The Ghost Protocol
1431 Words
The click of Damien’s safety being disengaged sounded like a mountain cracking in the silence of the alley.
Melissa didn't breathe. The red light from the streetlamps bled into the rain, turning the world into a fever dream of crimson and shadows. She looked at the man she had loved the man who had supposedly killed her, then supposedly saved her and saw the tremor in his hand.
“Do it,” Ace hissed from the sidelines, his scarred face twisted in a mask of ecstatic cruelty. “Shoot her, Damien. Kill the 402nd version of your precious wife. Let’s see if the 403rd comes out of the pod with the same fire in her eyes, or if she finally wakes up as the mindless doll we designed her to be.”
Melissa’s head throbbed. The high frequency tone Ace had triggered was still vibrating in her skull, shaking loose fragments of images that felt like shards of glass.
A white room. A needle. Her father’s voice saying: "She is the perfect vessel."
“Damien,” Melissa whispered, her voice cracking. “Is that all I am? A save game? A reset button for your conscience?”
Damien’s eyes were tortured, but he didn't lower the weapon. “You don’t understand the scale of what they’re building, Melissa. If I don't trigger the reset now, the Thorne Corporation’s kill switch will fry your brain permanently. This is the only way to keep you.”
“To keep me?” she spat, a sudden, cold clarity washing over the pain. “You’re not trying to keep me. You’re trying to keep your property.”
Something inside Melissa snapped. It wasn't a bone; it was a barrier.
A string of binary code seemed to flash across her vision. Suddenly, the way Damien held his gun looked amateur. She could see the slight lean in his stance, the way his weight was distributed, the 0.5 second delay it would take for his finger to squeeze the trigger.
[REBIRTH PROTOCOL: ACTIVATED]
[SUB-ROUTINE: DEFENSE OVERRIDE]
The world slowed.
Damien fired.
Melissa didn't scream. She pivoted on her heel, her body moving with a fluid, terrifying grace that no socialite heiress should possess. The bullet hissed past her ear, grazing the glass of the stasis pod behind her.
Before Damien could realign his sights, Melissa was inside his guard. She didn't use the knife this time; she used her palms. She struck his wrist, sending the HK VP9 skittering across the wet asphalt, and followed up with a brutal elbow to his jaw.
Damien stumbled back, shock replacing the guilt on his face. “Melissa, stop! You’re triggering the combat sub routine! It will burn out your heart!”
“Then let it burn!” she shrieked.
She turned her attention to Ace. The scarred twin’s smirk vanished as Melissa launched herself at him. He tried to raise the remote, but she was a blur of black silk and red hair. She caught his arm, twisted it until the bone groaned, and slammed him against the brick wall of the alley.
“The remote, Ace,” she growled, her voice sounding deeper, layered with a strange, metallic resonance. “Turn it off.”
“I can’t,” Ace wheezed, even as he tried to reach for a hidden blade in his sleeve. “It’s a master-slave link. Once the tone starts, the only way it stops is with the death of the Subject.”
Melissa felt her heart racing not at a human pace, but like a high performance engine redlining. Her skin felt hot, the rain evaporating off her shoulders in faint wisps of steam.
“Melissa! Look at me!”
Damien was back on his feet, but he wasn't reaching for his gun. He was reaching into his inner pocket. He pulled out a small, silver vial. “The tone is an induction loop. It’s forcing your nanites to overwrite your personality. If you don’t take the suppressant, 'Melissa' will be gone forever. You’ll just be a weapon.”
“Why should I trust you?” she demanded, her hand tightening around Ace’s throat.
“Because I’m the one who stole the original Melissa away from the lab!” Damien shouted over the roar of the wind. “The woman I watched die in that alley two years ago... that was the first time I tried to break you out. I failed. I’ve been trying to get it right ever since. Every reset is a new attempt to save the woman I love from the machine her father turned her into!”
Ace laughed, a wet, choking sound. “He’s lying, 402. He’s not saving you. He’s perfecting you. Every time you die, he tweaks the code. He’s not looking for his wife. He’s looking for the ultimate assassin.”
Melissa looked from the man with the gun to the man with the scar. Both Vane brothers were monsters. Both were liars. And both were obsessed with the ghost of a woman who might not even exist anymore.
The pain in her head reached a crescendo. Her vision turned white.
“Subject 402, status check,” a cold, female voice echoed in her mind. It wasn't her voice. It was the system. “Stability at 12%. Immediate reset required.”
“No,” Melissa whispered.
She let go of Ace and snatched the remote from his hand. She didn't turn it off. She crushed it in her bare palm, the electronics sparking against her skin.
Then, she turned to the stasis pod the 403rd version of herself.
The woman inside was beautiful. Still. A blank canvas.
“You want a reset?” Melissa looked at Damien, her eyes glowing with an eerie, golden luminescence. “Here is your reset.”
She picked up Damien’s fallen gun. She didn't point it at him. She pointed it at the glass pod.
“Melissa, don't!” Damien screamed.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
She emptied the magazine into the pod. The reinforced glass shattered, and the nutrient fluid spilled out like a ruptured womb, washing over the grime of the alley. The body inside slumped forward, a lifeless shell that would never wake up.
Melissa dropped the gun. The golden glow in her eyes flickered and died. The high frequency tone in the air vanished, replaced by the heavy thrum of the rain.
She felt her heart slow down. The heat left her skin, leaving her shivering and cold in her tattered gown.
Ace was staring at the destroyed pod in horror. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? That was the last viable Thorne Vane hybrid. There are no more backups. If you die now...”
“If I die now, I stay dead,” Melissa said, her voice trembling but certain. She looked at Damien, who was staring at her as if she were a stranger. “No more resets, Damien. No more 'tweaking the code.' From this second on, I am the only Melissa Thorne there is. And if you ever try to 'save' me again, I’ll use that combat programming to make sure you’re the one who needs a backup.”
Damien took a step toward her, his face a mask of grief and awe. “Melissa...”
“Stay back,” she warned, backing toward the mouth of the alley. “You wanted a lethal bride, Damien. You wanted a queen who could survive the Vane Syndicate.”
She wiped a streak of blood and rain from her cheek, her gaze hardening into something unbreakable.
“Well, congratulations. You got her. But here’s the thing about queens, Damien...”
She paused at the edge of the darkness, the city lights reflecting in her narrowed eyes.
“They eventually grow tired of their Kings.”
As Melissa disappeared into the night, Damien reached down and picked up a damp piece of paper that had fallen from her gown during the fight. It was a photo she had brought from her "future" memories.
It was a picture of Melissa and Damien on their wedding day, smiling. But as Damien turned it over, his blood ran cold.
Written in Melissa’s handwriting but dated three years before they ever met were the words:
“Don't believe his lies. There were never 402 clones. There were only two. Find the other one before he finds you.”
Damien looked up at Ace, who was slowly standing up, a sinister grin spreading across his scarred face.
“Which one did we just let walk away, Brother?” Ace whispered.
- Writer
