The rain had followed her across borders.
By the time Ava reached the outskirts of Piemonte, Italy, the storm had settled into a slow, relentless drizzle fine mist clinging to her hair, her lashes, her breath. The vineyard loomed on the hill above like a forgotten memory rows of wild vines, shutters hanging loose on a crumbling villa.
It was exactly as her father described in his letters.
The only place where the world forgets to look.
She parked the stolen car under a fig tree and climbed the last slope on foot, her boots sinking into the wet soil. The villa's doors groaned as she pushed them open. Dust rose in a shimmering wave, catching the pale morning light.
Inside silence.
A piano stood in the corner, strings long since broken. Shelves still held old bottles of her father's favorite Chianti, the labels faded but intact.
She set down her backpack, the one she hadn't opened since Greece, and pressed a trembling hand to her ribs. The bruises from the blast still burned. Each breath felt heavy, jagged but she was alive.
And Adrian wasn't.
The thought hit her like a cold blade.
She sank onto the floor, back against the wall, the weight of everything pressing in. The flash drive was still around her neck, hanging by a cord. She pulled it out and stared at it.
"This is all that's left," she whispered.
But as soon as the words left her lips, the air seemed to shift like the room itself inhaled. A faint hum ran through her veins, a pulse that didn't belong to her heartbeat.
It came again stronger. A rhythm. Familiar.
Her breath caught.
"Adrian?"
The hum vanished.
She pressed a hand against her skin, terrified and fascinated. The sensation wasn't external. It was inside her , her blood singing, as though something had awakened beneath her flesh.
Then the nausea came sharp, overwhelming. She stumbled to the old sink in the corner, gripping its rusted edge as her vision blurred.
Her pulse thundered in her ears. The air shimmered. And for a moment, the reflection in the cracked mirror wasn't hers.
It was his.
Adrian's eyes dark, fevered, pleading staring back through her.
"Find me."
The words weren't spoken aloud, yet they echoed inside her skull like a memory she hadn't lived.
Ava staggered back, gasping. The mirror cracked further with a sound like splintering glass, and the vision dissolved, leaving only her reflection pale, trembling, eyes wide with terror.
"What's happening to me?"
The Diary
Hours later, she found herself in her father's old study, surrounded by notebooks and dust. The rain outside softened into a whisper.
Her flashlight swept across the desk maps of genetic structures, formulae, sketches of cells evolving through stages.
In one corner, beneath a loose floorboard, she found it: a small, leather-bound diary marked with a single letter burned into the cover.
E.
Her mother's initial.
Her hands shook as she opened it. The pages were brittle, the ink faded, but the handwriting was delicate, precise.
"The serum is no longer just reactive it's responsive. It listens. It learns. It remembers what we fear, what we love."
Another entry:
"Ava carries the dormant code. She must never be told until it's time. The serum chose her not by chance, but through bond."
Ava's chest tightened. She turned the page.
"If the serum activates, she will feel the link. The prototype and the heir will share one pulse. Separation is illusion. Distance means nothing."
Her fingers froze on the last sentence.
The prototype and the heir.
Her father's creation and his daughter.
Adrian.
Her.
Her throat went dry. "No"
She read the next lines, written in hurried, jagged strokes her mother's desperation bleeding through the ink.
"Adrian's bond to her will grow if the serum stabilizes. It is no longer chemical. It is psychic molecular memory woven between their blood. He will feel her heartbeat. She will dream his pain."
"If one dies, the other begins to decay."
Ava dropped the diary, heart hammering. "Oh my God"
That's why she'd felt him. Why she'd heard him.
He wasn't dead.
Not yet.
The Link
Night had fallen when the symptoms returned.
She was at the fireplace, feeding it with broken branches when her vision flickered again not darkness, but another place entirely. A cell. Cold, metallic, drenched in shadow.
Chains clinked. Someone coughed low, ragged.
Ava's pulse spiked. "Adrian?"
She saw flashes his hands, bruised, blood-streaked; his body shivering under harsh lights. His breath came uneven.
And then his voice, raw and distant
"Don't come here, Ava she's watching you"
Lysandra.
The vision jolted out of her like electricity. Ava fell to her knees, gasping, the world spinning.
She clutched her head, whispering through clenched teeth, "I'm not letting her have you."
For a long moment, the only sound was the crackle of fire. Then faintly a whisper inside her chest that wasn't her own heartbeat.
Trust your blood.
The words rippled through her like a current. She rose slowly, trembling but resolute.
"Then I will."
She took the flash drive and inserted it into her father's old terminal. The screen sputtered to life blue light filling the room.
A password prompt appeared.
She typed the obvious:
EDEN denied.
LEGACY denied.
Then, remembering the diary her mother's words she tried again.
BOND.
Access granted.
Lines of data cascaded across the screen gene sequences, encrypted formulas, and video fragments. One file stood out, labeled "Kane Protocol 12 Subject A."
She clicked it.
Her father appeared, younger this time, standing beside a lab pod filled with glowing blue fluid. Inside it a figure suspended. Male. Strong. Unmoving.
"Subject A demonstrates total genetic integration," her father said on-screen. "Adaptive strand stabilized. Neural pathways synchronized. Emotional imprint recorded bonded to donor K."
Donor K.
Kane.
Her.
The image zoomed closer, and Ava's breath stopped.
It was Adrian asleep, years before she'd ever met him. Tubes snaking from his skin. Eyes closed.
He'd been bonded to her before he ever knew her name.
And suddenly, everything the connection, the visions, the way he always knew made horrifying sense.
She wasn't just the key to ending Eden.
She was Eden's final experiment.
The Awakening
Her thoughts spiraled anger, grief, disbelief until the old villa began to shake.
At first, she thought it was thunder. Then came the deep hum again inside her, louder now, vibrating in every cell. Her pulse accelerated, heat rising under her skin. Her vision blurred gold for an instant veins glowing faintly beneath the surface.
She gasped, clutching the table. "Stop, stop."
But it didn't. Her blood felt like fire and lightning.
And in that storm, she saw a glimpse through Adrian's eyes. He was awake now, in some underground lab, straining against chains. Guards stood outside his cell. Lysandra's voice echoed faintly, cold and analytical.
"The serum adapts through emotion. Her pain triggers his evolution."
Ava screamed, slamming her hands on the table the connection snapping like a whip.
The fire in the hearth roared higher. The old windows shattered inward.
Then silence.
She collapsed to the floor, panting, her body trembling with exhaustion. The glow under her skin faded, leaving her pale and soaked in sweat.
When she finally looked up, her reflection in the shattered window made her freeze.
Her eyes once hazel now shimmered faintly gold.
The serum wasn't dormant anymore.
It had woken up.
The Call
By dawn, the rain had stopped. Mist hung low over the vineyard, silvering the rows of wild vines. Ava sat at the window, a blanket around her shoulders, watching the sun rise over the valley.
In front of her, the flash drive still blinked faintly alive with data she hadn't yet decrypted.
Somewhere in that code lay the map to Adrian's prison.
She could almost feel him through the silence a presence on the edge of her heartbeat, faint but constant.
"You saved me once," she whispered. "Now I'll save you."
The power flickered again, and the terminal's speakers crackled.
A voice came throug weak, static-filled, but real.
"Ava"
Her heart leapt. "Adrian?"
"Don't trust anyone not even me"
The line went dead.
Ava stared at the screen, her pulse racing.
If he was still alive enough to warn her, that meant he was fighting back and Lysandra was losing control. But for how long?
She stood, grabbed her jacket, and slung the backpack over her shoulder.
The vineyard's wind swept through the open door as she stepped outside, the horizon painted with pale light.
She didn't look back.
The Other Side
In an underground lab somewhere beneath Vienna, Adrian Kane opened his eyes.
The restraints were gone. The room was empty save for a single broken monitor flashing static.
His reflection stared back at him in the glass his skin marked faintly by glowing lines, gold like fire beneath the surface.
He remembered the explosion. The sea. The pain.
And her voice.
Ava.
He closed his eyes, and for the first time since his creation, he felt her heartbeat inside his chest a pulse that wasn't his own.
"She's coming," he whispered.
Then, faintly, as if the serum itself replied:
She already is.