THE RED FILE
1601 Words
Rain began falling just minutes after they fled the burned house — hard, stinging drops that soaked Emberly’s hair to her scalp and blurred the city lights into nothing but streaks of white and gold.
They ran until their lungs burned.
Until the pounding behind the trapdoor faded from hearing — but not from memory.
Not from fear.
Elias pulled Emberly under an overhang outside an abandoned bus station, the concrete smelling of mildew and old cigarettes.
He bent forward, hands on his knees, catching his breath.
Emberly leaned against the cold wall, trembling so violently her wet clothes shook.
Elias looked up at her, soaked eyelashes clinging together.
“Talk to me,” he murmured.
Emberly pressed her palms over her face, her breathing erratic.
“He was there,” she whispered.
“Not a memory. Not a voice recording. He was there.”
Elias nodded slowly. “I know.”
“And he knew my name.”
Elias stood upright, jaw tensed. “Yes.”
“And he said—”
Her chest seized. She couldn’t say the word.
Couldn’t even think it without shivering.
He stepped closer and cupped her jaw gently.
“You are not his. You are not that child anymore.”
She nodded — but she didn’t feel it.
Because the last thing she saw before Elias slammed the door shut—
Were those eyes.
Pale.
Unblinking.
Inhumanly calm.
Almost like he had been waiting.
Waiting for her to open the door.
Waiting for her to return.
Elias let her lean against him until her breathing steadied.
“We need to disappear for a bit,” he said quietly. “No home, no patterns, no trails.”
She wiped rain from her face. “Where?”
“Police station?” she suggested.
But she said it without conviction.
Elias shook his head instantly. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I guarantee you — someone inside already knows about him. And they’re not stopping him.”
Something tight and cold closed around Emberly’s stomach.
“You think he’s connected to law enforcement.”
“Or law enforcement is connected to him,” he said darkly. “Either way, you can’t trust them.”
A loud thunder c***k split the sky.
They flinched simultaneously.
Elias reached into his coat and pulled something out — a thick, water-protected envelope, sealed with red wax.
Emberly blinked. “What… is that?”
Elias looked like he had been debating showing her this for hours.
Maybe days.
“It came to my apartment this morning,” he murmured.
“No return address. No name. Just this.”
He handed it to her.
The envelope had no markings except one thing burned lightly into the paper:
EMBERLY KLINE.
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
“Someone delivered this to you?” she whispered.
“No. Someone broke in.”
Her breath stuttered.
Elias held her arm steady.
“They didn’t steal anything,” he said. “They only left this. On my pillow.”
Her stomach turned.
“Open it,” he said softly.
Her fingers shook as she broke the wax seal.
Inside lay a thick stack of documents.
Newspaper clippings.
Photographs.
Typed pages.
And on the top — a single manila folder.
Labeled simply:
THE RED FILE — SUBJECT EK-01
Emberly froze.
“EK,” she whispered. “Emberly Kline.”
Elias nodded.
“Somebody kept a file on you,” he murmured.
Her skin crawled.
She opened the folder.
Inside were pages and pages of clinical notes.
All the hair on Emberly’s arms stood up.
> SUBJECT: EMBERLY KLINE
AGE: 6
STATUS: Retained
OBSERVATION: Responsive to fear stimuli. Exhibits memory dissociation. Ideal candidate for long-term conditioning.
PRIMARY HANDLER: D. LATHAM
The name hit Emberly like a hammer.
She staggered backward.
Elias grabbed her elbow. “Emberly—?”
Her voice came out barely audible.
“Latham.”
Elias frowned. “Who is that?”
Emberly swallowed hard.
Her throat burned, thick with dread.
“He’s the man from the basement.”
The rain suddenly felt colder.
Elias went still.
“I thought you didn’t remember his face.”
“I didn’t,” Emberly whispered.
“Not until I saw the name.”
Another memory surfaced — a deep voice saying:
Good girl, Emberly.
Her knees weakened.
Elias took the file from her, scanning pages rapidly.
“What is this?” he muttered angrily. “Who runs something like this?”
Emberly couldn’t answer.
Because she saw something in the folder.
A photograph.
Her breath froze in her lungs.
It was a picture of her.
As a child.
Sitting in the triangular room.
Hands on her lap.
Eyes hollow and unfocused.
And behind her—
Half hidden in the shadows—
A man.
Tall.
Broad shouldered.
Face out of frame.
But one detail visible:
A hand.
Long fingers.
A silver ring blazing on the index knuckle.
Her pulse exploded in her ears.
“That’s him,” she whispered. “That’s the man in the basement. He wore that ring.”
Elias’s expression darkened.
He flipped through more photographs.
And Emberly noticed something even worse — the photos were time-stamped.
And the last timestamp—
Was only nine years ago.
Emberly felt the ground tilt beneath her.
“Nine years?” she choked. “But I would’ve been sixteen. Not a child anymore.”
Elias stared at the timestamps.
Then the photos.
His chest rose sharply.
“Emberly,” he said slowly. “Look.”
She leaned closer.
The last photo wasn’t of her.
It was of another girl.
Same triangular room.
Same cot.
Same tall man in the corner.
The girl looked terrified.
And she was wearing a hospital bracelet.
Emberly’s stomach twisted into a knot of pure nausea.
“They replaced me,” she whispered.
“Oh my God… they replaced me.”
A guttural, helpless sound left her throat.
Elias pulled her into his chest immediately.
His hand slid into her wet hair.
His voice rough against her ear:
“You are out. You survived. And I swear to God I won’t let him take you again.”
Her tears mixed with rain against his coat.
“It wasn’t just me,” she whispered hoarsely.
“He didn’t stop after I left. He didn’t stop with my escape. He just… found another girl.”
“And another,” Elias murmured.
“And another.”
Thunder rumbled overhead.
Elias looked around.
“We need shelter,” he said. “But not somewhere obvious. And not somewhere we’ll be trapped.”
He stuffed the documents back into the envelope and secured it under his jacket.
Emberly wiped her face.
“Where are we going?”
Elias hesitated.
“That depends on whether you’re willing to hear something that might make all this worse.”
Her stomach dropped.
She squared her shoulders.
“Tell me.”
He inhaled sharply.
Then said:
“I know someone who used to work inside the program.”
Emberly’s blood turned to ice.
“There was a program?”
“Oh yes,” Elias said grimly.
“It wasn’t one man in one basement. Latham didn’t improvise this. He wasn’t working alone.”
Emberly’s pulse skyrocketed.
“What kind of program?” she whispered.
He met her eyes.
And for the first time since she’d known him, Elias looked genuinely afraid.
“A government blacksite experiment,” he said.
“Focused on fear-conditioning, memory suppression, and psychological manipulation.”
Her heart slammed painfully.
“You’re saying I was part of an experiment.”
“You were the experiment,” Elias said quietly.
“EK-01 wasn’t your initials. It was your classification.”
Her legs nearly buckled.
She grabbed the brick wall to steady herself.
Elias stepped closer.
“I can get you answers,” he said. “But the man who knows the truth lives off the grid. Deep off. And he won’t talk unless you force him to.”
Rain beat down harder.
Lightning crackled overhead.
Emberly looked down at the red file in her trembling hands.
At her name.
At the notes.
At the photograph of herself as a child in that metal room — the tally marks — the helpless little girl her mother had tried so desperately to save.
Her voice came out as a whisper:
“Take me to him.”
Elias nodded once — a hard, decisive motion.
And in that moment, Emberly felt something inside her shift.
Fear didn’t vanish — but something new pushed through it.
A cold, focused determination.
She wasn’t the little girl in the metal room anymore.
She wasn’t frozen.
Or helpless.
Or owned.
This time—
She was going after the man who made her that way.
Thunder boomed.
Elias grabbed her hand.
“Then we leave,” he said.
“Now. Before he finds us again.”
They turned toward the street.
Rain soaked their clothes.
Wind ripped at their hair.
Sirens wailed somewhere downtown.
As they stepped into the storm, Emberly looked back once.
Half expecting to see him.
Latham.
The man with the silver ring.
The man from the tall shadows.
The man who whispered her name like a command.
But there was nothing behind them.
Nothing except an empty street drenched in stormwater.
Elias squeezed her hand.
“Stay close,” he murmured. “We’re not safe yet.”
They disappeared into the night.
But Emberly knew something with sharp clarity:
Latham was already on their trail.
And he wasn’t coming to finish the past.
He was coming to reclaim what he believed was his.
---
- Writer
