The memory knife
903 Words
Sleep never came.
Instead, I drifted in and out of something far worse—half-dreams, stitched together by blood and static. The kind that left me gasping in the dark, unsure whether the screams I heard were mine or someone else’s.
By sunrise, I was a ghost in silk pajamas, pacing my room like a caged thing.
Something was wrong.
More wrong than before.
There was a pressure building behind my eyes, like a dam cracking, about to flood my mind with something I wasn’t ready to remember. Something I wasn’t supposed to.
I stood in front of the mirror, searching for myself.
But I couldn’t find her.
Not the Evelyn Ravencroft who smiled for press photos.
Not the perfect daughter who gave speeches about diplomacy and charity.
She was gone.
Replaced by something I didn’t recognize.
Something watching me from the inside.
A knock came.
Three short taps. Quiet. Controlled.
Cassian.
I opened the door.
He stepped in, his eyes scanning me instantly. His jaw clenched at the sight of me—pale, shaking, barefoot on cold marble.
“You didn’t sleep,” he said.
I shook my head.
“Something’s happening to me,” I whispered. “I’m losing time. I’m remembering things that don’t feel like mine.”
“What do you mean?”
I hesitated.
“I see places I’ve never been. People I don’t know. And... training. Like combat drills. But it’s all jumbled. Like it’s buried under something. I think I’m—”
“Being triggered.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Triggered. Like sleeper agents in covert programs.” He lowered his voice. “Project Siren. You’ve heard of it.”
My throat closed.
The name sent lightning through me.
I had heard of it. Once. A whisper. A classified folder with redacted pages and a symbol I couldn’t forget—a black star with a slit across it, like a severed eye.
“They were training royal bloodlines,” Cassian said. “For psychological weaponization. Girls with specific genetics. High emotional control. Superior memory suppression. Until someone flipped the switch.”
“You’re saying I’m one of them?”
“You don’t just wake up with the skills to wrap a body in triple-layered plastic, Evelyn.”
“Then who trained me?”
His silence was the loudest answer.
“My father?” I choked. “You think he knew?”
“I think...” He looked away. “I think he thought he could protect you from it.”
I backed away, my breath catching. “You’re not making sense.”
“Yes, I am. You just don’t want to hear it.”
His voice was calm. Too calm.
“I think they tried to erase it from you,” he said. “Whatever they did. Whatever they made you do. But something—someone—triggered it again.”
My knees buckled. I sat hard on the edge of my bed.
The room spun.
My fingers shook as they gripped the duvet.
“There was a man,” I whispered. “The one I... killed. He said something before it happened. About a file. About my father. And then it all went blank.”
Cassian knelt in front of me, eyes burning.
“What did he call you?”
“Eve.”
His jaw tightened.
“That’s your Siren name,” he said.
I flinched.
“It’s what they used to identify you inside the program. Eve. Silent. Lethal. Untouchable.”
I buried my face in my hands. “This can’t be real.”
“It is. And they’re going to keep hunting you now.”
“They?”
“The ones who activated you. Or the ones who want to shut you down.”
A silence fell between us.
Thick. Suffocating.
Finally, I looked up at him. “Why are you helping me?”
His expression didn’t waver.
“Because I was assigned to you five years ago as your bodyguard. But I stayed because I care. And now, because I know what they turned you into. And you deserve to know too.”
He pulled something from his coat pocket.
A photo.
Black and white. Grainy.
It was... me.
Younger. Hair tied back. Covered in blood.
Eyes dead.
In the corner of the photo, scribbled in faded ink:
PROJECT SIREN: SUBJECT 7—EVE.
I stared at the image, my pulse screaming.
“Where did you get this?”
“Off a hard drive I recovered from a fallen intelligence operative. The same man you...” he paused. “The same man who died at the bridge.”
My stomach turned.
“You mean he was trying to help me?” I whispered.
“Or trying to wake you up,” Cassian said. “Maybe both.”
I curled into myself, shaking. “I need to know. Everything. Every file. Every mission. Every person I’ve hurt. I want the truth.”
“Then we have to be faster than your father’s team. Because once they confirm the DNA from the bridge, it won’t matter who you used to be.”
“I’ll be the enemy,” I said.
“No.” He met my gaze. “You’ll be their greatest weapon... or their greatest threat.”
And suddenly I realized—
The question wasn’t Did I kill that man?
It was:
What else have I done...
that I don’t remember?
- Writer
