Chapter Two : In the Wake of Fire (Part 1)
757 Words
They say you can’t run from your past. But Ivy Marlowe had already done the impossible—she’d come back from it.
Not completely. Her face still wore the fire. Her memory still stitched itself together in strange places. And now her name sat tucked into a black folder labeled Trial Subject—a folder that shouldn’t exist.
Ivy stood on the roof of a four-story parking deck, her breath visible in the chill morning air. From here, the city buzzed with early noise. Horns. Sirens. Lives being lived.
She pressed her back against a concrete pillar and checked the burner phone Anton had given her. No signal here. Good.
She pulled out the printout he'd handed her in a sealed envelope. Names. IDs. Lab logs. Coordinated time stamps that suggested everything from unauthorized drug trials to remote memory induction testing.
Her name appeared on page six. Just below another one.
ELLIS, DANIKA – Status: Terminated
Ivy’s grip tightened.
Danika hadn’t invited her to that gala just to take pictures. She was trying to warn her. Maybe trying to get her to see something. But they hadn’t had time.
And now Danika was dead. And Ivy wasn’t.
Why?
The only clue sat in the lab log's meeting roster: a name Ivy had almost managed to forget.
Dr. Rhys Calder.
She closed her eyes.
Calder had once been a respected neuroscientist, specializing in trauma recovery through brainwave synchronization. Ivy had interviewed him years ago, after a medical conference in Berlin. He was brilliant. Ambitious. Dangerous in a quiet, methodical way.
He’d also had a theory: that trauma could be reversed by rewriting the pathways it carved.
She hadn’t taken him seriously. Until now.
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Three hours later, Ivy was in a stolen coat, riding the Red Line train toward the Potomac Institute—a shell corporation fronting as a cognitive therapy clinic.
Anton had found the address, hacked their visitor logs, and confirmed that Rhys Calder had checked in three days before the bombing. That meant he hadn’t died in the blast.
Which also meant he might know why someone had tried to kill her.
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Potomac Institute – Suburban Maryland
The building was sleek—glass, marble, and gray steel nestled behind a gate of motion detectors and facial recognition cameras.
Ivy ducked behind a courier van and adjusted the baseball cap on her head. Her scar itched under the tension of surveillance.
Using Anton’s credentials, she entered through a side door coded for maintenance. Once inside, she slipped into an elevator and tapped the basement level.
The hum of fluorescent lights buzzed overhead as the doors opened.
She stepped into silence.
Hallway. White. Clean. Too clean.
It didn’t smell like a hospital. It smelled like bleach and something else—something metallic. Like a lab.
She passed two doors before stopping at one marked:
“Cognitive Alignment Recovery – Session Room 3”
Voices came from inside.
She crouched, ear to the seam.
“…she’s a variable now,” said one voice. Male. Tight.
“You should have terminated her,” said another. Female. Cold. “We can’t risk her remembering what happened in Phase Three.”
“She doesn’t remember,” the male voice insisted. “She’s unstable. Still processing false memories.”
False memories?
Ivy’s throat went dry.
“She remembers enough to run,” the woman replied. “Which means she remembers enough to talk.”
“Then what do we do?”
A pause.
“Let her lead us to the backups. Then eliminate her.”
Ivy backed away, heart pounding.
She turned—only to find herself face-to-face with a man in a black lab coat.
He blinked.
“Ms. Marlowe?”
She didn’t think. She slammed her fist into his throat and ran.
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She didn’t stop until she reached the fire exit. Alarms screamed as she kicked open the door and bolted into the alley behind the building.
The cold air slapped her awake. Her lungs burned. Her side screamed with pain.
But she didn’t stop running.
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Later, in Anton’s safe house, Ivy pored over the notes again. Her head spun.
False memories. Rewritten pathways. A list of test subjects, all marked as either "Unstable" or "Eliminated." Danika’s name among them.
Her own name marked Survived—but not "escaped."
Survived what?
“What did they do to me?” she whispered.
Anton looked up from his computer. “I don’t think they erased your memory.”
She stared at him.
“I think they rewrote it.”
- Writer
