Chapter 73 The Names Of The Dead

Chapter 73 The Names Of The Dead
The water is too hot, but I don’t turn it down.
I let it burn my skin because it’s something I can control.
Steam fills the bathroom, fogging the mirror until my reflection disappears entirely. I’m grateful for that. I don’t want to see her, the girl who looks like me but feels like a stranger wearing my face. I scrub until my arms ache, until the scent of soap overwhelms the sterile smell of this place, until my thoughts blur into nothing but heat and motion.
When I finally step out, my hands are trembling.
I dress slowly. Black trousers. A soft gray shirt. Nothing that draws attention, though I know it won’t matter. Attention follows me now whether I want it or not. I tie my hair back, not bothering to make it neat. I don’t need to look composed. I just need to move.
The guards are waiting outside my door.
Two of them today. Different faces from yesterday, but the same careful distance, the same rigid posture. Darius’s doing. I don’t comment on it.
“Good morning,Luna ” one of them says, too politely.
I nod once and start down the stairs.
My body feels heavy, like gravity has doubled overnight. Each step reminds me that I’m real, that I’m here, that the ground still holds me even when everything else feels uncertain. The mansion is quiet, too quiet. Darius isn’t here. I feel the absence like a missing limb, even though I don’t want to.
Halfway down, I slow.
“Do you know where Darius is?” I ask without turning around.
The guards exchange a glance. “He left early,” one answers. “Meeting at headquarters.”
Of course.
I pause at the bottom step. The decision forms fully in my mind before I can talk myself out of it.
“I need one of you to drive me there.”
There it is. The line I’ve been dancing around since I woke up.
“That wasn’t…” the guard begins.
“I know what he instructed,” I cut in, my voice sharper than I intend. I inhale and steady myself. “I’m not asking to escape. I’m asking to go to a place he already trusts.”
They hesitate. I can see the calculation happening behind their eyes. risk versus protocol, obedience versus consequence.
Finally, one nods. “We’ll inform him.”
“Good,” I say. “He can be mad later.”
The drive is quiet.
The city blurs past the window, steel and glass and shadows stitched together into something that feels both familiar and foreign. I’ve been here before. Hundreds of times. But today, everything feels different,like I’ve stepped into a version of my life that was always running parallel to mine, waiting for me to notice it.
Headquarters looms ahead, massive and imposing. A monument to control. To order. To secrets.
As soon as I step inside, the looks start.
They try to hide it,quick glances, stiffened shoulders, murmurs that cut off the moment I pass,but I feel them all the same. I am the thing whispered about in corridors now. The girl from the trial. The hybrid.
I keep walking.
I walk towards a gaurd and ask him to take me to the records department. He agrees with unease in his eyes.
I follow him closely. I don’t slow when someone bumps into me and mutters an apology that sounds more like fear. I follow the guard through the maze of hallways until I reach the records department.
The air changes the moment I step inside.
It smells like paper and dust and time. Shelves stretch from floor to ceiling, packed with files that have outlived the people written inside them. This is where truths go to sleep. Where lies are filed neatly and labeled official.
An old man sits behind the main desk, hunched over a terminal. His hair is thin and white, his glasses sliding down his nose as he peers at the screen. He looks up when he hears my footsteps.
His eyes widen ,just slightly,but then something surprising happens.
He smiles.
“Can I help you, dear?” he asks.
The word dear almost breaks me.
“I’m looking for records,” I say carefully. “Operation Chimera. That’s hat the experiments that my father was doing is called.”
He nods as if this is the most ordinary request in the world. “We have plenty of those.”
“I need names,” I continue. “Victims of the early experiments.”
His smile fades, replaced by something heavier. Recognition, maybe. Or resignation.
The old man’s fingers still over the keyboard when his shoulders stiffen.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, not meeting my eyes. “I can’t show you these documents without proper authorization.”
The words land like a door slamming shut.
I turn to leave just as Fred appears at the entrance.
He looks like he ran the entire way.
His hair is disheveled, his jacket half-buttoned, chest rising and falling too quickly. His eyes find mine instantly, relief flashing across his face before he can hide it.
“Lyra,” he says, breathless. “I came as soon as I heard you were in the building.”
I don’t know what to feel.
Not anger. Not comfort. Something tangled and unfinished.
“Who told you?” I ask.
“Half the floor,” he admits, trying,and failing,to slow his breathing. “You don’t exactly blend in anymore.”
I glance back at the screen, at the names scrolling past. “I didn’t come to make a scene.”
“I know,” he says softly. “That’s why I was worried.”
I turn to face him fully now. Up close, I can see the strain in his eyes. The guilt. The fear. The way he’s bracing himself for rejection.
I open my mouth,ready to plead to the old man, but Fred steps forward before I can say anything. The movement is quick, decisive. He reaches into his jacket and pulls out his badge, holding it up between them like a shield.
“It’s okay,” Fred says. “I’ll take responsibility.”
The old man studies the badge for a long moment. I can see the war playing out behind his eyes, years of obedience against the weight of one girl standing in front of him, asking for the names of the dead.
Finally, he nods.
“Make your copies,” he says. “I didn’t see her.”
Fred doesn’t look at me as he moves to the terminal. He logs in, his fingers flying with practiced ease. The printer hums to life, too loud in the silence that follows.
We stand there while it works.
We don’t talk.
I search his face, looking for the manI thought I knew. The one who laughed easily. The one who said he loved me. The one who lied.
The air between us is thick, buzzing with everything unsaid. I have questions piled so high in my chest they feel like they might choke me. I want to scream at him. I want to ask him why. I want to ask him how long he knew. I want to tell him I hate him. I want to tell him I miss him.
Instead, I say nothing.
Fred doesn’t look at me once. His jaw is tight, eyes fixed straight ahead as page after page slides out of the printer. The tension is almost unbearable,like a wire stretched too thin, waiting to snap.
When he finishes, he gathers the papers neatly, clips them together, and hands them to me.
“There,” he says. “That’s everything that’s still on file.”
I take them.
The weight of the pages feels disproportionate to what they contain. So many lives reduced to ink and margins and official stamps.
I don’t thank him.
I turn and walk away.
“Lyra,” Fred calls after me.
I stop, but I don’t turn around.
“I’m not ready for that conversation yet,” I say, my voice steady despite the storm inside me.
There’s a pause. Then, quietly, “I understand.”
I step out of the records department and straight into something solid.
A wall.
No,arms.
Warm hands grip my shoulders, steadying me before I can stumble back. I inhale sharply, already bracing myself, and then I look up.
Darius.
His eyes search my face like he’s been doing that all along, like he’s been waiting to find me.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
Before I can answer, his gaze shifts over my shoulder.
Fred stands a few feet behind me, frozen in place.
Something dark flickers across Darius’s face. His jaw tightens, his body going rigid in a way I recognize too well. Jealousy. Anger. Possession.
I don’t have time for any of it.
I pull out of his hold, hard enough that his hands fall away, and I walk past him without a word. Past Fred. Past the stares that have already started to gather like a sharks sensing blood in the water.
I don’t look back.
I don’t stop until I reach the car.
I slide into the backseat, clutching the files to my chest as the door shuts and the engine starts. Through the tinted window, I see Darius standing there, watching. He doesn’t try to stop me. He doesn’t follow.
The car pulls away.
Only then do I let myself breathe.
That night, I spread the papers out on my bed.
I don’t read them like records.
I read them like eulogies.
Names. Ages. Notes scribbled in margins by hands that never trembled while writing them. Some were younger than I was when my memories begin. Some were old enough to have lived full lives before someone decided they were expendable.
Men. Women. Children.
Not data.
Wolves.
I imagine them as they might have been, laughing, arguing, dreaming. I imagine the lives they could have had if someone hadn’t decided they were materials for an experiment .
I think of my sister i don't even know her name but from the file she was known as Subject L-20. I know she belongs among them.
That night, I light the first candle at the fountain in the garden.
I don’t know why I do it. No ritual was taught to me. No tradition handed down. It’s just instinct,something old and quiet inside me reaching for a way to mourn.
The flame flickers as I whisper her name.
Then another.
And another.
Soon my the garden is glowing softly, shadows dancing along the walls as the candles burn. I sit on the concreteground, knees drawn to my chest, surrounded by light meant for the dead.
Each candle is a promise. A refusal to let them vanish into files and footnotes. A way of saying: you mattered. You still matter.
And then, I sense him before I see him.
I don’t turn around when Darius stands next to me. I don’t acknowledge him when he kneels beside me, careful not to touch, careful not to intrude.
He stays silent.
Together, we watch the flames.
I don’t ask him why he’s there.
He doesn’t ask me to stop.
For once, neither of us tries to fix anything.
We just sit with the truth, letting it burn quietly between us.