Episode 10
1192 Words
Secrets in the Shadows
The storm had passed, but the tension hadn’t.
Isla sat motionless on her bed, the half-shattered window leaking in cool air and the faint scent of pine and rain. The glass sparkled like ice across the floor, but her focus was on the last thing she’d seen through that opening….Kael.
He was drenched, ferocious. Still his eyes had found hers like a thread snapping taut between them.
But there was Vespera.
She hadn’t spoken, but Isla didn’t need her to. Her presence was enough. Those violet eyes had whispered threats without sound. Isla could still feel them pressing against her chest like claws.
She wrapped her arms around herself and whispered to the dark, “What am I even doing here?”
There was no answer.
Only the soft pulse of the crescent mark above her heart.
The facility was quiet by 3 a.m., just how she needed it.
She dressed in black, moved carefully, and slipped Rosie’s borrowed override code into the hallway access panel without hesitation. She didn’t know exactly what she was looking for, only that Vespera’s words had crawled under her skin and wouldn’t let go.
Ask your mother why she ran.
She hadn’t thought of her mother in years. Not like that. The woman had vanished from her life so completely, it felt like a wound she’d learned to breathe around. But now? Now she wasn’t so sure the story she’d grown up with was the truth.
The administrative wing felt sterile and hollow. She passed long corridors of shuttered offices until she reached the small steel door marked “ARCHIVE ACCESS: RESTRICTED.”
Her hand hesitated over the panel.
Then she typed her mother’s name.
Adele Carter.
One match. Sealed file.
Heart thudding, Isla bypassed the security lock with Rosie’s access string.
The file opened.
First it was an image of her mother. Younger. Strong-jawed. Her eyes fierce and intelligent. In her arms, a baby with dark curls and a frown that looked eerily familiar.
Employee ID: Adele Carter. Genetics Division. Level B Clearance.
Isla blinked. Her mother had worked here?
She clicked deeper.
Medical logs. Blood reports. Surveillance summaries. Phrases leapt out of the screen like venom.
“Dormant shift genes.”
“Moonborn strain detected—suppression advised.”
“Subject Carter, A.: withdrew from testing after personal complications. Status: AWOL.”
AWOL.
Her mother had run, just like Vespera said.
And now Isla knew what form. Her hands shook. She couldn’t breathe.
She heard a sharp sound outside.
Voices.
She shut the screen, slid the chair back, and slipped into the shadows behind a cabinet. Just in time.
The door creaked open. She heard footsteps. A man’s voice.
“I thought this wing was cleared.”
Another voice, female this time. “Admin override was tripped. Someone was here.”
The footsteps stopped near the console.
There was a pause, then a dart hit her neck.
Isla gasped, spinning toward the sound, but the sedative was already flooding her bloodstream. Her knees gave out.
Everything tilted.
And as she collapsed into darkness, she saw them again.
Silver eyes.
Watching her from the hallway.
Isla floated in a dream she couldn’t wake from.
Silver trees, a silver sky.
And a woman in the distance, cloaked in white, arms outstretched.
“Daughter of the Moon,” the woman whispered. “The bloodline continues.”
Isla tried to reach for her, but her arms wouldn’t move.
“You must choose… but you must awaken first.”
Then the forest shattered.
Fire. Screams. A name in the smoke.
“Isla!”
She heard Kael’s voice.
She jerked awake.
**********
The lights overhead hummed.
Isla blinked, disoriented, struggling to sit up.
Leather straps crossed her chest, wrists, and ankles. It was cold, tight.
Her surroundings weren’t familiar. This wasn’t the infirmary.
This room was darker, it smelt like ancient runes. Symbols lined the corners of the ceiling—some etched into metal, some painted in red.
The restraints burned faintly against her skin. And something inside her, a feeling she didn’t understand—recoiled from them.
Beyond the thin curtain, voices murmured.
“She’s stable for now,” said a man.
Another answered, sharper. “Only because she’s sedated. The blood test confirmed it. She’s one of them.”
“We’ll start mapping the genetic response at daybreak.”
“Don’t damage the source,” a new voice warned, smooth and female.
Vespera.
“We need her intact.”
Isla’s heart raced. She pulled at the restraints, but they didn’t budge. Panic flooded her chest, then froze as a shadow passed the curtain.
Isla shut her eyes. A hand brushed her forehead. Then everywhere went silence.
The shadow left, but the fear lingered in Isla’s heart.
She didn’t understand what they were doing to her. Only that it felt like she was being studied, not cared for. Like an animal.
How much time passed, Isla didn’t know.
She drifted in and out of sleep. Each time she opened her eyes, the room was dim, the straps still tight.
No visitors, no answers. Until one night…
A sudden bang startled her awake.
The door burst open.
And Kael stood in the frame, wild and dripping rain, eyes blazing.
Her breath caught.
“Kael?” she croaked.
He was at her side in three strides, hands working quickly at the restraints.
“What did they do to you?” he growled, his voice rough with fury.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “They drugged me. I saw… I saw files. About my mom. She worked here.”
Kael paused, his jaw tightening. “I know.”
The final strap fell away, and she struggled to sit up, dizzy.
He caught her shoulders. “Easy. We need to get you out of here.”
“But….”
“No time,” he said. “They’ll come back.”
Kael leaned against the cold concrete wall, breathing hard, soaked to the bone, but the storm inside him was worse.
He had felt it.
The exact moment her fear peaked and vanished into nothing.
They had her.
He closed his eyes and whispered her name like a prayer he didn’t deserve.
“I should’ve stayed away.”
But he couldn’t.
Not when every part of her called to what little humanity he had left.
She was the only softness in his life of violence, and now they wanted to carve her open and call it science.
He didn’t know what he was becoming.
But if they hurt her…..He would become worse.
He would become unstoppable.
For her.
Isla gripped his shirt, chest heaving. “Kael… something’s wrong with me.”
“I know,” he murmured. “But it’s not wrong. It’s you.”
Her lip trembled. “I’m scared.”
He cupped her face. “You have every right to be.”
Footsteps sounded down the hall.
Kael stood, lifting her into his arms without effort. “Hold on to me.”
She did, tight.
Not because he was her escape.
But because somehow… even in the madness…
He felt like the only real thing left.
- Writer
