CHAPTER 8 :THE WOMAN WHO SHOULD HAVE STAYED DEAD
1729 Words
Nobody moved after Victor spoke.
The hospital room suddenly felt too small.
Too quiet.
My heartbeat thudded painfully in my ears while rain hammered against the windows behind us.
Damian kept the g*n aimed at the door.
“What did you say?” he asked coldly.
Victor answered from the hallway without raising his voice.
“You heard me.”
A strange pressure built slowly in my chest.
The woman from the morgue.
The burned woman I saw reflected in the television screen.
No.
That wasn’t possible.
“She’s dead,” Damian said sharply.
Victor laughed softly.
“That’s what we said about Elena too.”
My blood went cold.
The door handle moved slightly again.
Once.
Slowly.
Like whoever stood outside wasn’t in a hurry.
Every instinct inside me screamed to run.
But my legs wouldn’t move.
Because deep down…
Part of me already knew.
Knew this nightmare wasn’t finished yet.
Damian stepped slightly in front of me again.
Protective.
Always protective.
“Stay behind me,” he whispered.
The lights flickered overhead.
Then suddenly—
A scream echoed somewhere down the hallway.
Not a normal scream.
Something worse.
Raw terror.
Another scream followed immediately after.
Then gunfire.
Then silence.
Victor spoke again through the door.
“They’re losing control of her.”
My stomach twisted violently.
Her.
Not it.
Not subject.
Her.
The way he said it sounded afraid.
And somehow that terrified me more than anything else tonight.
Damian’s jaw tightened.
“She shouldn’t even be alive.”
“That’s the problem,” Victor replied quietly.
A horrible memory flashed suddenly—
A woman convulsing violently on a laboratory table while blood streamed from her nose.
Doctors screaming:
“Subject revival unstable!”
Another voice yelling:
“Terminate her now!”
Then—
The woman opening her eyes.
Completely white.
I gasped sharply.
Damian looked back at me instantly.
“What did you remember?”
“She was one of the test subjects.”
Silence outside the door.
Then Victor murmured:
“Yes.”
Cold fear spread slowly through my body.
“How many survived Lazarus?” I whispered.
Nobody answered immediately.
That hesitation told me enough.
Too many.
Damian slowly lowered the g*n slightly.
“How did they find her?”
Victor laughed bitterly from the hallway.
“She found us.”
The air in the room changed instantly.
Even Damian looked unsettled now.
Not scared exactly.
But close.
Another scream echoed through the hospital.
Closer this time.
Then—
Heavy footsteps.
Not running.
Dragging.
Slow.
Coming down the hallway.
My pulse spiked violently.
Victor stepped away from the door immediately.
I heard him mutter something under his breath.
Then the footsteps stopped directly outside the room.
Silence.
Complete silence.
I couldn’t breathe.
Damian raised the g*n again.
The door handle slowly turned.
Once.
Twice.
Then stopped.
And for one horrifying second—
I saw a shadow beneath the door.
Bare feet.
Burned skin dripping water onto the hospital floor.
My entire body froze.
The lights flickered again.
Then the woman spoke softly from outside the room.
“Elena?”
My blood turned to ice.
Because the voice sounded exactly like mine.
Not similar.
Exact.
I stumbled backward instinctively.
“No…”
Damian’s face lost all color.
The woman knocked gently against the door again.
“Elena,” she whispered softly, “please let me in.”
Another flash exploded through my head—
A laboratory observation room.
Scientists staring through glass while two identical women stood inside the testing chamber.
One was me.
The other smiled strangely.
Then alarms started screaming.
I grabbed my head painfully.
“No, no…”
Damian immediately caught my shoulders.
“Look at me.”
My breathing became uneven.
“She looks like me.”
“I know.”
“You knew?”
Pain crossed his expression instantly.
“There were side effects after Lazarus.”
“Side effects?” I repeated shakily. “You mean copies?”
“No.”
But he sounded uncertain.
And that scared me.
Outside the room, the woman laughed softly.
The sound made every hair on my body rise.
“You still protect her,” she murmured toward Damian.
His grip tightened slightly on my shoulders.
“Don’t answer her.”
“Why?”
His eyes met mine directly.
“Because she isn’t Elena anymore.”
The woman outside went silent.
Then softly—
“Neither is she.”
A violent crash echoed somewhere farther down the hallway.
More screaming followed.
Victor shouted something at someone.
Gunshots exploded again.
The hospital was collapsing into chaos around us.
But all I could focus on was the thing standing outside the door pretending to sound like me.
Another memory slammed into me—
Me screaming at a doctor:
“You cloned neural imprinting?!”
The doctor answering proudly:
“Lazarus needed backups.”
Backups.
My stomach turned violently.
“Oh my God.”
Damian’s expression changed instantly.
“You remember the imprint project?”
I looked at him in horror.
“There were others.”
He stayed silent.
That silence was answer enough.
The woman outside suddenly stopped moving.
Completely silent now.
Too silent.
Then—
The door dented inward violently.
Like something slammed against it from outside.
I screamed.
Another impact followed instantly.
The metal bent harder this time.
“She’s unstable!” Victor shouted from somewhere down the hallway.
The woman laughed again.
But this time it sounded wrong.
Distorted.
Like two voices speaking at once.
“Open the door,” she whispered.
BOOM.
Another impact.
The lock started cracking.
Damian grabbed my wrist immediately.
“We move now.”
“Where?!”
“The service tunnels beneath the hospital.”
The woman hit the door again hard enough to shake the entire room.
Cracks spread across the metal.
“We don’t have time,” Damian muttered.
He pulled open a maintenance panel beside the bathroom wall and revealed a narrow emergency hatch behind it.
I stared.
“How do you know this is here?”
“I designed this hospital.”
Of course he did.
Nothing about this nightmare surprised me anymore.
Another violent slam shook the door.
Part of the frame ripped loose.
I heard Victor shouting again outside.
Then suddenly—
A gunshot.
Silence followed instantly.
My stomach dropped.
“Victor?” I whispered.
No answer came.
Damian pushed the hatch open quickly.
“Go.”
“What about you?”
“I’m right behind you.”
The door exploded inward before either of us could move.
Metal crashed across the hospital floor.
And she stepped inside.
My breath stopped instantly.
It was me.
Not similar.
Not close.
Exactly me.
Same face.
Same eyes.
Same dark hair soaked from the rain.
But her skin was burned badly along one side of her neck and jaw.
And her eyes…
God.
Her eyes were completely white.
The room temperature seemed to drop instantly.
She looked directly at me.
And smiled.
“I finally found you.”
I couldn’t move.
Couldn’t think.
It felt like staring into my own corpse.
Damian raised the g*n instantly.
“Don’t come closer.”
She tilted her head slowly.
Almost curiously.
“You still think bullets matter?”
Then suddenly she moved.
Fast.
Too fast.
One second she stood near the broken doorway—
The next she had Damian against the wall hard enough to c***k concrete.
I screamed.
The g*n flew from his hand.
She held him by the throat effortlessly while staring at me.
“You remember now, don’t you?”
Damian struggled violently against her grip.
“Run!”
But I couldn’t.
Because another memory hit me like a truck—
This woman screaming on a laboratory table while doctors injected black liquid into her veins.
Me shouting:
“She’s rejecting the imprint!”
Victor screaming back:
“She’s evolving!”
The memory vanished.
Evolving.
Not healing.
Not surviving.
Evolving.
The woman smiled wider as realization appeared on my face.
“There she is,” she whispered.
Damian slammed a metal tray into her side hard enough to break free briefly.
“ELENA RUN!”
She turned toward him instantly.
Anger crossed her face for the first time.
“You chose her.”
The words sounded personal.
Painfully personal.
Then she grabbed Damian again and threw him across the room hard enough to shatter glass cabinets.
Blood spread instantly across the floor beside him.
“No!”
I rushed toward him instinctively.
The woman watched carefully.
Almost fascinated.
“He always chooses you first,” she said softly.
Damian coughed painfully, trying to stand again.
“Stay away from her.”
The woman slowly looked back at me.
“I remember dying,” she whispered.
A chill crawled down my spine.
“What?”
“I remember the fire.”
Her voice cracked strangely.
“They left me burning.”
Another memory exploded through my head—
Two bodies in the laboratory after the explosion.
One was mine.
The other—
Her.
I froze.
No.
No no no.
We both died that night.
The woman smiled sadly after seeing realization hit me.
“Yes,” she whispered softly. “Now you remember.”
My breathing became shallow.
“You were the second Lazarus subject.”
“Second?” she repeated quietly.
Then laughed softly.
“No, Elena.”
She stepped closer slowly.
“I was first.”
The room went completely silent.
Damian looked horrified.
“You shouldn’t remember that.”
She ignored him completely.
Her white eyes stayed locked on mine.
“They built Lazarus from my body.”
Every nerve inside me went cold.
“I died six years ago.”
Another flash—
A younger Damian screaming while holding her body in a laboratory.
Victor shouting:
“The neural tissue is still active!”
Scientists surrounding her corpse.
Experimenting.
Testing.
Using her.
My stomach twisted violently.
“She was your girlfriend,” I whispered toward Damian.
Pain crossed his face instantly.
Real pain.
The woman smiled faintly.
“There she is.”
Everything suddenly made horrifying sense.
Why Damian looked at me with grief before love.
Why he never let me go.
Why Victor said I came back wrong.
I wasn’t the first Elena.
I was the replacement.
The woman stepped closer again.
“And now,” she whispered softly, “I want my life back.”
chapter 9 coming soon........
- Writer
