The room was white.
So white it hurt.
Fluorescent panels embedded in the ceiling hummed at a frequency designed to prevent sleep. The walls were padded with sterile silicone and lined with sensor filaments. There were no windows. No clocks.
Just one mirror.
And a steel cot bolted to the floor.
Sienna sat on the edge of the cot, staring at the mirror.
Her reflection looked wrong.
Too sharp. Too pale. Too still.
She wasn't in the Sterling estate anymore.
She was in a containment unit beneath Sterling Pharmaceuticals' private research bunker—an off-grid medical site designed to house test subjects exposed to unknown radiogenic compounds.
At least that's what the sign outside the airlock said.
Quarantine Level 3: Biogenetic Variance Holding Cell.
Silas had fought the order.
Jenna had lobbied the board to delay it.
Neither had succeeded.
Because twenty-four hours after Adrian Sterling's death, an anonymous "medical ethics team" had flagged Sienna's antibody profile as "unstable" and "potentially mutagenic."
She was no longer a person.
She was evidence.
They had locked her away.
Alone.
—
On the third day, the hallucinations started.
At first, it was just her mother's voice.
Not her birth mother—her foster mother. The one who'd died screaming her name during the gas leak in their apartment three years ago.
Sienna hadn't heard that voice in years.
But now it echoed through the room.
"Sienna... why didn't you come for me?"
She clutched her head.
"No, no, no, not now."
Then came the visuals.
The mirror would shimmer—and flicker—and suddenly she wasn't looking at herself.
She was looking at someone else.
A girl, maybe ten. Sitting on a metal table. Arms outstretched, strapped down. Eyes glazed. Saline IV taped to one arm, red tubing in the other.
The girl didn't scream.
She didn't blink.
She just stared straight at Sienna.
Until she whispered:
"You took my place."
Sienna backed away from the mirror.
And screamed.
—
By day four, she stopped eating.
Her blood tests showed irregularities. Her platelet count dropped. Her core body temperature fluctuated wildly.
They sent in a robotic arm with a thermogenic needle.
It took a full vial of blood.
Sienna watched it disappear into the wall.
And felt nothing.
But that night, she had a plan.
She palmed the cap of the last medical tray and unscrewed its narrow blade-like edge.
Then, when the lights dimmed to night mode, she sat on the floor.
She placed her palm against the silicone wall.
And with the sharpened plastic, she cut into her forearm—right along the vein.
Not deep enough to cause damage.
Just enough to bleed.
Thick, black-red blood oozed out.
She smeared it against the silicone in a spiral pattern.
Then added a symbol at the center:
∞
They were watching her.
She knew that.
But this—this was for her.
To mark the truth.
To remind herself that she was not their project.
She was the mistake they couldn't bury.
—
On the fifth morning, the door hissed open.
She didn't move.
Not until the man stepped inside.
Black gloves.
Medical coat.
And eyes she hadn't seen in almost a year.
Dr. Graham Ives. Director of Applied Human Engineering at Sterling Labs.
Her master's former colleague.
And the man who had testified in court that Dr. Chen's death was an accidental overdose.
He looked at her like she was a petri dish.
"Miss Chen," he said blandly. "You've lost twelve percent of your white blood cells. Your skin is showing signs of dermal thinning. And yet your neural activity has increased by seventeen percent."
She stared.
Said nothing.
He leaned forward.
"And your blood—your beautiful, volatile, disobedient blood—has begun synthesizing artificial antibodies without instruction."
He smiled.
"That's never happened before."
She whispered, "You killed him."
"Your mentor?"
He gave a careless shrug.
"He interfered."
Sienna stood.
Slowly.
"Why did you really bring me here?"
He didn't flinch.
"Because you're the only thing that works."
He reached into his coat and pulled out a black cube. Thumbed the top.
A small hologram flickered to life.
A document.
Project: INFINITY PROTOCOL.
"Your blood, your memory, your genomic signature—they've all aligned to something we've been chasing for decades," he said. "You are the convergent point. The anomaly that answers all the wrong questions."
He stepped closer.
"Unfortunately," he said softly, "an anomaly that feels doesn't always obey."
Then—
He injected something into her arm.
Fast.
She gasped.
"Just a mild neural tracer," he said. "It'll help us calibrate the hallucinations next time."
He turned and walked toward the door.
Sienna staggered.
"Why do you call it the Infinity Protocol?" she asked.
He paused at the threshold.
"Because immortality," he said, "is only useful if you never forget who you are."
Then he left.
And the lights turned red.
—
That night, she didn't sleep.
She sat on the floor.
Staring at the mirror.
And whispering to herself:
"I am Sienna Chen. I am not your ghost. I am not your cure. I am not your daughter. I am not your clone. I am not your mistake."
"I. Am. The. End."