Chapter 58

Whispers in the ashes.

The envelope had no seal. No mark. No name.

Just a single whispered message.

“We see you.”

I stared at the black slip of paper lying on my desk.

I haven’t touched it since Rourke slid it in from under the door, his eyes narrowed like a wolf scenting poison.

“Where did it come from?” I asked without looking at him.

Rourke stood by the threshold, arms crossed.

“Delivered by a street kid. No trace. Paid in gold.”

Damian emerged slightly from the shadows behind me.

He wound had begun to fade, but something deeper lingered In his eyes. A fracture. A restlessness. The beast caged again.

“I don’t like this,” Rourke muttered.

“I do,” I said peeling the flap open.

Inside were two things. A photograph of an underground lab. Steel tables, wires strung veins, old syndicate insignia spray painted red across the wall.

And a name scrawled beneath it in crimson ink.

“Project Eve.”

Damian cursed behind me. “No, that can’t be real.”

I turned slowly, “What is Project Eve?”

Silence. The kind that crushed air.

Damian didn’t speak. Wouldn’t. So, I looked at Rourke.

He rubbed his jaw, “I’ve heard whispers. Years ago. Before Gabriel’s rise. It was an old genetic program. Top-secret even among the syndicate elites.”

My stomach coiled. “What kind of genetic program?”

“Cloning,” Damian finally said. His voice was hoarse.

“Not replication. Enhancement. Creating successors.”

“You’re saying the syndicates tried to create people?”

“No,” Damian replied. “Weapons.”

By nightfall, the three of us stood in front of what remained of the vesper. One of Edenfall’s long-abandoned underground.

It burned down during the last syndicate war, but below its ash lay untouched foundations.

Rourke held a map he’d pulled from syndicate archives.

“Sublevel three,” he said. “Classified as a secure medical unit.”

Damian carried a sidearm. I carried a blade.

The entrance was hidden under a false marble slab in the casino’s back vault. It opened with a hiss.

The air beneath was stale. Cold. And wrong.

We descended in silence.

The staircase opened into a corridor made of old steel and lined with dust-choked light fixtures.

My steps echoed like gunshots.

Then came the door. Rusty. Heavy. But unlocked. I pushed it open.

The lab inside was exactly like the photograph.

Metal beds. IV poles. Rows of cryo tanks. Empty and shattered. Monitors flickered faintly with blue lines that pulsed like heartbeats.

And on the far wall, painted in blood red.

“EVE_001-003.”

There had been three.

Rourke wandered around a rusted cabinet and pulled out an older leather binder. He flipped through, face darkening with each page.

“Look at this.”

He laid it on the table. I stared down.

Black and white images of infant girls each labeled Eve_001, Eve_002, Eve_003. Notes beside each one in code, translating to.

002: unstable loyalty. Terminated.

003: Subject released to filed asset, observation only.

My fingers froze over 003.

The attached profile showed a girl…dark-haired, dark-eyed, curvy even at eighteen.

Her.

Damian’s breath hitched. “You were…project EVE?”

My voice came out hollow. “I wasn’t born. I was built.”

“No, Damian said. “You were chosen. Gabriel must have known. He kept you close because you were his contingency.”

“Or his experiment,” I whispered.

I turned another page and gasped. A photo. A woman with my face. But older. Leaner. Her eyes were feral.

“Who is she?” I asked.

Rourke read the label. EVE 001. Status. Escaped. Condition: aggressive. Beside it, “Terminated order revoked by D. Calix Renaud.”

“Calix,” Damian muttered. “I thought he was dead.”

“Who is he?” I snapped.

“One of the founders. Syndicate geneticist. He designed EVE. He was obsessed with the idea of legacy. Fixing people.”

Rourke stepped back. “Which means if Eve 001 is alive, and Calix too…”

“They’re watching me,” I said.

The next day, I sat alone in the Edenfall chapel.

I haven’t prayed in years. I didn’t believe in saints or gods or absolution.”

But something inside me needed grounding.

I stared at the cracked stained glass window depicting the martyr queen of Edenfall a woman who died to protect her people. Not rule them.

Is that the part I’m on? Or something darker.

Damian entered, footsteps soft, hands behind his back.

“I knew,” he said quietly.

I turned, my voice turned ice. “What did you say?”

“I knew about project EVE. Not you, not exactly. But the program, I helped fund it. I believed in it.”

“You what?”

He came closer but didn’t touch me.

“I thought I could create loyalty. A new generation who wouldn’t betray, I didn’t know they used children. I didnt know they used you.”

Tears pricked my eyes, but I didn’t let them fall.

“So you built me,” I whispered. “Just like Gabriel. Just like the rest.”

“No,” Damian said. “I fell inlove with you. That wasn’t science. That wasn’t programming. That was real.”

Silence.

My voice was a whisper. “Then prove it.”

He held out a file, thick, heavy, and stamped in old syndicate symbol.

“Calix is alive. He is guarding something in the west district. I’ll take you there. But if you want me gone afterwards…I’ll go.”

I stared at the file, then at him. My voice shook.

“Don’t you dare walk away.”

That night, under a false identity and stolen passports, we reached the west district compound. A fortified glass estate tucked between the ruined gardens of Edenfall’s richest dead.

Inside was a man in silver hair and lab coat.

Dr. Calix Renaud.

He smiled when he saw me.

“As beautiful as they promised,” he said. “EVE-003, my final masterpiece.”

Rourke shoved him against the wall.

“Where is 001?” I demanded.

Calix chuckled. “She’s free. Wild. What you should’ve been.”

“I am nothing like her.”

He leaned forward. “Aren’t you? The only difference between you and 001 is choice. You chose mercy. She chose rage. But you both burn the same.”

I grabbed a scalpel from the tray beside me and held it to his throat.

“Tell me where she is now.”

Calix didnt flinch. “She’s coming for you, Claire. Not to kill you. To replace you.”

Three hours later, a called came into Rourke’s burner line.

A syndicate mark was executed downtown. Three clean kills.

Security footage showed me. But I have never left the compound.

My voice cracked as I stared at the screen.

“She’s wearing my face.”