Chapter 20

Chapter 20
The black site was carved into the side of a mountain. Hidden beneath layers of jurisdiction, smuggled funding, and silence.

But I had the keys now.

And I had a name.

Tier Zero.

The file Lisel gave us detailed the last remaining hub of the Phoenix program. Not a lab. Not a base. A facility. Deep. Cold. Subterranean.

Somewhere they kept the forgotten.

The broken.

The ones who’d survived the first waves of experimentation.

Marina hadn’t been the only child they’d touched. Only the one who got away.

Now I knew where they were.

And I wasn’t coming to bargain.

I was coming to end it.

The plan came together in silence.

We worked from a safe house across the border, somewhere in the mountains of northern Italy. A villa once used by arms dealers, now gutted and wired with our gear. Mateo ran recon from a drone system stitched together with duct tape and miracles. Ryan handled ground logistics—routes, timing, fallback zones.

I stayed with Marina.

She knew something was coming.

Kids always do.

“Will you have to go alone?” she asked me one night, while I braided her hair by firelight.

“No,” I said softly. “But I will have to go first.”

She nodded. Thought for a long moment.

“Will you come back?”

“I always come back.”

“That’s what he used to say,” she whispered.

My fingers froze.

“Who?”

She glanced up at me, eyes wide and old in that strange way children sometimes are.

“The man who took me away before you found me again. The one with the metal hand.”

I didn’t breathe.

Marina had never mentioned him before. Not in any of the interviews. Not in her dreams.

Not until now.

My voice was barely audible.

“Do you remember his name?”

She hesitated. Then shook her head. “But he called me ‘Version Two.’ Like I was a story he was rewriting.”

My stomach turned to ice.

Not Lisel.

Not the scientists.

Someone else.

Still out there.

Still rewriting.

We infiltrated Tier Zero on a moonless night.

The mountain air bit like glass. The access road was hidden under brush and long-abandoned checkpoints. The entire structure ran underground—six levels deep, only one known entrance. But Lisel’s keys still worked.

We got in.

The lights were dim. Emergency backups running on reserve power. Either they knew we were coming…

Or they’d already abandoned the place.

We swept the upper levels—offices, labs, records rooms. All empty.

Then we heard it.

Footsteps.

Not many.

Just one.

Slow. Deliberate.

Mateo raised his weapon.

“Hostile?”

“Unknown,” Ryan muttered.

The figure stepped into the light.

A child.

No older than Marina.

But there was something off. Too still. Too controlled.

She looked up at me, and her eyes flicked like scanners.

“You’re Subject 001,” she said.

My throat went dry.

“How do you know that?”

“Because they made us all watch you.”

I knelt slowly. “What’s your name?”

“They don’t give us names here. Just designations. I’m 014.”

“Where are the others?”

She tilted her head. “They’re asleep. Until he wakes them.”

“Who?”

“Version One.”

Ryan stiffened. “What does that mean?”

“They said he was your shadow,” she said softly, like a nursery rhyme. “They said he broke the code before anyone else. And now he’s coming back to finish what he started.”

A chill slid down my spine.

“I thought I was the first.”

014 blinked. “You were the first success. But not the first experiment.”

The lights overhead flickered.

An alarm began to pulse—low and slow. Not a warning.

A wake-up call.

Ryan looked at me. “This isn’t just a lab.”

“No,” I said. “It’s a hive.”

And something inside it was waking.

We moved fast.

Ryan secured the children—nine in total, all silent, all compliant. Programmed for obedience. It shattered something inside me to see their stillness.

Mateo rigged the lower level with charges.

If we couldn’t save them all, we’d make sure no one else could hurt them.

But before we could exfil, the lights died completely.

Then the emergency doors locked.

And we heard him.

A voice from the speakers. Calm. Precise. Familiar in the worst way.

“I knew you’d come back, Estela.”

It wasn’t Lisel.

Wasn’t Diego.

It was deeper than that.

A voice I didn’t recognize—but my body did.

Something ancient in my bones recoiled.

“You’re not supposed to exist,” I said.

“I existed before they even knew what to call us,” he replied. “You’re just the upgrade.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m the reason you were made.”

A screen crackled on.

And I saw his face.

He looked like me.

Older. Sharper. With a mechanical brace along the right side of his skull, like something rebuilt after fire.

“You’re not my brother,” I whispered.

“No,” he said. “I’m your blueprint.”

And then every door in the complex opened at once.

The real war had begun.