PART 2: Mrs. Ellen’s hand flew to her throat, her eyes widening as she stared at the screen

The needle plunged, but not into me. It sank into Marcus’s own thigh as we tumbled off the gurney onto the cold tile floor.

He gasped, his eyes going wide. He tried to pull the syringe out, but the amber liquid was already disappearing into his muscle.

“No,” he whispered. “No, no…”

“What is it, Marcus?” I asked, crawling away from him, my breath coming in ragged gasps. “The ‘Final Phase’? What does it do?”

He didn’t answer. His tongue seemed to thicken in his mouth. He looked at his mother, his hand reaching out like a child’s.

Mrs. Ellen didn’t move toward him. She moved toward the red folder.

“Useless,” she muttered, looking at her son with a chilling detachment. “Just like your father. All that brilliance, and you let a drugged girl outsmart you.”

She grabbed the folder and turned toward the hidden door.

“You’re not leaving,” I said, standing up on shaky legs. I grabbed the heavy black notebook—the record of my torture—and threw it at the monitor. It didn’t break the screen, but it hit the ‘unmute’ button I had seen Marcus press.

My mother’s voice filled the room again, but this time, it wasn’t a plea.

“The police are in the driveway, Ellen,” my mother said, her face hardening on the screen. “I didn’t just find the feed. I gave them the coordinates of the hidden room. They’re five minutes away.”

Mrs. Ellen froze. She looked at the hidden door, then at me, then at her son, who was now twitching on the floor, his eyes rolling back into his head.

“You think you’ve won?” Ellen sneered, reaching into her coat pocket. She didn’t pull out a gun. She pulled out a small remote. “This house is registered as a medical research facility. It has a ‘biohazard’ protocol. If I press this, the ventilation seals and the oxygen is scrubbed. We all go to sleep, Lucia. Forever.”

“You’d kill your own son?” I asked, horrified.

She looked down at Marcus. “He’s already gone. That dose… he designed it to be irreversible. Total cognitive wipe. He’s the vegetable now.”

The cruelty in her voice was the final piece of the puzzle. These people hadn’t just stolen my past; they had replaced it with a nightmare.

“Press it then,” I said, taking a step toward her. “I’ve been dead for two years, Ellen. I’ve been living in a fog, waking up in a body I didn’t recognize, married to a ghost. You think I’m afraid of the dark?”

I kept walking.

“I’ll do it!” she screamed, her thumb hovering over the red button.

“Do it. But look at the screen first.”

She glanced at the monitor. My mother wasn’t alone anymore. Behind her stood a team of men in tactical gear. And next to her was a man I hadn’t seen in the photos. He was older, gray-haired, but he had my eyes.

“Hello, Ellen,” the man said.