187

187

Eira’s pov

“How long have you been having these dreams?” the therapist asked, her pen barely brushing the paper.

I couldn’t speak at first. My hands were clenched so tightly in my lap, my knuckles had gone white. Words were caught in my throat, thick and heavy, like they had nowhere to go.

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “Weeks. Maybe longer.”

Dr. Kessler leaned forward, patient and still. “Can you tell me about them?”

I blinked, and they surged forward like a dam had cracked. Uniforms. Metal corridors. Gunshots. A voice in my earpiece calling, Agent Eira, target acquired.

“I see missions,” I murmured. “Places I shouldn’t remember. I speak languages I never studied. I know how to dismantle a Glock 19 in ten seconds flat.”

“And how does that make you feel?” she asked.

“Like I don’t know who the hell I am,” I said. Then I laughed,short, sharp, almost bitter. “And isn’t that ironic? Everyone else has been telling me who I am for so long. A daughter. A traitor. A victim. A mistake. But none of them knew I was…”

“A weapon?”

I met her eyes. She didn’t flinch. She’d read the file. She knew what I’d done,what I’d been trained to do.

“Yes,” I said. “I was a weapon. A project. Not a girl. Not a sister. Not even human most days.”

Silence stretched. I wanted her to say something, anything. Instead, she just nodded, letting me dig deeper.

“There was a name I hadn’t heard in years,” I murmured. “In the dream. Someone called me Agent Eira.”

Her pen paused. “And what did you do in the dream?”

“I killed someone.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know,” I lied.

But I did. His name had come to me like a gunshot in the dark,Commander Holt. The man who trained me. The man who tried to unmake me.

My voice dropped to a whisper. “I wasn’t supposed to remember.”

“Who told you that?”

I stared out the window. “My sister.”

The room seemed to shrink around me, the air pressing down like gravity had doubled.

She hadn’t just lied to me. She had wiped me. Every memory of my training, my past, my missions… gone. She wanted me to be docile. Weak. Her pet sister she could shape into whatever narrative suited her rise to power.

But something had cracked. Something deep. And now, piece by piece, I was clawing my way back.

That same night, I couldn’t sleep. I left the safehouse before dawn. The streets were silent, the moon still hanging like a judge in the sky. I knew where I needed to go, even before I’d fully accepted it.

Home.

Or what used to be.

Snow’s house. The one we shared before she became someone else. Before I became no one.

The gate hadn’t been touched in months. I picked the lock in less than a minute. Muscle memory. My fingers knew what my mind hadn’t.

Inside, the house smelled like dust and dried perfume. Familiar and foreign. I moved like a ghost through the halls, every floorboard remembering me too late.

Then I found it.

Her old room.

It looked innocent. Polished. Almost staged. But the bookshelf? That had always been her favorite place to hide things.

I ran my fingers along the spines until I reached the one that felt wrong,Pride and Prejudice. Snow hated romance novels. I pulled it out.

Hollowed.

Inside, a thin black ledger rested, bound in cracked leather.

I opened it. And the world stopped turning.

Names. Routes. Codewords. Drop zones. Missions. My missions. Cross-referenced with her own projects.

She hadn’t just erased me. She used me. Turned me into a tool, wiped me clean, and kept my past hidden in a book like it was just another trophy on her shelf.

My hands shook. Pages blurred.

Then I saw it. A final page. A list titled: Assets to be Decommissioned.

My name was circled. Twice.

There was a red stamp across it—COMPLETED.

My mouth went dry. She thought I was dead.

“No,” I whispered. “You wanted me dead.”

I sat on the floor, the ledger open in my lap, and let the memories come. Not just flashes this time,everything.

The cold steel table. The injections. The first mission. The night I cried after my first kill, and she told me, Tears are for the people we lie to, not the people we eliminate.

Snow never loved me.

She owned me.

Until I broke. Until something in me fought back.

I closed the ledger, heart pounding like a war drum. I didn’t need anyone to explain who I was anymore.

I wasn’t a lawyer’s daughter. I wasn’t a mistake.

I was Agent Eira.

And the girl who died in Snow’s experiments? She was back.

No more therapists. No more lies. No more waiting.

I was going to burn every secret Snow ever wrote down. And when I was done, I’d take back the life she stole from me.

Not as a twin.

Not as a ghost.

But as the weapon she never meant to lose.