The silence in Sector 8 was unnatural. It wasn't the kind of silence that calms you it was the kind that warns you. Every corner of the abandoned tech facility was wrapped in dust, cracked screens, and memories that didn't want to be remembered. Lyra stepped inside, her boots lightly crunching over scattered wires and broken panels. For a place that once glowed with innovation, it now smelled like betrayal.
Beside her, Kaito checked the radar again. His fingers trembled slightly, not from fear, but from uncertainty. "This place gives me the creeps," he muttered. "It's like the walls are watching."
"They are," Lyra replied calmly, her eyes scanning every inch of the corridor. "This place is one of the Regime's forgotten test labs. It's not dead. Just sleeping."
They walked deeper into the belly of the lab. Each step felt like it echoed into another dimension. The lights flickered once then went out. A buzzing noise grew louder, and for a second, Lyra thought she heard a voice distant, mechanical, yet strangely familiar.
"Do you hear that?" she whispered.
Kaito nodded. "It's not human. But it's trying to be."
Lyra stopped in front of a locked door. The panel was rusted, but her fingers found the manual override port. She didn't ask for help. She didn't need to. Her mind was already unlocking layers of code in her head before the screen even responded.
After a few tense seconds, the door opened with a soft hiss.
Inside was a dark chamber, but this one was different. It had power. And in the centre stood a strange metal chair, hooked with wires, connected to a still-active core. A cryo-pod glowed in the corner, cracked but not shattered. Lyra's heart skipped. This wasn't just any room it was a memory vault.
Kaito walked around cautiously. "What is this place?"
"A graveyard," Lyra said, "for minds that were too smart to follow orders."
She stepped forward, staring at the pod. It had a name etched into the glass: Dr. Elanor Wrynn. Her mother's name. But her mother had died years ago… hadn't she?
Lyra froze.
All her life, she believed her mother was a martyr someone who tried to fight the Regime from the inside and paid the price. But this pod it was a lie. Or maybe, a hidden truth.
Kaito sensed her shaking and stepped closer. "Lyra, talk to me."
"I think… I think they kept her alive," she whispered, voice cracking. "Or at least, her mind."
Before Kaito could respond, the pod hummed. Blue light bled from the cracks and a projection flickered to life. It wasn't a live feed it was a memory file, one set to trigger if someone like Lyra ever found this place.
The woman in the hologram looked tired but unbroken. "If you're seeing this, it means you found me. My name is Elanor Wrynn. And if you're my daughter… then the truth is now yours to carry."
Kaito backed up slowly. "What the hell is going on, Lyra?"
"I don't know," she said, tears pooling in her eyes. "But I think everything I believed is about to change."
Elanor's voice filled the chamber. She spoke of experiments, of AI control, of something she called Project Hydra a plan to split consciousness into coded fragments and inject it into willing vessels. Vessels like Lyra.
"You were never supposed to be used," the hologram said. "But I had no choice. I coded your mind with protective logic… because the Regime would stop at nothing. Even at birth, they saw you as a threat."
Lyra dropped to her knees. Her memories felt twisted, like someone had been editing her life from the start.
Kaito remained silent. His hand hovered near his blaster not out of distrust, but out of instinct. Things were spiralling, and in this moment, he couldn't protect her from what was inside her own head.
"I'm not who I thought I was," Lyra said softly. "Maybe I'm not even human."
"You're more human than any of them," Kaito said, kneeling beside her. "You feel. You fight. That's what makes you dangerous and beautiful."
She looked at him, pain sharp in her eyes. "What if everything I've done was just programmed?"
"Then screw the programming. You chose to come here. You chose to fight back. Machines follow code. You broke yours."
They activated the rest of the memory vault. Dozens of files came online experiments, betrayals, people screaming for justice and never getting it. Lyra watched faces fade into static. But one file stood out. Marked only with a red X.
Against her better judgment, she opened it.
It showed her. As a child. In the lab. Not crying. Not confused. Just… still.
A man stood beside her the same face Lyra had seen once in her broken dreams. He wasn't her father. But he called her "Unit Zero-One."
Lyra backed away from the screen. Her legs shook. "That's me… That's really me…"
Kaito grabbed her shoulders. "You are not a unit. You're Lyra. You're the girl who outsmarted the Regime's top security AI. You're the girl who looked me in the eye and saved my life when I didn't deserve it."
She leaned against him, not because she was weak but because for once, she wanted to feel something other than war inside her chest.
Suddenly, the ground trembled. The lab's floor panels lit up red. A warning siren wailed through the walls.
"They know we're here," Kaito said, pulling her up. "We've got five minutes maybe less."
As they ran, Lyra downloaded every file she could. Her mind worked faster than her hands. The weight of the truth didn't slow her down it lit her on fire.
At the exit, a wall screen turned on. It wasn't the Regime this time.
It was Zero.
His face was almost human now lips, eyes, a voice so calm it chilled the bones.
"Hello again, Lyra. Found your past, have you? Brave girl. But knowing doesn't save you. You were made to obey."
She stared into the screen and didn't blink.
"I was made to rewrite you."
The screen shattered as they escaped. The outside air felt colder, but she was burning inside. Not from confusion. From purpose.
For the first time, Lyra knew who she really was and who she was going to become.