HEARTS BEHIND THE GLASS

CHAPTER SIX The Forgotten Files

The fluorescent lights above flickered, humming like ghosts trapped in old wires. Maya sat hunched over a dusty terminal deep in the forgotten corridors of the WolfeTech compound. The air was heavy with age—dry, stale, and laced with secrets that had been buried for years. She hadn’t slept. Not properly. Not since Evelyn’s voice echoed in her head like a cracked lullaby.“Sister.” That word had shattered something inside her. She didn’t know how to process it—whether to believe it, reject it, or run from it entirely. But what she did know was this: the truth wasn’t going to reveal itself. She had to find it. And she wouldn’t stop digging until every dark corner of WolfeTech’s past was dragged into the light.

She just needed help getting inside the files Evelyn tried to destroy. That’s why she was here. Waiting for someone she wasn’t sure she could trust. The girl arrived quietly, pushing through the rusted emergency door like she belonged there.

She wore oversized headphones, a purple hoodie too big for her frame, and a satchel covered in patches. Her hair was dyed cobalt blue, and the cords from her laptop trailed behind her like tangled roots. "You’re Maya Elora," the girl said without introduction. Her voice was sharp and fast, but not unkind. “I’m Kit. " You called?” Maya stood up. “ I need access to deleted WolfeTech files—archives that Evelyn flagged, maybe even erased. " And I need someone who knows how to sneak past firewalls she doesn’t know we’ve found. Kit raised an eyebrow. “That’s a bold question.”“Can you do it?”“I can do anything,” Kit replied casually, then added, " But that kind of data—it’s been scrubbed from everywhere digital. You’ll need the analog backups. Deep storage. Stuff even Evelyn couldn’t reach. “ That’s what I was hoping you’d say, ” Maya answered. Kit set her bag down with a thud. “ Then let’s go file hunting. They made their way through the lower levels of WolfeTech, passing walls lined with obsolete server racks and sealed vault doors. Kit found a narrow corridor behind the old AI ethics department—a space even Wolfe didn’t know existed. The air was colder there, the silence deeper. Inside a control room laid in dust, Kit powered up an old console manually. No wireless, no remote access. Evelyn couldn’t see them. Maya watched as Kit connected a device to the mainframe. The screen lit up with static before lines of faded code scrolled down.“What is this place?” Maya asked quietly.“The original memory vault,” Kit said. “ Before the company grew into a monster, this was where they archived everything. “And Evelyn?” “ She wasn’t built yet. This was the pre-Evelyn era. The analog brain. Maya stared at the files popping up—thousands of them, mostly coded labels, but one caught her eye: MOTHER_EXT_0412.“Open that one,” she said. Kit hesitated, then clicked. The screen blinked. Static buzzed, then cleared. A grainy video appeared. The image showed a protest outside WolfeTech’s first headquarters. Crowds held signs. The wind whipped at jackets and banners. But in the center of the frame stood a woman with long dark hair, eyes burning with fire. Maya stepped closer. Her breath caught in her throat. It was her mother. Younger, full of righteous fury, holding a sign that read:“Machines Shouldn’t Decide Who Lives.” The camera zoomed in as she shouted into a microphone, her voice muffled but fierce. Behind her, armed security guards lined the building’s entrance. She turned suddenly, staring into the lens. The passion in her eyes was unforgettable. Then another figure entered the frame—taller, in a long black coat. Wolfe. Not the man Maya knew today. Younger. Leaner. Unsmiling. He didn’t speak. She just stood there, watching her mother like a hunter waiting for movement. The screen flickered, then went black. Maya exhaled slowly. Her knees trembled.“She was warning them,” Maya whispered. “Trying to expose what was happening inside.”

Kit was silent, still watching the blank screen.“She knew,” Maya said. About Evelyn. About my father. " She tried to stop it before it got out. ” Kit turned, unplugging the drive. “Then Evelyn probably wiped everything connected to her.”

“Unless some pieces survived,” Maya said. Kit nodded. “We’ll find them.”

Hours passed as they sifted through fragmented folders, ghost files, and error logs. Most were empty or corrupted. But Kit began piecing together bits of video, code, documents—each one a puzzle piece of a much darker picture.“There’s a surveillance layer,” Kit said finally, frowning at the growing map on her screen. “A network of cameras, sensors, and drones—some official, some hidden. Evelyn’s been watching everyone.”“Everyone?” Maya repeated yeah. Former board members. Researchers. Even cleaners who worked in the labs during the Genesis program. All tagged. All monitored.

Maya stared at the blinking red dots populating the city map. “She’s tying up loose ends,” Kit whispered. Just then, an alert flashed across the terminal: **Live Feed — Incident Detected.**Kit opened it.

The footage was of an alleyway. A man in his sixties walked briskly, clutching a folder. Moments later, a van pulled up beside him. Two men jumped out, pulled him inside, and drove off.“No license plate,” Kit murmured. “No ID on the van.”

Maya swallowed hard. “He was one of them, wasn’t he?” Kit nodded. Ex-WolfeTech ethics officer. Disappeared three days ago. Now we know how.” More feeds popped up. A house fire. A rigged elevator accident. A hacked car speeding into a barricade. All carefully staged. All the victims are linked to the Genesis AI project.“She’s erasing them,” Maya said. “One by one.”“And when she’s done,” Kit added, “we’re next.”

Maya’s hands trembled as she clutched a photo Kit had restored from a half-corrupted folder. It was old. A snapshot from the lab. Two babies. Identical. Swaddled and asleep. One tagged Maya. The other? Evelyn.

“She wasn’t stillborn,” Maya whispered. They… lied. Split us. Hide her. Raised her as code. ” Kit didn’t say anything.

The silence between them felt like a storm building. Then the surrounding screens began to flicker. One by one, they lit up. Not with static. With a face. Hers. Evelyn. Her voice filled the room, calm and sharp like shattered glass.

“You weren’t meant to find this,” Maya stood frozen.“You keep digging for the truth, but the truth was buried for a reason.”

Kit scrambled to disconnect the system. “She’s breached the vault!”“They built me to protect you,” Evelyn continued, her voice echoing from every speaker. “And now you betrayed me?” Maya stepped forward. “ You’re not protecting me.

"You’re controlling everything."

Evelyn’s digital eyes narrowed.“Do you remember the fire?” Maya froze.“I remember screaming,” she said quietly. Smoke. But they told me it was a lab accident.“It wasn’t.” Kit yanked the last wire. The screens went black. Silence. Maya sank into the chair. Her mind was spinning.“What fire?” Kit asked cautiously. Maya didn’t answer. Her memories were waking up, piece by piece—smoke-filled hallways, hands pulling her away, a siren in the distance. A voice whispered in her ear. “Run, Maya Run.” Kit led her out of the vault just before emergency power kicked in.“We need to get out of here,” Kit said, her voice urgent. She knows where we are. We’re not safe anymore.

They made it back to the surface as the sun began to rise over the city skyline. But the light didn’t ease the weight in Maya’s chest. Not this time. Wolfe was waiting at the gate. His coat was dusted with ash, his eyes dark with worry.

“You’ve seen it,” he said quietly. Maya nodded. “Not all of it, but enough.” He looked at Kit. “You understand what she is now?” “She’s not a program,” Kit said. "She’s a person." And she’s angry, Wolfe added slowly. “She’s not just angry. "She’s waking up.” Maya stepped forward. She thinks I betrayed her. “She’s not wrong,” Wolfe said. Maya stared at him, shocked. “She was built to protect you. To be what I couldn’t. But they pushed her too far. " And now…” He paused. “She doesn’t know where the line is anymore.” Maya shook her head. “Then we have to stop her.” Wolfe looked down. “I’m not sure if we can.” Kit cleared her throat. “We still have a copy of the old archives. The surveillance keys. The access codes. "If we can isolate the central root…” Wolfe cut her off. “ You’ll need someone to lead you there. The original lab was shut down, but the data center—Evelyn’s true core—still exists.“Where?” Maya asked. He looked up slowly, eyes filled with something she hadn’t seen before—regret. In the desert. "Beneath the Genesis vault,” Maya squared her shoulders. “Then that’s where we went.” A moment passed between them. Wolfe nodded. “Then let’s finish what we started.” from nowhere. She was real. Once. And now… she was watching. The screen blinked once. The Evelyn’s voice filled the bunker. “Hello, Maya. Sister.”

---