Ashes of Him

Phase 13A

They didn’t speak for a long time after the man in the black jacket disappeared around the corner. The square seemed to hold its breath, silent and watching. Not a bird chirped. Not a leaf rustled. Ivy’s hands hovered near her holster the entire walk back to the Jeep, which they’d parked just outside the Ashvale perimeter. Mason kept glancing behind them, shoulders tight. Ella, for once, didn’t look back at all.

Something in her had been awaken but it was Ivy who couldn’t stop shaking—not from fear, but because the tape hadn’t surprised her. Not entirely. As they reached the Jeep, Ella leaned against the passenger door with her arms crossed.

“You knew,” she said without preamble.

Ivy stiffened. “What?”

“You knew about the tapes. About what they did to people here.”

Mason’s head snapped around. “Wait—what the hell are you talking about?”

Ella turned to him, calmly but with a deadly snare. “She knew. I saw it on her face the second that voice asked me to recite the safety phrase. She’d heard it before.”

Mason looked at Ivy. “Tell me she’s lying.”

Ivy’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t deny it.

“I knew about 13A,” Ivy said finally. “But I didn’t know it was you, Ella. I swear to God, I didn’t.”

“That’s not enough,” Ella said. “What the hell were you doing tracking this place before I even showed up at your door?” Ivy didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she opened the rear of the Jeep and pulled out a black envelope, thick with files.

She threw it onto the hood. Mason unfolded it. Inside were pages of printed documents, photographs, charts.

One article was dated ten years earlier:

“Teenage Girl Found Wandering Highway Near Ashvale — No Memory, No ID”

The photo was unmistakable.

It was Ivy.

Ella stared. “You were part of it. Ivy nodded. “They called me Subject 12D. I escaped. I was twelve. They wiped me clean, but something came back eventually. Flashes,names,a basement,a scream and the scent of bleach. I didn’t even know where Ashvale was until five years ago. But once I found it…” She looked up at them, voice shaking. “I’ve been trying to bring it down ever since.”

Mason backed away “And you didn’t tell us?”

“You wouldn’t have trusted me,” Ivy responded.

“People don’t trust the ones who survive. They trust the victims who stay broken. You needed me to be a guide, not a ghost.”

Ella tightened her fists. “You used me to get back inside.”

“I saved your life!” Ivy roared. “Back in Seattle, you were spiraling. You were one step from

breaking completely, and you came to me. I didn’t force you here.”

“But you didn’t warn me,” Ella replied, softly but firmly. “You let me walk into that building, not knowing what I’d come across”

Ivy exhaled hard with her eyes shining brightly. “Because I didn’t want to be the one who shattered you. I thought maybe it would come back in pieces, softer. Maybe you wouldn’t have to see what I saw.”

Mason finally stepped forward. “That’s not your choice, Ivy.”

“No,” Ivy said. “It wasn’t.”

A heavy silence settled over them.

Finally, Ella took the envelope of files and began going through them. Medical logs,session summaries,digital signatures from Ashvale’s head administrator—Dr. Lionel Strake. And one image that froze her blood.

It was a photo of a room. No windows. No lights.

A girl was strapped to a chair. Her mouth was open in a scream.

But she wasn’t Ella.

She was Dana Kingsley.

Ella grabbed the page. “She didn’t get out, did she?”

Ivy shook her head. “No. She was the only one who fought the rewrite. They were not able to break her, so they erased her entirely.”

Mason’s voice was low. “She was a test case.”

Ivy nodded. “They wanted to see what would happen if they pushed the human mind beyond its capacity to forget.”

Ella sat on the Jeep’s bumper, her head in her hands. “What is Phase 13A? It keeps reoccurring in the tapes, in the room numbers…”

“It was the final rewrite program,” Ivy said. “A combination of memory conditioning, pharmacological suppression, and emotional decoupling. They found that erasing memory wasn’t enough. People still responded emotionally to what they couldn’t remember. So they tried to wipe the feeling too.”

Mason stared at her. “They tried to erase love.”

“No,” Ivy said. “They tried to weaponize it.”

They returned to the Ashvale Medical Center before nightfall.This time, Ivy led them underground to a part of the building sealed behind rusted doors and a biometric lock. The lock was offline but Ivy had found a manual override in the maintenance files years ago.

The door opened into a chamber lined with screens, and tall filing cabinets.

“This was the command center,” she explained. “Where the rewrites were monitored, managed, and stored.”

“Stored?” Ella echoed. Ivy opened a file drawer. Inside it were dozens of flash drives, neatly labeled with names and numbers. “These are memories, audio logs,internal files and patient journals. They didn’t just erase people here. They cataloged them.”

Ella picked one up. It had her name.

And Mason’s.

She turned slowly toward him, her voice slightly above a whisper. “Why is your name on my file?”

Mason’s face turned pale.

“Ivy?” Ella said.

But it was Mason who answered.

“I asked them to do it.”

The words hit like a punch on the face.

Ella moved backwards, looking at Mason in a disbelieving manner“What?”

Mason stepped forward “Listen to me. It wasn’t what you think. You were breaking down and screaming every night. Saying people were after you. That you couldn’t breathe. You said you wished you could forget it all.”

“So you brought me here?” Ella said looking at him with a deadly stare.

“No,” he said quickly. “I brought you to a doctor. A therapist. She said she knew of a treatment center outside of town. I didn’t know it was Ashvale. I didn’t know what they’d do.”

“But you signed off,” Ivy said slowly.

Mason’s jaw clenched. “They said it was reversible. That they could take the pain away for a while. Just long enough for her to heal. I didn’t know they were going to erase everything.”

Ella stared at him again. “You let them take me.”

“I thought I was saving you,” he said, pitifully.

“You begged me.”

“I didn’t know what I was begging for!” she shouted. “I was sick. I needed help not to be disappeared!”

Tears filled her eyes as she turned away, holding on to the flash drive with her name.

Mason didn’t move . Ivy didn’t speak.

Ella walked to the far wall and slid down it, the cold concrete pressing into her back.

For the first time since she had , she felt truly alone.

The night passed in extreme silence.They camped in the upper level of the building. Mason sat alone, his back to the stairwell and with his head bowed. Ivy moved about restlessly, chewing her thumbnail.

Ella watched the stars through a cracked roof with the flash drive still clutched in her hand.

“I didn’t come back here for revenge,” she said gently.

Ivy stopped moving .“Then why?”

Ella looked at her. “To remember why I left.”

Ivy’s voice lowered “And have you?”

Ella nodded. “Yes and now I know what I have to do.”

“What’s that?” Ivy asked looking at her astonishingly

Ella turned, eyes clear for the first time in days.

“Find out who’s still running this place… and make sure no one else ever gets rewritten or erased.”