Sometimes, the past doesn't knock.
It breaks the door down.
The last thing I expected to see when I boarded the dusty, near-empty train to Dalhousie was a face that felt like a ghost.
Zarina.
She was in the last compartment, cross-legged on a torn blue seat, hood drawn low over her head, a book in one hand and the other hand absently tracing invisible symbols on her jeans. As if she was writing a language only she understood.
I paused at the door.
She didn't look up.
But she said, clear as a whisper slicing through fog, "I was starting to think you wouldn't come."
"Zarina?" I asked, half-waiting for her to vanish, like my mind was playing a cruel trick.
She closed her book and finally looked at me.
Same eyes.
Same smirk.
But older. Sharper. Like life had sanded her down into something more dangerous.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," she said.
"I did," I replied, sitting opposite her. "You disappeared five years ago."
"I was taken five years ago," she corrected. "You forgot me."
"I didn't—"
"You did." Her voice cut sharper. "And not because you wanted to. Because they made you."
Rohan slid in beside me silently, eyes on Zarina, every muscle in his body alert.
"Who's this?" Zarina asked.
"Rohan," I said. "My... partner."
Zarina's smile didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Oh. Right. The golden boy who flipped on Apex. You're cuter in person."
"Flattery's suspicious," Rohan muttered.
"So is survival," she replied. "Yet here we are."
She handed me a crumpled photograph.
It showed a sterile white room — two chairs, a metal table, a thick door with no handle from the inside.
"I was there," she said. "You were too. Our memories were tested. Deleted. Layered over."
I stared at the picture.
A piece of me itched, deep in my mind. Like a half-healed wound remembering pain.
"Why?" I whispered. "Why us?"
"Because we had strong emotional triggers," she said. "We were... adaptable. They ran simulations. Rewrote reactions. Installed trust, erased fear, rebuilt identity."
"And then dumped us back in the world to see how we'd function," Rohan added quietly.
Zarina nodded. "Some of us broke. Some of us disappeared. You? You became the poster girl for accidental rebellion."
That stung. I hadn't asked for any of this.
I just delivered packages.
She pulled out a flash drive.
"This is everything. Every subject. Every experiment. Including you, Aanya. And Rohan, too."
My hands trembled as I took it.
"What's the catch?" I asked.
"There's a room beneath the Apex archives," Zarina said. "A physical lab they kept off-record. If you want the rest of your memories, your full files, we have to go there."
"Isn't that suicidal?" Rohan asked.
Zarina smirked. "Only if you get caught."
I glanced at Rohan.
He was already shaking his head. "Too risky. We're already being hunted."
"But I need to know," I said. "I need to remember who I was."
Rohan's eyes softened. "You are who you choose to be now. Isn't that enough?"
I touched his face. "I love who I am with you. But I want to meet the girl I was before they rewrote her."
He nodded.
Barely.
But it was enough.
Dalhousie was foggy, sleepy, beautiful.
And tense.
We stayed at an old British-era guesthouse that smelled like damp books and burnt toast.
The receptionist barely looked up when we checked in, but Zarina warned me, "People talk here. Quiet towns have the loudest whispers."
At night, I couldn't sleep. I stared at the ceiling, memories flickering like static.
A birthday party.
Laughter.
A girl holding my hand. A song.
Then — silence. Erased.
Rohan turned over beside me. "You're thinking too loud," he murmured.
"Sorry."
He reached over, laced his fingers with mine. "I'm scared, Aanya."
"Me too."
He pulled me closer. "We're in this together."
And somehow, that made the darkness less crushing.
The next morning, we made our move.
Zarina led us to a back road near the Apex compound. Overgrown. Forgotten.
"We can get in through the tunnel system. Old emergency exits. Most of them are sealed. I found one that isn't."
She wasn't lying.
Behind a rusted gate and a collapsed shed, there was a tunnel. Cold, damp, and whispering like it remembered the screams it once held.
We crept through with flashlights, boots echoing on the concrete.
About fifty feet in, we reached a metal door.
Zarina tapped a code. The lock clicked open.
Inside was the kind of room that haunted war movies.
Wires. Machines. A chair with leather straps.
Rohan cursed under his breath.
And there — in the back — was a filing cabinet.
Old-school. Paper.
Zarina yanked it open.
And pulled out two folders.
The folder had my name on it. Handwritten.
AANYA S. – LEVEL 3 SUBJECT – EMOTIONAL EXPERIMENTATION
I opened it.
Pages. Photos. Notes.
"Subject shows strong loyalty and love triggers."
"Initial memory removal successful — erased early family trauma."
"Romantic response override: target individual R.S. implanted in dream simulations."
"Subject displayed spontaneous affection in Phase 4. Unplanned."
I stopped breathing.
They made me love Rohan before I ever met him?
"Is this real?" I whispered.
Zarina looked at me, serious now. "Yes. But here's the twist. They implanted responses. But they didn't create the chemistry. That part? That was all you."
Tears blurred the page.
I didn't know what hurt more — that my feelings had been manipulated, or that I had fallen in love inside a simulation and still did it again in real life.
I looked at Rohan.
He was holding his own folder, unread.
Suddenly, an alarm blared.
Red lights.
Zarina shouted, "They found us!"
We ran.
Down the tunnels. Up a maintenance ladder.
Gunfire behind us. Not close. But chasing.
We burst out into the woods.
Branches tore at our faces. Fog closed in like a trap.
Rohan tripped. I pulled him up.
Zarina threw a flare.
It exploded behind us — blinding and loud.
And then — silence.
We didn't stop running until we reached the guesthouse and locked the door behind us.
That night, I opened Rohan's file.
He didn't stop me.
Inside: his recruitment. His doubts. His sabotage plans.
And this:
"Subject R.S. shows excessive guilt regarding Subject A.S."
"Continues relationship despite awareness of shared manipulation."
"Possible emotional codependency forming."
I looked at him.
"You knew," I said.
He nodded. "Not everything. But enough."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I didn't want you to think your love wasn't real."
"I still don't know if it is."
"It is," he said. "Because every moment we've shared, even under all this manipulation, has been ours. We chose it. Again and again."
I didn't answer.
Not right away.
Instead, I said, "We need to find the others. If Zarina and I were in the same trial, maybe they're out there too. Lost. Scared. Or worse."
He nodded.
And quietly, he took my hand.
That night, I dreamed of a memory.
Not a dream.
A real one.
Zarina and I, running through the university halls, laughing. A photograph in her hand.
And then — two men grabbing her.
Me screaming.
A needle.
Darkness.
I woke up gasping.
But I remembered.
For the first time, I remembered something they tried to take.
And I knew — I was going to remember it all.
No matter what.