chapter 24 The experiment that never ended
1010 Words
For the rest of the night, Olivia couldn’t sleep.
Her mind replayed every word Ethan and Ryan had said — over and over — until the truth felt like a knife pressed against her chest.
She was in immense pain and she couldn't find a way out.
She sat by her window in silence, watching the first light of dawn break over the campus lawns of Westridge University, the sky painted in soft pink and gold. It was beautiful, almost cruelly so, because everything inside her was breaking.
She had always known there was something different about Ethan — the way he looked at her like he was holding back a thousand secrets, the way he’d flinch when thunder rolled, the way his voice softened when he said her name.
Now she understood why.
He wasn’t just haunted.
He was hiding from the world.
And yet — she loved him.
So deeply it scared her.
---
Later that morning, she found herself walking through the science wing — the quiet hallways echoing faintly beneath her shoes. She didn’t even know why she was there. Maybe because this was where Ethan had spent most of his time — tutoring, researching, escaping.
Maybe because she wanted to feel close to him even if he wasn’t there.
But when she reached his old lab room — the one he’d told her was “just a storage area now” — she noticed something odd. The door was slightly open. Inside, dust floated in thin beams of light… but beneath one of the desks was a small metal box.
Olivia hesitated, heart thudding.
Her instincts screamed not to touch it.
But love makes people curious. And brave. And foolish.
She opened the box.
Inside was a stack of old documents — faded, singed around the edges. At the top, stamped in red ink, were the words:
> PROJECT VIOLET: Subject Record #E-03
And beneath it —
Eli Cross.
Her stomach dropped. It was Ethan’s old identity.
She flipped through the pages, her eyes scanning the terms she didn’t understand:
> “Neural synchronization.”
“Genetic alteration through emotional imprinting.”
“Subject response to pair-bond stimuli — compatible match identified: O.W.”
Her hands froze.
O.P.
Her initials.
Olivia Parker.
The file slipped from her grasp. “No… no, this can’t be real,” she whispered.
Her pulse roared in her ears as the door creaked open behind her.
“Olivia?”
Ethan’s voice.
She turned slowly, tears welling up. “Tell me this isn’t true,” she said, her voice breaking. “Tell me this isn’t me.”
Ethan’s face was drained of color. He stepped forward cautiously, like she was a fragile thing he was afraid to touch. “Where did you find that?”
“Answer me, Ethan!”
He sighed — defeated, exhausted. “It’s complicated.”
“I don’t care if it’s complicated!” she cried, tears spilling. “You said you didn’t want to drag me into this, but I was already in it, wasn’t I?!”
He hesitated, then nodded slowly. “Yes. You were.”
Her knees gave out, and she sank to the floor. “So what? I was an experiment too?”
“No!” he said quickly, kneeling beside her. “You were never part of it — not directly. The experiment was based on neural pairing. They believed that emotional connection could trigger genetic repair. They… they found out that my body responded to a specific emotional frequency.”
He took a deep breath. “Yours.”
Olivia’s heart stopped. “Mine?”
“You were part of the control group,” he said quietly. “You were a volunteer — you just didn’t know what it really was. You donated blood for a research study three years ago, remember? That was their way of connecting us.”
Her eyes widened — flashes of memory returning. Her first year in college. A random “student health survey” that had asked for blood samples. She hadn’t thought much of it.
“I thought it was just a medical form,” she whispered.
“So did I,” he said bitterly. “Until I woke up after the explosion… and they told me that my cellular recovery matched with one donor. You.”
He reached for her hand, but she pulled away. “So our whole connection — our feelings — they’re fake?”
“No,” he said firmly, voice shaking. “They’re not fake. What they started as an experiment became real to me, Olivia. You became real. You became everything.”
Her tears blurred his face, but she could still see the pain in his eyes — the sincerity that broke her heart.
“I loved you before I even knew why,” he whispered. “And maybe that’s what scares me most — that I don’t know where the science ends and my heart begins.”
Olivia shook her head, torn between fury and longing. “Ethan… you should’ve told me.”
“I wanted to,” he said softly. “But how do you tell someone that you were created to love them?”
Silence. Heavy, suffocating.
Then she whispered, barely audible:
“I still love you.”
Ethan froze — his breath caught.
Even through betrayal, confusion, and heartbreak, she realized something terrible and beautiful: she couldn’t stop loving him. Because somewhere between every fight, every late-night talk, and every look that felt like home — she had lost control of her heart.
She reached for his hand again, this time not to accuse, but to hold.
His fingers trembled as they interlocked with hers.
For a brief moment, time stood still.
Until the sound of glass shattering snapped them back — someone had been watching.
And when they turned — Ryan was standing at the door, expression unreadable, a single line of blood trailing down his temple.
“You shouldn’t have found that,” he said darkly. “Now you’ve just made everything worse.”
- Writer
