Lena stood by the hillside, watching the last of the flames die out.
Smoke curled into the morning sky, black against gold. Her heart pounded, not from fear, but from release.
The facility was gone.
But what it carried inside her wasn't.
Jay walked over, face smudged with soot, eyes hollow. "We did it."
She nodded slowly. "Then why doesn't it feel like enough?"
Jay sat beside her. "Because there's one answer we still don't have."
She didn't ask.
She knew.
"Why you?"
Back in town, the news was everywhere.
"Abandoned Research Facility Destroyed in Mysterious Explosion."
"Unregistered Biotech Lab Tied to Missing Person Cases."
But no names.
No faces.
And certainly not Jay or Lena's.
The fire had erased more than data it had bought them silence. At least for now.
But silence had its own sound.
That night, Lena couldn't sleep. She scrolled through the files she saved before the fire the ones she had copied secretly, while Jay was breaking the console.
Most were corrupted. A few were blank.
But one opened.
A video.
She tapped play.
A room. Cold. Bright. Jay strapped to a chair, weak, bloody.
Across from him, Dr. Rhinehart.
He was speaking quietly.
"We need to isolate her reaction. If she believes you're dead, the emotional spike will be strongest."
Jay was silent.
Rhinehart continued, "She's the anomaly. All other subjects broke. She held on. She's our breakthrough."
Lena's heart pounded.
Jay had known.
He knew she was being watched, tracked, played and he still came back.
Still protected her.
Even when he was the bait.
She slammed the laptop shut and ran to him.
He was asleep on the couch, arm hanging off the side, the same way he always used to nap when they were younger.
She knelt beside him.
"Jay," she whispered. "Why didn't you tell me?"
His eyes opened slowly. "Because I didn't want you to love me because of guilt."
Tears welled in hers. "I love you because you survived. Because you chose to come back even when they told you not to."
He reached out, touching her cheek. "They wanted to control love. But love is chaos. You can't write it. You can't code it."
She nodded, leaning into his palm. "Then let's be chaos."
The next morning, a new letter arrived.
No postmark.
Just her name, again.
But this time it wasn't Jay's handwriting.
Inside, a single sentence:
"Project Mirrorman has many faces. And one just arrived in your city."
Lena looked at Jay.
He read it. Looked back at her. "They're not done."
She folded the note calmly. "Then neither are we."