The tires screeched as Verena veered the car onto a narrow dirt road.
Tree branches slapped the windows. The engine roared.
Clara groaned in the back seat, pressing a hand to a graze on her arm. Blood trickled between her fingers.
Kenneth kept looking over his shoulder. "They're not following. Not yet."
Margaret sat frozen in the passenger seat, her heart pounding out of rhythm.
> Dad.
The word felt like poison in her mouth. It echoed, unwanted, in every corner of her mind.
She hadn't seen him in years—presumed dead. Buried in lies. Now, he was standing at the heart of everything they were trying to destroy.
A puppet master. A traitor. Her blood.
"Talk to me," Verena said, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. "What the hell did he mean—'you shouldn't have come back'?"
Margaret couldn't answer.
Not yet.
Not until she saw the last file on the flash drive.
---
An hour later, in a safehouse buried in the outskirts of Havenbrook, they secured the doors and pulled the blackout curtains tight.
Kenneth dropped onto the couch, exhausted.
Clara stripped off her jacket and tended to her wound.
Margaret plugged the flash drive into the safehouse's offline laptop.
There were only two folders left—most marked as corrupt or encrypted beyond reach.
But one folder blinked, open and accessible.
"Case File 0 – Rebirth Protocol"
Margaret clicked it.
---
The screen filled with clinical notes. Audio logs. Photographs.
She opened the first audio file.
> "Subject Alpha-0 initiated: Margaret Harrow. Age: 3."
Her blood ran cold.
> "Early-stage neural conditioning progressing. Memory suppression successful. Emotional attachments minimal. Conditioning set to trigger upon contact with male Subject-001: Franklin Rhodes."
She clutched the edge of the desk, bile rising in her throat.
> They paired me with Frank. Deliberately.
> My marriage. My life. All of it… programmed?
Kenneth moved behind her, reading over her shoulder.
He didn't say a word. But the horror in his silence said enough.
Another file auto-played—a hidden log.
> "Harrow's daughter shows resilience to trauma. Unlike other subjects, she retains a strong core identity even after multiple resets. We believe she may be the key to permanent integration."
Clara spoke from across the room. "Integration of what?"
The answer came in the next photo.
A scan of Margaret's brain.
Overlaid with another scan—Frank's.
Two neural maps.
Merged.
> They weren't just studying DID. They were trying to... link people's minds together?
> Was I… part of an experiment to fuse personalities? Or host someone else's mind entirely?
She looked up, trembling. "My father did this to me."
Verena leaned against the wall, her expression tight. "We always knew Ridgewood's files were dark. But this is deeper than psychology. This is warfare."
Kenneth whispered, "They've been trying to build something. A vessel. And you… you're the prototype."
Margaret blinked back tears.
"They used my life as a testing ground."
---
She scrolled further.
Another file: VIDEO: "Initiation Day"
She hesitated.
Then clicked play.
---
The video showed a dimly lit room.
A child sat in the center.
Her. Margaret. No more than five years old.
Surrounded by machines. Observers in lab coats. A man stepped forward.
Dr. Julian Harrow.
He knelt beside the child and whispered, "You're going to forget all of this, pumpkin. But one day… you'll change the world."
The screen flickered.
The girl was screaming.
Then the screen went black.
---
Margaret slammed the laptop shut.
Tears streamed down her face.
Verena stepped forward. "We don't have time to break down. Harrow saw you tonight. He knows you've remembered. He won't just chase us. He'll try to finish what he started."
Clara stood, eyes hard. "Then we end it first. We hit Ridgewood again. We release everything. The files. The evidence. To the world."
Ken
neth looked to Margaret. "You okay?"
She shook her head.
But she stood anyway.
Eyes clear.
Jaw clenched.
Voice steady.
"No," she said. "But I'm ready."
The safehouse felt too small for the war brewing inside Margaret.
She paced back and forth, fists clenched, heart thundering.
Her entire life had been a lie.
A manufactured love story.
A controlled environment.
And now her own father—the man who used to braid her hair and tuck her in at night—was the architect of her nightmare.
Kenneth stood beside the laptop, rereading the last few files. "There's more here—plans for replication. They weren't just experimenting on you and Frank. They were building a whole system to replace memory and identity on command."
Clara added, "Military-grade psychological weapons. If this ever goes public…"
Verena cut in, her tone sharp. "It has to."
Margaret stopped pacing. "No."
All eyes turned to her.
She breathed hard, steadying her voice. "Not yet. Not just upload-and-run. I want to see my father fall. Not just exposed—broken. I want him to feel the destruction of everything he's built."
Verena raised an eyebrow. "Then we need more than data. We need a witness. Someone on the inside who'll testify. Or someone we can extract."
Clara frowned. "That's a suicide mission."
Margaret's lips curled into something colder than a smile. "Not if we know exactly where to strike."
---
Later that night, under candlelight and caffeine, they pieced it all together.
The files on the flash drive revealed more than test subjects.
They listed backup sites.
Satellite facilities Ridgewood had been using to offload their more 'volatile' experiments—people too unstable to keep at the main lab.
One name repeated again and again: Facility Delta-9.
Buried beneath a decommissioned psychiatric hospital. Off-grid. Untraceable.
But there was one other name that stopped Margaret's breath.
> Subject Echo-4: Eleanor Harrow.
She stared at it.
Her mother's name.
Marked as "Presumed Deceased – Stage IV Host Instability."
Kenneth leaned forward. "That's not confirmation she died. That's… scientific detachment. That's them hiding something."
Margaret's voice was a whisper. "They said she died when I was a child."
Clara sat up straighter. "If she's alive—"
Verena cut in, calm but sharp, "Then they've been keeping her hidden… or using her for something far worse."
Silence spread like poison.
Margaret gripped the edge of the table.
She felt sick.
> They stole her father.
They weaponized her husband.
And now… her mother was part of this?
"I want in," she said. "We find Facility Delta-9. We break in. And we burn it to the ground."
Kenneth stood. "Then we start prepping. Weapons. Route. Intel. We don't get a second chance."
Clara glanced at the window, where dawn was beginning to smear across the horizon.
"We move before nightfall."
---
Six hours later.
Margaret zipped up a tactical jacket—Clara's old one, from her days undercover in Ridgewood's outer circles.
She stared at herself in the mirror above the sink.
No makeup.
No warmth.
Just hard eyes. The same eyes she saw on her father's face.
She barely recognized herself.
And maybe that was the point.
This wasn't about healing anymore.
It was about war.
Behind her, Kenneth stepped in. His voice was quiet. "You don't have to come."
She didn't turn.
"I do."
He stepped closer, his voice softer. "Not because of revenge. Not to prove anything. Only if it's what you want."
She finally looked at him.
"I want the truth," she said. "I want to know why I was made. Why I was erased. Why Frank… why my mother… why me."
Kenneth nodded. "Then let's finish this."
---
At sundown, the car rolled to a stop on the edge of a rusted fence line.
They were in the woods again—deep, rural, forgotten.
Facility Delta-9 didn't exist on any GPS. No roads. No signage. Just a trail of breadcrumbs hidden in Ridgewood's archives and satellite footage.
Verena scanned the tree line. "Half-mile hike in. No cameras we can see."
Clara loaded her weapon. "Doesn't mean they won't see us."
Margaret held up the tablet. "We go in, copy everything they've got. If my mother's alive, we bring her out. If not—"
Her voice cracked. She cleared it.
"Then we blow the whole place sky-high."
They climbed the fence and slipped into the woods.
The silence was
hick, unnatural.
And somewhere beneath their feet, a secret bunker waited—one that held every answer they were about to risk their lives for.
The bunker entrance was hidden beneath a decaying shed in the woods—half-collapsed, overrun with vines, its roof sagging like it was about to give way.
Clara found the keypad buried behind a false wall of wooden slats.
Kenneth plugged in a signal disruptor, a small black device with blinking lights.
"Give me one minute," he said, fingers dancing over the screen. "If Harrow kept their old security systems, I can spoof it."
Margaret stood at the edge of the clearing, breath shallow. The wind moved through the trees like whispers.
Every instinct screamed to run.
But she had no more space for fear.
Only answers.
"Got it," Kenneth said. The keypad blinked green.
A mechanical click echoed through the shed as a trapdoor in the floor unlocked.
Verena opened it.
A ladder led into darkness.
"Ladies first?" she muttered with a smirk.
Margaret went in without a word.
---
The descent was steep.
Cold air rushed up to greet her. Sterile. Recycled. It smelled like chemicals and quiet horror.
At the bottom, a narrow corridor stretched out—metallic, dimly lit, lined with numbered doors. Just like Ridgewood.
But this one felt worse.
More... personal.
"This wasn't just a lab," Clara whispered behind her. "It was a vault. They didn't want these subjects escaping."
They moved silently, weapons drawn, stepping over cables and puddles of water from leaking pipes.
Verena tapped a door marked CELL 04.
No response.
She cracked it open.
Inside was a cot, a camera, a steel toilet.
No windows. Just darkness and the sound of faint breathing.
A woman sat curled in the corner.
Hair matted. Skin pale.
Her eyes flinched at the light.
"Subject Echo-3," Clara murmured, checking the clipboard at the door.
"Still alive."
They closed the door quietly.
Margaret's stomach twisted. "How many others?"
"Too many," Verena said.
---
They passed six more cells.
Some were empty.
Some… weren't.
In CELL 09, they found a man strapped to a gurney, mouth gagged, eyes wild. His wrists bled from old restraints. Margaret stepped closer.
He looked right at her.
Then whispered, despite the gag, "You're the daughter."
She froze.
"What did you say?"
Kenneth looked back at the clipboard. "Subject Echo-1. Declared mentally unstable. High psychic sensitivity. Removed from main rotation."
"Removed," Margaret repeated. "Because he remembered."
Verena pulled her back. "Focus. Your mother's ID was Echo-4. Let's find that room."
---
CELL 10.
Echo-4.
The air changed the moment they approached.
Margaret could feel it. Like something heavy pressed down on her chest.
The door was reinforced. Double locks. Bio-scan pad.
Clara stepped up. "Give me your hand."
Margaret hesitated.
Then placed it on the scanner.
A green light pulsed.
Click.
Click.
The door creaked open.
It was darker than the others.
No cot. No lights.
Just a single chair in the center of the room—and someone sitting in it.
Margaret stepped forward slowly.
"Mom…?"
The figure stirred.
A woman lifted her head.
Hair tangled. Cheeks hollow. Eyes—her eyes—blinking into recognition.
"Margaret?" the woman rasped.
It was her.
It was Eleanor Harrow.
Alive.
---
She moved like a ghost.
Margaret crossed the room in seconds, falling to her knees.
Tears streamed down her face. "Mom… I thought you were dead."
Eleanor touched her face with trembling fingers.
"No, baby. They tried to erase me. But I held on. For you."
Behind them, Clara scanned the room. "Her vitals are weak. We need to get her out now."
But Eleanor shook her head.
"Too late. They know you're here."
Margaret froze.
"What?"
"They always know," Eleanor whispered. "Your father left a trace in you. A tracker. Not GPS. Neural. Tied to your responses. Every time you get close to the truth… it pings them."
Kenneth cursed under his breath.
Verena was already at the hallway. "We need to move."
But the lights overhead went red.
And an automated voice crackled through unseen speakers.
> "Containment breach detected. Security lockdown initiated."
Clara lifted her pistol. "They're coming."
Margaret looked at her mother.
"Can you walk?"
Eleanor nodded faintly. "For you… yes."
---
They ran.
The lights flickered.
Behind them, doors slammed shut automatically.
Clara tossed a grenade behind them, just in case.
Eleanor leaned on Margaret as they reached the ladder shaft.
A metal shutter was already half-dropping over the exit.
"Go!" Kenneth shouted.
Verena climbed first, then Margaret pulled Eleanor up with everything she had left.
Clara and Kenneth followed.
Bullets rang out behind them as black-suited guards swarmed the hallway.
One grazed Clara's leg, but she made it up.
They collapsed into the woods, breathing hard, shaking.
Verena slammed the trapdoor shut and dropped a charge on it.
They ran.
The explosion roared seconds later—blowing the entire shed sky-high.
Flames lit up the trees.
Facility Delta-9 was gone.
But Margaret didn't feel like they'd won.
Not yet.
Because her mother had one more thing to say:
"He's not done. Harrow's planning something worse than Ridgewood. He called it… Phase Zero."
They didn't stop running until dawn broke through the trees.
The safehouse was too far.
They huddled in an abandoned ranger cabin, the wood rotting and the roof leaking—but it was enough for now.
Eleanor collapsed onto a dusty mattress. Her body was weak, but her eyes had sharpened with clarity Margaret hadn't seen in years.
Kenneth closed the door behind them and dropped the backpack filled with files and drive copies.
"Alright," he said, "someone explain what the hell Phase Zero is."
Eleanor sat up slowly, her voice hoarse but calm.
"It's the reset."
Verena looked up from bandaging Clara's leg. "Reset of what?"
Eleanor turned to Margaret.
"Harrow knew this would happen eventually. That you'd find the truth. That Ridgewood would be exposed. So he built Phase Zero—a final protocol to erase it all."
Margaret's stomach twisted. "Erase what? Evidence?"
Eleanor shook her head. "People."
Silence thickened the air.
"They want to wipe entire networks of 'tainted subjects'—anyone who's shown signs of personality split, conditioning resistance, or emotional instability from the trials. Every test subject. Every rogue insider. Anyone like... Frank."
Kenneth's eyes widened. "They're going to kill them all?"
"No," Eleanor whispered. "They're going to repurpose them."
---
Margaret backed away from the bed, shaking her head.
"Repurpose how?"
Eleanor's voice dropped lower.
"Transfer protocols. Harrow's trying to build new hosts—not just erase data, but overwrite it. Create compliant bodies for loyal minds. Empty vessels, Margaret. Like puppets."
Verena muttered, "Mind swapping. That's sci-fi insanity."
"It's science they already tested—on Frank. On me. On her." She pointed at Margaret.
Margaret blinked, her voice hollow. "That's what he meant when he said I was 'Unaware.'"
Eleanor nodded slowly.
"You're Phase Zero's blueprint."
---
The flash drive beeped on Kenneth's laptop.
He clicked open the last folder Eleanor had handed over before they escaped Delta-9.
OPERATION: PHASE ZERO – ACTIVATION LOGS
Clara leaned in. "What's the timeline?"
Kenneth scrolled. "Two days. Forty-eight hours until execution protocol begins."
Margaret's blood ran cold. "How many people are at risk?"
Verena clicked on the attached map. "There's a list of coordinates. Ten locations. Labs, safehouses, even rehabilitation centers."
Clara ran her fingers through her hair. "They've been using clinics to gather test subjects this whole time."
Kenneth turned to Margaret.
"We have less than two days to expose everything. To broadcast the files. Release names. Stop them before they shut the entire network down."
Margaret clenched her jaw.
Her voice was steel.
"Then we don't sleep. We don't wait. We don't run."
She looked to her mother.
"You're staying here. You're too weak."
Eleanor didn't argue. She reached for Margaret's hand instead.
"You were never supposed to survive this. But you did."
Tears shimmered in her eyes.
"Now make sure no one else has to."
---
Midnight.
They broke into three teams.
Clara and Kenneth took the files and went to a radio station on the outskirts of Havenbrook—an abandoned military comms base they'd used before. The plan: broadcast the footage, the logs, and the faces to every underground channel, every leak site, every rebel group that still had a signal.
Verena hacked into Ridgewood's backup servers to stall Phase Zero's countdown.
Margaret, alone, headed to the one place no one wanted to return.
Ridgewood itself.
---
The main lab sat quiet now, gutted after the last escape.
No alarms.
No guards.
Margaret entered through the emergency access tunnel beneath the west wing.
Every step echoed.
Every shadow whispered of trauma.
She followed the path Frank had once dragged her through.
She passed the glass rooms where subjects had screamed.
She passed the wall where her photo had once been pinned—"Subject 20: Unaware."
Now, a new photo hung there.
Her face.
Labeled:
> "Phase Zero: Key Host. Extract upon breach."
A chill crawled up her spine.
> They weren't just watching.
They were waiting.
Margaret didn't stop.
She reached the central server room and jammed in the flash drive. The files loaded. Screens flickered to life. Footage played across the monitors—experiments, torture, child subjects, death logs.
She hit "Upload All."
A timer appeared:
> 3%… 12%… 27%...
Suddenly—a noise.
A footstep.
She turned.
And saw him.
---
Dr. Julian Harrow stood at the door.
Unarmed.
Calm.
Just like before.
"I knew you'd come back," he said softly.
Margaret raised her pistol. "Don't move."
He didn't.
"I'm not here to stop you, Margaret," he said. "You've already won. You've made your point."
She stared at him, heart pounding. "You killed people. You used me."
His voice didn't change.
"I created you."
Margaret's finger twitched on the trigger.
"You destroyed me."
He stepped closer.
Margaret didn't lower the gun.
The upload hit 89%…
91%…
> "I don't need you alive anymore," Harrow said.
Margaret fired.
Twice.
---
He collapsed.
The upload hit 100%.
A high-pitched tone sounded. Lights flickered red.
Security breached.
Data released.
Ridgewood was over.
But Margaret didn't stay.
She ran.
---
Back at the cabin, hours later, she reunited with the team.
Eleanor was sleeping peacefully.
Clara had bruises but was smiling.
Kenneth handed her a cracked
phone.
"You're trending in the underground. The footage went global. Ridgewood's officially burned."
Verena smirked. "You did it."
Margaret looked at them all.
Then at the sunrise beyond the window.
"No," she said softly.
"We all did."