CHAPTER 4: The Hidden Room
1106 Words
Rain hammered against the broken glass panels of the rooftop shelter, each drop loud enough to remind Rhea she hadn’t slept. Her eyes were wide open, locked on the ceiling, even as the sky threatened to collapse.
Across the room, Jace sat in silence, typing on a portable holo-console, trying to recover more fragments from the encrypted memory chip.
Rhea’s mind, however, was still stuck on her brother’s final words:
> “Your childhood. Your name. Even your face. All of it was designed.”
She whispered it again, just to hear how it sounded in the air.
Designed.
---
Questions with No Answers
“How much of me is real?” she asked suddenly.
Jace stopped typing.
He looked over slowly. “I don’t know. But we can find out. That’s what I promised.”
“I don’t even remember being tested. Being... changed.”
He sighed. “That’s how good they were. They didn’t just erase memories, Rhea. They replaced them. Layered fake ones on top. You think you remember your tenth birthday or your mother’s perfume or your first fall on a hoverboard. But those memories might have been downloaded into you like files into a drive.”
The words hit her like a slap.
“So I’m a copy of someone who used to exist?”
“No,” Jace said. “You’re still you. But the real you might be buried under everything they forced on top.”
---
A Lead in the Code
Jace tapped a few more commands, and a faint blue symbol blinked onto the screen. It was a location tag, buried in the chip’s metadata—just a string of digits. GPS coordinates.
“What is it?” Rhea leaned closer.
“It’s a marker. Laziel embedded it deep in the code. Might be the original place you were changed. Or where he found the truth.”
“Where does it lead?”
He checked the map overlay. His brows furrowed. “Sector 12. Near the old transportation depot. That place has been shut down for over a decade.”
Rhea stood. “Then we go there.”
“Rhea—”
“No,” she said firmly. “If there’s a chance I can find out who I really am—who I was—then I have to go.”
---
Sector 12 – The Wastelands
They traveled at night, keeping to back alleys and abandoned tunnels. Sector 12 wasn’t just off-grid—it was a dead zone. Long ago, a massive neural experiment had malfunctioned here, flooding the area with unstable data pulses. Most people said it was haunted.
But Rhea didn’t believe in ghosts.
She believed in answers.
The old depot loomed ahead like a skeleton made of steel. Rusted beams curved across the sky, and the air smelled of oil and static. Jace found a half-buried control box and pried it open. Sparks flew.
“Here,” he said. “There’s still power in the emergency circuits.”
The sliding doors groaned open.
Inside was a lab.
Or what was left of one.
Broken medical beds, shattered visors, and scorched cables lay everywhere. The walls were charred, as if someone had tried to burn it all.
But the back room was still sealed.
Rhea stepped forward. Her heart pounded louder with each breath.
---
The Real Rhea
The sealed room was protected by a biometric scanner.
“Wait,” Jace said. “If this was one of the government’s black sites—”
Too late. Rhea placed her palm on the panel.
The light flashed green.
Access granted.
The door hissed open.
Jace stared. “Why would it recognize you?”
Rhea didn’t answer. She stepped inside.
The room was small. Clean. Intact.
And in the center was a mirror.
It looked ordinary. But when Rhea stepped in front of it, something strange happened.
The mirror flickered—and her reflection changed.
The girl staring back wasn’t her. Not exactly. Her skin was lighter. Her hair was straight and short. Her eyes were green.
But her face...
Her face was still somehow familiar.
> “What… is this?” she whispered.
A voice echoed in the room—feminine, mechanical, and calm:
> “Subject 0349: Original Identity Recovered. Welcome back, Ren Xelara.”
Rhea’s breath caught in her throat.
Ren Xelara.
That was her name before she became Rhea.
---
Files From the Past
Jace found a working console near the mirror. He connected his tools and began decrypting the internal system.
“Rhea—Ren—you need to see this,” he said.
Screens lit up. Videos. Medical logs. Neural maps.
She watched herself—the other version of herself—being trained, scanned, tested.
She saw scientists talking in hushed tones:
> “Subject Ren is mentally adaptive. Emotional responses remain unpredictable. We suggest full memory overwrite to stabilize behavior.”
> “Initiate Rhea Voss personality protocol. Implant synthetic family memories. Monitor integration.”
One screen showed Laziel, standing in a lab coat. He was yelling.
> “She’s not a weapon! She’s a person. A child!”
Then the screen cut out.
Tears burned in Rhea’s eyes.
“I was... made. Everything I know, everything I love—it was programmed.”
Jace knelt beside her. “No. You became real. You lived those memories, even if they were given to you. You turned them into something true.”
She didn’t know what to say.
---
A Warning Comes Alive
Suddenly, the mirror screen glowed red.
> “ALERT: Memory Recovery Detected. Neural Signature Lock Activated.”
“What’s that?” Rhea asked.
Jace’s face went pale. “It’s a failsafe. They built this in to stop escaped subjects from remembering too much.”
The console beside him exploded in sparks.
Alarms screamed.
> “TARGET LOCATED. PURGE INITIATED.”
A panel in the floor opened—and a machine rose from the ground. It was sleek, spider-like, and armed with multiple syringes glowing blue.
Rhea backed away.
“RUN!” Jace shouted.
They dashed toward the exit, dodging blasts of electric pulses. The spider-bot hissed and lunged, narrowly missing Rhea’s leg.
They barely made it out of the facility before the main doors slammed shut.
---
On the Run Again
Back in the shadows of Sector 12, panting and bruised, Rhea dropped to her knees.
Ren Xelara.
That was who she was.
But it wasn’t who she chose to be.
She looked at Jace.
“I’m not giving up,” she said.
He nodded. “Good. Because we just woke up something very dangerous.”
- Writer
