The shot echoed down the hall like thunder.
Voss's head snapped back, blood spraying across the vault door. His body crumpled to the floor in a heap of silence. For a moment, all Ava could hear was her own breathing ragged, shallow and the distant rumble of fire devouring everything behind them. Iris stood beside her, weapon lowered, watching the blood pool around Voss's boots. Her voice was calm, eerily steady. "He's just the beginning."
Ava wiped the blood from her cheek. "He was the plan."
She kicked his pistol away and turned to the vault, now slightly ajar from the code Voss had started to enter. The metallic door groaned open with a hiss, revealing a narrow corridor bathed in sterile blue light.
Jonas appeared behind them, limping and pale. "What the hell is that?"
They stepped into the corridor. It smelled of antiseptic and death.
At the end of the hallway was a laboratory pristine, untouched by the chaos above. Rows of tanks lined the walls, each filled with murky fluid and floating figures, some human, some… not quite.
Ava moved slowly, heart thundering. Inside the tanks were failed clones, unfinished hybrids, twisted experiments. A child's face in one jar. A monstrous limb in another.
"What the hell were they doing?" Iris whispered.
Jonas staggered toward a console, scanning files. His voice cracked. "Project Seraphim… they were trying to build something… something better than human."
On one monitor, Ava saw her name. Her original name, Ayla Grace Monroe highlighted next to a long string of code.
She pressed her hand against the glass.
"They weren't just killing families," she murmured. "They were replacing them."
The horror was deeper than she imagined.
Iris turned to her. "Do we burn it?"
She shook my head. "We expose it."
The Circle didn't just betray her family. They betrayed humanity.
It ends now. No more shadows. No more secrets.
The world would know what they did and it would never forget.
The light from the lab cast a pale glow on their faces as we stood surrounded by horrors. Tanks hummed. Machines beeped softly. The things inside the fluid didn't movebut Ava could feel them, like ghosts pressing against my skin.
Iris stared at the monitor showing her name. "You were part of this?"
She nodded slowly, throat dry. "I didn't know. Genevieve told me I was saved, not engineered."
Jonas tapped furiously on the keyboard, voice tight. "They took you… ran trials. You weren't just a survivor, Ava. You were a prototype."
Every breath felt heavier.
So many things Genevieve had said suddenly made sense. The training. The endless injections. Her obsession with perfection. She wasn't just being molded, she was being modified.
Ava stepped away from the console, her heart beating like war drums. "It doesn't matter anymore. They made me into this. But I choose what happens now."
Jonas hesitated. "There's a backup system. A failsafe. It's deeper underground… labeled 'Facility Black.'"
Iris raised a brow. "Sounds cozy."
Ava turned toward the shadows. "We're going. We finish this."
They moved quickly, deeper into the lower levels. The clean lab walls gave way to rusted metal and flickering lights. Facility Black was older, colder, like something forgotten by time and memory.
The door to the main chamber creaked open. Inside were rows of stasis pods. One began to flicker.
A figure stirred inside.
Ava's blood turned to ice.
It was her. A perfect copy. Pale, still. Sleeping.
Jonas whispered, "They didn't make just one of you…"
She stared at the clone. "They made a weapon. But I'm no longer theirs."
She reached for the control panel.
Iris stepped closer. "What are you doing?"
She didn't answer.
She pressed the red button marked 'PURGE.'
Alarms screamed. The tanks hissed.
Flames erupted behind them.
Let them burn.
Every. Last. One.