Chapter 46

The Kill code.

The tower shook beneath our feet. My fists went blistered from impact. My knuckles cracked open from hammering into subject B04’s obsidian armor.

My breath came in sharp, shallow bursts. My body wouldn’t let me collapse.

Pain wasn’t new, it was my second skin.

B04 moved like a mirror. My moves, my instincts, and my rage.

He didn’t bleed like a man. He bled like a machine.

You were never real, I panted, while backing away as he rose again. You were just the insurance policy.

“I am you,” he said flatly. “Without a weakness.”

I spat blood onto the floor.

Then I’ll break you like I broke everything else.

Up in the control room, Damian burst through the reinforced glass doors, cutting down two guards without hesitation.

Dr. Aveline didn’t flinch.

She stood calmly before the command console, her finger hovering over something small, a pulsing red button labeled.

Engage code: Reclamation.

Damian raised his gun. “Step away.”

Aveline smiled, “You’re too late.”

He pulled the trigger, too slowly.

She pressed it.

In the lower chamber, I felt it instantly. A crack down the middle of my mind.

I froze mid-fight. My heart rate spiked. Pupils dilated.

B04 stopped. Sensing change. I staggered back, choking on air that suddenly doesn’t taste like air again.

Protocol engaged: reclamation. Subject A01: override mode initializing.

No…no. I gasped, clutching my head.

Memories flooded my vision. Cold steel rooms. Screams. Wires in my spine. Aveline’s voice was whispering programming into my ear like a lullaby.

I dropped to my knees, with my hands digging into the floor.

B04 stepped forward.

“It’s over,” he said softly, “You were never free.”

Damian shot the console again. Sparks flew.

“You think this ends with her kneeling?” He growled.

“You built the devil, and now you’re going to see what she becomes when she burns.”

Dr. Aveline turned, her expression calm.

“She’s always meant to kneel. It’s in her code.”

Damian stepped closer.

“You forgot one thing,” he snarled. “She fell in love.”

Aveline blinked, visibly shaken for the first time.

“Love corrupts programming.”

He stepped forward, blade in hand. “No. Love rewrites it.”

And with one precise strike, he cut the power line to the control console.

Down below, the signal flickered. Override failed.

I gasped as the grip in my mind loosened. Color returned to my vision.

The world stopped spinning. I looked up…

B04 was already mid-strike. But this time, I caught his arm. And broke it.

The sound of metal and bone shattering echoed across the chamber.

You should’ve stayed asleep, I hissed, slamming him against the wall.

He coughed up blood.

“You’re too late. She has everything she needs. Even if I die, the others will wake.”

What others?

He grinned. Cracked. And bleeding. “She didn’t just make one of us.”

My blood ran cold. They were more. Not just failed experiments. Active ones. Enhanced. Hidden. Clones?

No worse.

Damian’s voice broke through the comm. “Claire’s code cut, but she’s escaping. She’s headed for the helipad.”

I’m on her, I growled, leaving B04 gasping behind me.

I sprinted through the corridors, with fire streaking through my veins, rage was coiled like a serpent in my chest.

Outside, snow lashed the helipad as Dr. Aveline climbed aboard her waiting helicopter.

A briefcase strapped to her wrist.

Inside it. Genetic samples. Command codes. Keys to every lab. Every soldier, every ghost of the Phoenix project.

I emerged from the tower, hair wild, my eyes were gold and furious.

No more running, I said.

She stared at me. “You’re glorious,” she whispered.

My jaw clenched. Say that again.

She stepped toward me slowly, arms open like a twisted mother offering a hug.

“You’re exactly what I designed you to be. Strong. Feared. Worshipped.”

I didn’t move.

“You’re the weapon. The Queen. But even queens bow to architects.”

I tilted my head, then smiled.

Wrong Queen. And I threw the blade straight to Aveline’s wrist.

The briefcase clattered to the snow.

The helicopter spun wildly as the pilot ducked for cover.

I closed the space between us in seconds, grabbed Aveline by the collar, and yanked her down to the icy helipad.

You made me, I said coldly. But I remade myself.

Then, I leaned in whispering something in her ears, and punched her, hard enough to knock her out cold.

Later, as the tower burned behind us, Damian found me standing over the ruins.

“Is it over?” He asked.

I didn’t answer at first. I stared at the case, now sealed inside a containment unit.

No, I said. It has just begun.

“She’s alive,” Damian said carefully. “Barely.”

I nodded. She’s going to talk. And when she does, we’ll know where the others are.

“Are you ready for that?”

I turned to him, and my voice went quiet.

I don’t think I’ll ever be ready. But I won’t let someone else live in chains because of what they did to me.”

He took my hands, “What happens now?”

I met his gaze.

We build an army. Not to rule. Not to destroy. To protect what they could never understand.

Damian smirked, “You sound like a leader.”

I looked back at the tower. I’m the warning.