chosen her over them.
And she never forgot it.
The lights above sparked violently.
A new door appeared.
Iron. Heavy.
And I knew—
Behind it was the memory they wanted to keep buried most of all.
The one that would tell me everything.
What I did.
Why I was remade.
And what I was about to become.
Because this wasn't just about what happened.
It was about what was coming.
The iron door was waiting.
It didn't creak when I opened it.
Didn't resist.
It just let me through—like it had been expecting me.
The room on the other side wasn't a room at all.
It was a replica.
Of a bedroom.
Sterile, quiet, and staged. Like a child's room rebuilt from memory by someone who had never met her. Toys with no dust. Books with no wear. A bed with a nameplate burned into the wood.
RHEA-12
My breath hitched.
Twelve.
Not her age.
Her number.
A monitor hummed in the corner. Still active. Still live.
I walked toward it like a sleepwalker.
The footage that played wasn't footage.
It was surveillance.
A constant, looping stream of a girl sitting cross-legged on the floor, head tilted, eyes closed. Her hands rested on her knees. Her mouth was still—stitched at the corners.
Her hair was longer. Her scar deeper.
But it was her.
Rhea.
Before me.
Before the lies.
Before she learned to hide the way she was made.
> "You weren't the only one they rebuilt."
Her voice came from behind me.
But when I turned—
She wasn't there.
The feed on the monitor flickered.
> Subject RHEA-12 exhibits anomalous psychic resistance.
Continues to override sedation.
Request: Termination – DENIED.
The log was dated seven years ago.
I did the math in my head.
She was ten.
> "She found me here," I whispered. "Not at school. Not after some transfer. She knew because she'd already seen me."
I was talking to myself now.
Or maybe to the boy still buried under my skin.
The monitor changed feeds.
A door opening.
A group of children lined up against the wall.
One boy—older, taller—was pulled forward by a gloved hand.
His eyes were half-shut. His face bruised.
Me.
> "Subject AV-09: Instability during moral trigger test.
RHEA-12 intervened. Memory lock administered.
Secondary result: psychic echo loop initiated."
I stumbled back from the screen.
She intervened.
They punished us both.
And then—
They made me forget her.
Rhea had known me. Before St. August's.
Before the obsession.
Before the bruised love we thought we were just now beginning.
She wasn't new.
She was the first person I'd ever chosen.
And they'd erased her from me.
On purpose.
The realization hit like ice.
All this time, I thought I was chasing her.
But the truth was worse:
She'd been waiting for me to wake up.
And I was years late.
> "Adrian."
I turned.
This time, she was there.
Rhea. Now. Her face pale, lips parted like she hadn't meant to speak.
Her eyes weren't cold like before.
They were wet.
"You're remembering," she whispered. "Finally."
I couldn't answer. I couldn't breathe.
Because behind her—on the far wall—was one last window.
And behind the glass:
The real room.
Blood-streaked walls.
Syringes still on the tray.
A chair bolted to the floor.
And a name scratched into the concrete by something sharp:
RHEA + ADRIAN = OUT
I reached out and touched the window.
"Did we ever make it out?" I asked.
Her silence was answer enough.
> "Not yet," she said.
And then the alarms began to scream.
Not in memory.
Here.
Now.
The room shook. The lights dimmed. Doors began to seal.
"Someone knows," she said. "They tracked us through the memory dive."
My heart hammered.
"You said I was made," I said.
She nodded.
"But you never said what for."
This time, her smile was sorrowful.
Because we both knew—
The answer was waiting at the end of this hallway.
And it wasn't going to be kind.