CHAPTER 13: THE BOY WHO LIED WITH HIS EYES
1317 Words
The door exploded inward.
Metal slammed against concrete.
Men in black uniforms flooded into the control room with weapons raised.
“STEP AWAY FROM THE TERMINAL!”
Everything happened too fast.
Eva grabbed my arm instantly.
“Move!”
Gunfire exploded through the room.
Sparks burst from the walls beside us while Eva pulled me behind overturned desks.
My ears rang violently.
I couldn’t think.
Couldn’t breathe.
Only one sentence kept repeating inside my head:
He was your handler.
No.
No, that couldn’t be true.
Not Adrian.
Not the man who looked at me like losing me would destroy him.
Another shot shattered one of the monitors.
Glass rained across the floor.
Eva shoved a g*n into my hands suddenly.
“Take it.”
I stared at it in shock.
“I don’t know how to use this.”
“You don’t need to shoot,” she snapped. “You just need to survive.”
More footsteps echoed from the corridor.
Too many.
They were surrounding us.
Eva cursed quietly under her breath.
Then the monitor flickered again.
Static flashed across the screen before the video continued by itself.
Version Zero looked directly into the camera.
And spoke calmly while chaos exploded around me.
“If you reached this memory, it means I finally learned the truth about Adrian.”
My heart nearly stopped.
Eva looked toward the screen instantly.
“You need to hear this,” she whispered.
Gunfire continued outside our cover.
The organization wasn’t rushing toward us anymore.
They were waiting.
Like they wanted something.
Or someone.
The screen flickered harder.
“Adrian Keller entered Project Lazarus four years before my first death.”
A photo appeared beside the recording.
Adrian.
Younger.
Expressionless.
Standing beside scientists wearing Lazarus badges.
No warmth in his eyes.
No softness.
Nothing.
The Adrian I loved suddenly felt far away.
Version Zero continued speaking.
“At first, he followed every order.”
Pain twisted sharply inside my chest.
“No…”
Eva looked at me carefully.
“Alina—”
“He lied to me,” I whispered.
But even saying it hurt.
Because deep down…
part of me still wanted to defend him.
The recording continued.
“He was assigned to monitor my emotional stability during reconstruction cycles.”
Another image appeared.
Me.
Or Version Zero.
Sitting inside a white observation room while Adrian stood outside the glass watching silently.
My stomach turned violently.
I remembered that room.
The lights.
The cold.
And Adrian’s voice saying:
“Can you tell me your name?”
Tears burned behind my eyes instantly.
That memory wasn’t romantic.
It was clinical.
Like I had been someone they were studying.
Version Zero’s voice softened slightly.
“But something changed after the second cycle.”
The image on screen shifted again.
This time Adrian was holding me.
Not professionally.
Not coldly.
Like someone terrified of losing the only thing keeping him alive.
“He broke protocol.”
The screen glitched violently.
Then:
“He fell in love with me.”
Silence filled my chest.
Even the gunfire outside suddenly felt distant.
Because somehow…
that truth hurt more than the lies.
Eva slowly lowered her weapon.
“He tried to protect you after that,” she whispered.
I looked at the screen again.
Adrian’s face froze there beside mine.
One cold.
One smiling.
Before everything broke apart.
“Then why reset me?” I asked quietly.
Eva closed her eyes briefly.
“Because every time you remembered too much… your body started failing.”
The answer shattered something inside me.
Version Zero continued:
“The emotional retention became unstable. Every restored version eventually collapsed after remembering enough.”
Another memory slammed into me suddenly.
A hospital room.
Machines screaming.
Adrian gripping my hand tightly while doctors shouted around us.
And my own weak voice whispering:
“Don’t let them rebuild me again…”
The memory disappeared violently.
I gasped sharply.
Eva caught my arm before I fell.
“You’re remembering faster now.”
My breathing became uneven.
“He kept bringing me back…”
Eva nodded slowly.
“Because he couldn’t let you die.”
A loud voice suddenly echoed through the control room.
“Step away from the girl.”
Every muscle in my body froze.
I knew that voice instantly.
Adrian.
The armed men slowly moved aside.
And then he stepped through the broken doorway.
Rainwater dripped from his black coat.
There was blood near his shoulder.
But his eyes—
God.
His eyes looked completely destroyed.
Not cold.
Not emotionless.
Destroyed.
The second he saw me holding the g*n, something painful crossed his face.
“Alina.”
The way he said my real name nearly broke me.
Eva immediately raised her weapon toward him.
“Don’t come closer.”
Adrian ignored her completely.
His eyes stayed locked on me.
“I know what you saw.”
My throat tightened painfully.
“Was any of it real?”
The question came out smaller than I wanted.
Adrian stopped moving.
For one second, nobody spoke.
Then quietly—
“Yes.”
Tears instantly filled my eyes.
“What part?”
His expression cracked.
“All of it.”
Silence.
The storm outside thundered violently.
The armed men stayed perfectly still, waiting for orders.
But Adrian only looked at me.
Like none of them mattered.
“You were my handler,” I whispered.
His jaw tightened immediately.
“At first.”
Pain spread through my chest.
“So you admit it.”
“I never wanted to lie to you.”
I laughed weakly through tears.
“That’s funny.”
Adrian looked like the sound physically hurt him.
“I was supposed to monitor you,” he admitted quietly. “But after the second reconstruction… I stopped seeing you as a subject.”
My breathing became shaky again.
“You reset me.”
His eyes closed briefly.
“Because you were dying.”
The words hit like a knife.
“I watched you die three times,” he whispered. “Do you have any idea what that does to someone?”
Emotion cracked through his voice completely at the end.
Real emotion.
Raw.
Broken.
And somehow that made everything worse.
Because liars weren’t supposed to sound devastated.
“You should have let me go,” I whispered.
Adrian looked at me like those words destroyed him from the inside.
“I tried.”
Silence.
Then slowly, he stepped closer.
The guards tensed instantly.
Eva raised the g*n higher.
But Adrian ignored all of it.
“Every version of you remembered me eventually,” he said softly. “And every version suffered because of it.”
A tear slid down my face silently.
“So what now?”
His expression darkened immediately.
“They want to erase Version Zero permanently.”
I frowned slightly.
“What does that mean?”
Adrian looked directly into my eyes.
“It means if they capture you tonight…”
His voice nearly broke again.
“…Alina Vale disappears forever.”
The room went silent.
Completely silent.
Because suddenly I understood the real danger.
Not death.
Erasure.
Becoming someone else again.
Forgetting everything.
Forgetting him.
The thought terrified me more than dying.
Eva stepped beside me carefully.
“We don’t have much time.”
Adrian nodded once.
“They already started the purge protocol.”
Fear crawled slowly into my stomach.
“Purge?”
Adrian looked toward the flickering monitors.
“All Lazarus data is being destroyed.”
My heart stopped slightly.
“The memories…”
“Yes.”
The black box suddenly felt heavier in my hands.
Like it was carrying an entire life.
Adrian looked back at me one final time.
Then he said the one thing I never expected to hear.
“You were never supposed to survive this long.”
And somehow…
the sadness in his voice hurt more than the words themselves.
chapter 14 coming soon..........
- Writer
