THE OTHER SIDE OF HER
671 Words
The power flickered.
Not from failure — from interference.
“Sarafina.” Noemi’s voice was lower now, almost shaken. “I rerouted to thermal. There’s someone in the building. Basement level. Coming up.”
Dante c****d his gun. “She’s not part of our network.”
Alba moved first, leading Sarafina and Dante down the old elevator shaft — it hadn't worked in years. They climbed the steel framework in silence, the metal groaning with every step.
They reached Sublevel 3.
Storage. Unused labs. Silence.
Until—
“You came back,” a voice said. Smooth. Familiar.
Sarafina froze.
A woman stepped into the hallway from the shadows, holding no weapon, no fear. She looked mid-thirties. Poised. Clean white coat. Gloved hands. A faint scar curved beneath her left eye.
But what stopped Sarafina wasn’t her presence.
It was her face.
Same cheekbones. Same dimple when she smiled. But older. More polished. Like time had shaped her, but hadn’t touched her innocence.
“Who are you?” Sarafina asked, not lowering her gun.
“I’m the reason you’re still alive,” the woman said simply.
Alba stepped in front of Sarafina like instinct. “Don’t believe her.”
The woman smiled softly. “You must be Alba. I’ve seen your files.”
“I asked you a question,” Sarafina snapped. “I want your name.”
The woman tilted her head.
> “I go by Seraph.
But once, I was called Sarafina Lucetti… before you were born.”
---
No one moved.
Dante muttered, “That’s not possible.”
“Oh, but it is,” Seraph said. “Your father experimented with memory cloning and neuro-genetic mapping. Before he made Alba, he made me. A backup. A copy grown in accelerated years. But the moment I developed a will, I was locked away. Declared too unstable. Too... rebellious.”
Sarafina’s throat tightened. “He made you from me?”
“Yes. I was supposed to carry your mother’s programming. Be the failsafe if you died. But I broke protocol. I didn’t want to be anyone’s shadow.”
Alba scoffed. “So what, now you want revenge?”
“No,” Seraph said calmly. “I want to finish what your mother started. She left me the other half of the Silence sequence.”
Dante narrowed his eyes. “Why not share it?”
“Because she gave you the stars,” Seraph said to Sarafina. “But she gave me the fire.”
She pulled a data crystal from her pocket and dropped it on the ground.
“This holds the Omega Key. It can wake every latent file your father tried to erase. But once it’s active… it can’t be undone.”
Sarafina knelt slowly, picking it up. It was warm. Alive.
“She left a choice,” Seraph said. “You complete the chart. I complete the flame. Together… we choose what Silence becomes. A cure, or a war.”
Alba turned to Sarafina. “You can’t trust her. She’s just like me — we were built.”
Seraph’s eyes softened. “That’s where you’re wrong. We weren’t built, Alba. We were born the moment we said no.”
---
That night, they didn’t sleep.
Sarafina stood at the top of the observatory dome, staring at the glowing map. The sky above mirrored the chart perfectly.
Stars blinked down like watching eyes.
She held the Omega Key in her hand.
And for the first time since her world shattered…
She realized she had power.
Real power.
Not from legacy. Not from blood. Not from code.
But from choice.
---
Somewhere else, far below the earth…
A chamber lit with white-blue light.
A dozen bodies floated in stasis tanks — all women.
All bearing Sarafina’s face.
A man in a charcoal suit walked the row slowly, stopping at one that had begun to twitch.
He smiled coldly.
> “Start the awakening sequence.
If Lucetti’s line won’t follow orders…
we’ll remind them who wrote the first page.”
- Writer
