chapter 10/11
1333 Words
Chapter Ten — The Awakening
(Adira’s POV)
The air turned heavy.
My breath fogged the glass as I stepped closer to the tank.
She didn’t move.
Her body floated in a slow, eerie stillness — pale skin bathed in a greenish light, eyes open but distant, like they were staring through me.
My mother.
I pressed my palm against the glass, my voice barely a whisper.
> “Mom?”
No response.
Just the faint hum of the machines still pulsing with unnatural life.
The tank was labeled Eden Prototype 01-A — “Mara.”
Prototype. Not patient. Not subject.
Prototype.
My flashlight beam slipped lower — to the control panel. It was still powered.
Buttons blinked weakly: Purge, Drain, Reanimate.
My pulse thundered in my ears.
This place had been dead for over a decade.
How was there still power?
A shadow flickered across the room.
I spun — flashlight raised — nothing.
Just that whisper again.
> “Adira… run…”
Only this time, it wasn’t from behind the door.
It came from the speakers above me — faint, glitching, like a recorded voice bleeding through static.
> “Adira… if you’re hearing this… don’t let them find you…”
My mother’s voice. Recorded. Shaking.
The console beeped.
A small screen lit up with a single message:
> “Sequence Incomplete. Awaiting Command Input.”
And below it, a blinking prompt:
> > Reanimate Protocol? [Y/N]
My fingers hovered over the key.
This was insane.
I didn’t even know if she was alive in there — or if pressing that key would destroy everything left of her.
Then the door behind me creaked open.
I froze.
Footsteps — soft but deliberate — echoed down the corridor.
The beam of a flashlight swept across the walls.
A man’s voice:
> “Adira? Step away from the tank.”
My stomach twisted.
It was Lior.
He walked in, face drawn tight, his eyes locking on the glass chamber. His usual calm was gone — replaced by something like terror.
> “You shouldn’t have come here,” he said, low. “You don’t know what that thing is.”
> “That thing is my mother!” I snapped.
> “No,” he whispered. “That was your mother. What’s in there now… isn’t.”
The word hit me like a blade.
He moved toward the console, hand outstretched — but I blocked him.
> “Tell me what you did to her!”
His jaw clenched. “I tried to stop it. But the project… it wasn’t about healing or research. They were building something else — something that could mimic life.”
The tank hissed again.
The liquid began to bubble, faintly at first — then violently.
Lior’s eyes went wide.
> “What did you touch?”
> “Nothing!”
The alarms blared — shrill and metallic. Lights flashed red. The control screen flickered with lines of code, faster and faster.
> > REANIMATION SEQUENCE INITIALIZED
Lior lunged for the power switch.
> “Adira, get out!”
But I couldn’t move.
Inside the tank, her hand — my mother’s hand — twitched.
Then it pressed slowly against the glass, matching mine.
Her eyes rolled downward, then locked onto me.
And she smiled.
Not warmly.
Not humanly.
Just a slow, hollow curve of the lips.
The tank shattered with a deafening c***k, fluid exploding across the floor.
And from the green haze, she stepped out.
Chapter Eleven — Echoes of the Dead
(Adira’s POV)
Darkness.
Cold.
A slow drip echoed somewhere above me.
I tried to move, but my body felt heavy — like I’d been buried under water.
When I finally opened my eyes, the ceiling above me was white. Sterile. Cracked in the corners.
Hospital?
My throat burned when I tried to speak.
> “Hello?”
No answer.
Machines beeped softly beside me, but none were attached. My clothes — damp, stained — still clung to me. Someone had placed a blanket over my body but hadn’t changed me.
That’s when I knew — this wasn’t a hospital.
It was an abandoned clinic.
I pushed myself up, pain stabbing through my ribs. A faint smell of antiseptic and rot filled the air.
The last thing I remembered —
My mother’s eyes.
Her smile.
The glass shattering.
Then, darkness.
> “You’re awake.”
The voice came from the doorway.
A girl stood there — short hair, oversized jacket, a small scar running down her neck. Her face was half-hidden in the shadow, but her eyes burned with something familiar.
> “Who are you?” I whispered.
> “Name’s Nara,” she said. “And you should be dead.”
The words hit me harder than the pain.
> “What… what happened?”
She stepped closer, her boots scraping the floor.
> “Three nights ago, the Eden Biotech ruins went up in flames. The whole building collapsed. They said no one survived — not even the man you were with.”
My heart clenched.
> “Lior?”
She didn’t answer.
Instead, she handed me a small, cracked device.
A wristband. My mother’s wristband.
> “I found this in the rubble,” Nara said. “It was still active. You were lying next to it — pulse faint, no burns, no fractures. Just… out cold. Like something kept you alive.”
The words blurred in my mind.
Alive.
How?
> “You shouldn’t be walking,” she continued. “You shouldn’t even be breathing. Whatever was in that place — it changed you.”
My hands trembled. I looked down — and froze.
Behind my left ear, faint but visible under the skin, was a crescent-shaped mark.
The same mark my mother had.
> “No…”
Nara’s gaze softened for a moment.
> “You need to leave Velora. Before they find you. Before she finds you.”
> “She?”
Nara looked past me, toward the window, where the city’s neon glow shimmered through the dust.
> “The thing that walked out of that lab. It wasn’t your mother.”
The room fell silent.
Only my heartbeat — fast, uneven — filled the space.
Then Nara added, quietly,
> “And if the rumors are true… it’s looking for you.”
- Writer
