They ran.
Through the trees. Through the snow. Into the heart of the mountain road where the lab once stood—buried beneath a controlled collapse ordered by Aria's father a decade ago.
Only it wasn't gone.
Amara led them to a steel hatch hidden beneath an overturned truck.
"They rebuilt it underground," she said. "They never stopped testing."
The lab stretched beneath the earth like a secret city. Cold, sterile, humming with power. Most of it had been abandoned—but not all.
They found the chamber by accident.
A small room. A broken camera. A metal table with shackles rusted from old blood.
Aria stared.
"This is where she died," Amara whispered. "Your mother. She tried to burn it all. She almost did. But they caught her first."
Aria walked forward slowly, hands shaking.
She touched the table.
Flashes hit her—memories too broken to be real.
Screams. Smoke. A voice calling her name.
Then something else: a recording. Glitching. But clear enough to hear one name repeated again and again.
Aria.
She turned to Xander, pale.
"She knew," Aria said. "She knew I'd come back. She left this for me."
Xander reached for her hand.
She didn't pull away.
"Then let's finish what she started."