The night stretched out...like something holding its breath.
They moved under cover of silence; the kind that buzzes in your bones when you know something irreversible is coming.
Kiran stayed behind in the van, fingers flying across her keyboard, eyes glued to flickering data streams. "You've got a two-minute blackout window before the external sensors reboot," she said through comms. "Don't waste it."
Zayaan gave a quick nod. Then to Arwa: "Ready?"
She pulled her hood lower, adjusted the black-glass contact lens that masked her iris signature, and nodded.
No hesitation.
They crossed the field behind the facility without a word, their boots whispering against dry grass... Ahead, the entrance to the service duct yawned open like a forgotten scar — rusted, half-covered with vines, and easily overlooked.
But Arwa remembered it.
She didn't know how she knew — just that her feet moved with a kind of certainty that didn't come from now. It came from before.
Before the silence.
Before they made her forget.
She slid inside first. The metal corridor swallowed her, and the hum of the outside world faded. Zayaan followed close behind... sealing the hatch behind them.
The duct was tight...suffocating... and dipped downward in a slow spiral. The farther they crawled, the colder the air became.
"You okay?" Zayaan whispered behind her.
Arwa kept moving. "Not even close."
But there was a small...unshakable steadiness in her voice.
At the end of the tunnel, a pressure lock pulsed with faint green light. Arwa placed her palm on the scanner. It hesitated — just a blink — then turned white.
Access granted.
Zayaan exhaled slowly. "Guess your ID still works."
"Guess I was meant to come back."
They slipped through into the inner hallway — pristine, clinical, lit with flickering overheads. Every sound felt louder here. The beep of a door lock. The distant hiss of vents. The hum of electricity like a heartbeat, they weren't supposed to hear.
Arwa's fingers brushed the wall as they walked, Something in the cold metal called to her.
Not a memory.
A muscle memory.
They reached the first checkpoint — a closed retinal scanner next to a set of sealed steel doors.
Zayaan stepped forward, readying the bypass.
Arwa stopped him.
"I can do it."
He paused. Let her.
She leaned into the scanner. It blinked red once, then turned green. The doors clicked open like they'd been waiting.
Neither of them spoke.
The next hallway was worse. Brighter. Too clean. Cameras dotted the corners — blind now, thanks to Kiran's blackout — but they still felt like eyes.
At the end: a second set of doors. Behind them, the archive vault.
Zayaan typed something quickly into the console, pulled the burner chip from his jacket.
Arwa stepped back. Watched him.
And then—
Her breath caught.
There was a voice. Not out loud. Not over comms. But inside her.
"You used to run this part of the floor."
"You used to order the scans."
"They trusted you."
She closed her eyes.
A flash — of herself, in a white coat, standing in this very hallway. Not hiding. Not running. Commanding.
Zayaan noticed her sway. "Arwa—?"
"I remember."
He blinked. "What?"
"I used to work here. Not just as a subject. As a scientist. They kept me because I knew too much."
The door clicked open.
Behind it: a room full of terminals. Servers blinking with life. Files. Records.
And the truth they came for.
Zayaan looked at her. "You still sure you're ready for this?"
Arwa stepped forward, eyes fierce. "More than I've ever been."