The door to Silas's room creaked open with a soft hiss. The scent of antiseptic and copper lingered faintly in the air.
Sienna stood at the threshold, ash still clinging to the hem of her coat. Her hair smelled like smoke and cold metal. In one hand, she held the charred remains of Dr. Chen's journal. In the other, the encrypted chip K had slipped into her palm like a curse.
Silas looked up from where he was seated—shirtless, towel draped over his shoulders. He'd just stepped out of the med-shower, but his skin still gleamed with sweat, his body lean and bruised from battles neither of them had yet named.
She shut the door behind her.
Hard.
His brows lifted. "Something on fire?"
"Everything," she said.
Then she threw the burned journal onto the table.
He stared.
She stepped closer, voice low. "You lied to me."
He didn't flinch. "I didn't lie. I just didn't tell you everything."
"That's the same thing when lives are at stake, Silas."
She reached into her pocket and slammed the chip onto the desk next to the book. "Your twin—your mirror—said you were the heir, and he was the control."
Silas stood slowly. "So you met K."
She crossed her arms. "He said you were never meant to have emotions. That you were designed to be a shell. An obedient successor."
He said nothing.
She pressed further. "Is that true?"
His voice was so quiet she almost missed it. "Yes."
Sienna took a step back.
He didn't move.
But then, with a strange, almost clinical calm, he began unbuttoning the towel from his shoulders.
And turned.
Sienna gasped.
His back—once pristine—was now fully exposed under the overhead light.
But it wasn't smooth.
It was marked.
Dozens—no, hundreds—of pale white scars crisscrossed his skin. Lines. Circles. Burn points. Injection marks.
They weren't from combat.
They were from surgery.
From experiments.
From someone carving knowledge into a child who didn't have the right to say no.
"These," Silas said, without turning, "were what made me 'viable.' I was Subject K-19B. Created as a variant after K went rogue."
He exhaled slowly, as if confessing loosened something in his ribs.
"They tried to burn emotions out of me. To program instinct without humanity. But your master—Dr. Chen—he was the only one who saw the fracture in the data."
Sienna's voice cracked. "He saved you."
Silas nodded once. "And then I buried every memory of that life."
He turned to face her.
His chest was bare too, faint marks visible even across his ribs. There was a tiny surgical line beneath his collarbone—too straight to be natural.
"And now?" she whispered.
He stepped closer.
"Now I choose what I remember. And what I protect."
Sienna looked up at him, eyes soft with horror and fury and something harder to name.
"You kept all this from me."
"I had to."
"Why?"
"Because if you knew what I was," he said, voice trembling, "you wouldn't let yourself love me."
A silence fell.
Thick. Electric.
Then—
She reached up.
Her fingers touched the longest scar across his back, trailing it gently, like tracing a constellation.
And then she whispered, "That's not your decision to make."
They didn't kiss.
But the silence after was louder than any declaration.
—
The moment was broken by the shrill beep of the encrypted comms line.
Silas turned to the terminal.
A message flashed in red:
PRIORITY ALERT – STERLING ESTATE – CODE BLACKPatient: Adrian Sterling, Sr. – Condition: Cardiac Failure – Status: CriticalETA to collapse: 2 hours. Final requests pending.
Sienna's breath caught.
Silas stared at the message like it was a ghost.
Then he straightened.
"Prep the med-heli."
"I'm coming with you," she said instantly.
"No," he said. "It's too exposed. If K—"
"K wouldn't stop me from saying goodbye," she snapped. "You can't either."
Their eyes locked.
He didn't argue.
Ten minutes later, they were in the air, slicing through night winds toward the Sterling estate.
The storm had passed.
But the reckoning hadn't.