Ava's POV
The hallway stretched out like a throat waiting to swallow me whole. My boots made no sound on the polished black floor. Sirens weren't blaring. No one yelled. No alarms. Just silence the kind that made your bones itch.
Erik had left the door open.
And I walked out.
I counted every camera. Marked every turn. My pulse stayed slow, mind cold. I passed empty rooms where the walls whispered old screams. Rooms that looked like mine steel tables, faded restraints, blood dried to rust.
This was more than a facility.
This was a graveyard of identities.
The west wing had a reinforced door half-buried in collapsed rubble. Echo had said it led to the armory. I reached it in under five minutes. The keypad was fried. I pulled a blade from my boot and jammed it into the hinge.
That's when I heard the breath.
I spun, blade raised.
Echo.
He was thin, pale, with scars like railroad tracks down his arms. One of his eyes was fogged over, but the other burned with something too alive for this place.
"I followed you," he said. "Figured you'd need backup."
I didn't argue. "Can you open this?"
He stepped forward, typed something into a hidden panel behind a vent grate. The door unlocked with a hiss.
Inside dust, crates, and weapons.
Lots of weapons.
I strapped on a vest, loaded a Glock, and grabbed a pulse rifle.
"We fight our way out?" Echo asked.
I looked at him.
"We fight our way in."
Erik was waiting in the central control room, standing before a wall of monitors. He didn't flinch when we barged in. Didn't move when I aimed my rifle at him.
He just watched the screens surveillance feeds of every room.
"You always had good timing," he murmured. "I was about to set the place on fire myself."
Echo frowned. "You're turning?"
Erik finally turned to me. "You were right. I remember now. All of it. They didn't kill our parents."
He looked me dead in the eye.
"We did."