Underground Facility — Old Control Room
09:58 AM
The Helix team crouched behind broken terminals, dusty scanners, and defunct neural equipment. Their breaths were held, every muscle tight.
Two agents in sleek black suits—Black Chamber—entered the room. Calm, deliberate. They moved like men who had studied the layout years ago.
One knelt beside the old neural imprinting chair, gloved fingers brushing the worn interface. The other pulled out a slim scanning device from his breast pocket and aimed it at a wall.
Ayla whispered behind Caleb.
"They're using a thermal sweep. We won't stay hidden for long."
Caleb gave a slow nod.
"Then we don't. Time to face them—but no weapons unless they make the first move."
In one smooth motion, Caleb stepped out from cover, hands empty, voice steady.
"We're Helix. Acting under direct CIA authority. Who the hell are you?"
The two Black Chamber agents turned instantly. One removed her helmet—a woman in her late 30s, face like carved ice.
She spoke coldly.
"You're out of bounds, Vaughn. Step back. This facility is no longer under your jurisdiction."
Tyler strolled casually out from behind a pillar, arms crossed.
"Funny. You people always show up right when we're close to the truth. Like librarians who panic when someone opens the wrong book."
The male agent looked straight at him.
"Reeve. Subject 08."
The room tensed.
Mina took a step forward, voice steady but sharp.
"You've been playing with people's lives. Planting fake memories. Engineering emotions. And now we're just supposed to walk away?"
The Black Chamber woman stepped forward.
"You were never supposed to reach this point. This project—Palimpsest—is bigger than memory. It's architecture. Control. We're creating optimized versions of people... by severing them from their past."
Jesse's voice came cold and quiet.
"Except when the experiment fails… and a man murders a CIA director."
Ayla looked sideways at Caleb.
"One word from you… and we can take them down."
But Caleb raised a hand. Calm. Focused.
"Not yet. Let them talk."
Tyler stepped closer, his grin gone, his tone serious.
"What did you put in my head? Why do I remember someone I've never met?"
The male agent answered quietly.
"We implanted an emotional tether. A safety protocol. You were bonded to a memory of someone in the team—to stabilize your trust, your loyalty. If your mind fractured, she would anchor you."
Mina's voice cracked, almost a whisper.
"So I was just… an anchor?"
Tyler looked at her, eyes locked.
"Not to me."
The tension thickened.
The Black Chamber agents began to back toward the door. But before leaving, the woman turned and said coldly:
"You want to go deeper into this facility? Fine. But when you reach the core… your own memories will turn against you."
The metal door slid shut behind them.
Silence.
Jesse finally spoke.
"That last line... wasn't a metaphor, was it?"
Caleb's voice was low. Firm.
"We've passed the point of no return. We go forward."
Tyler picked up a dusty neural interface helmet from the wall, staring at it like it held his reflection.
"And maybe down there... we'll finally figure out who the hell we are."
Just as Team Helix prepared to move deeper into the next corridor, the unmistakable click of automatic weapons echoed behind them.
They turned as one—
Five heavily armed NOVA agents stood in the open doorway.
Chest armor bearing a faint glowing inverted triangle.
At their front stood their leader—a tall, solid man with a voice like sharpened steel.
He raised his weapon and leveled it straight at Caleb Vaughn's chest.
"Do not move. By direct order of the Black Chamber, you are officially removed from this mission."
Tyler raised his hands halfway, his smirk barely flickering.
"Wow. We just exorcised a ghost, and now the monsters show up."
Jesse quietly began activating a signal disruption node tucked in his wristwatch.
Ayla subtly pressed a hidden switch on her bag—triggering a pulse shock device.
Mina slowly stood from behind cover, eyes analyzing NOVA's formation like a surgeon reading an X-ray.
Caleb remained still for a long moment. Then, his voice was steady.
"We've gotten deeper than you ever did. We know about Edevane. About the imprinting experiments. About Subject 08. You think you can just show up and shut it all off like a light switch?"
The lead NOVA agent responded coldly.
"You forget… we're authorized to erase more than just data. We erase liabilities."
They took a step forward.
Tyler glanced at Caleb.
"I can cause a little chaos. I only need ten seconds."
Caleb replied under his breath.
"Give me five."
Suddenly, Ayla dropped a device on the floor—FLASH.
A burst of light and smoke filled the room.
Tyler spun right, kicking a weapon from a NOVA agent's hands.
Mina shielded Jesse, who hacked the emergency door panel.
Caleb rushed two agents near the wall, moving with brutal precision.
In six seconds, the Helix team had slipped into the next chamber—
Sealing the blast door behind them.
They crouched, catching their breath behind rusted control panels.
Jesse was first to speak.
"They're not here to help. They're here to bury the mission."
Tyler, blood trickling from a gash on his temple, gave a crooked grin.
"Well, now we know. Edevane isn't just the enemy. The people who created him… are coming after us."
Caleb nodded grimly.
"And those people just declared war on their own team."
From behind the door, the muffled voice of a NOVA agent echoed faintly:
"You think you can run? Inside this labyrinth... you're just experiments that forgot how to die."
Darkness.
Helix pressed on—deeper into the unmapped lower levels of the compound.
Toward the heart of a project that may hold not only the truth…
But the key to who they really are.
The heavy steel door slammed shut behind them, echoing down the locked corridor. Footsteps from NOVA agents still echoed faintly, distant but present. In front of the Helix team stretched a curved corridor, its walls made of black reflective glass laced with faintly glowing fiber-optic threads. The air was warmer here—like the room itself was breathing.
Ayla pried open a side panel. The iris door hissed open.
They stepped inside—and were instantly hit by a cascade of shifting light.
The Primary Simulation Chamber was massive, domed like a planetarium, its floor a transparent platform of sensor glass. Hundreds of hidden projectors fired rapidly changing holograms across the space—fragmented visuals of a classroom, an orphanage hallway, a nursery full of pastel toys. The images flickered like dream fragments forced into the same nightmare.
Tyler froze in the middle of the floor.
The holograms locked on to him—scanning his biometrics—then everything else vanished, replaced by a small white room. In it, a crying infant, maybe one year old, with sharp blue eyes, lay in a crib.
In the corner of the simulation, metadata flickered into view:
> SUBJECT 08-B
Birth Name: T______ Vaughn
Delivery Location: St. Brigid Orphanage, Virginia
Date: May 19, 2000
Status: "REDACTED UNTIL ACTIVATION"
Tyler staggered.
Mina reached out to steady him, but he shook her off, eyes locked on the baby.
"That's… me," he whispered. "I couldn't even walk yet, and they already had me catalogued."
Caleb stepped closer, jaw tight.
A second image emerged next to the baby—a man in his thirties signing a document marked Project Palimpsest.
It was Caleb's father.
Colonel Vaughn.
Tyler slowly turned. Their eyes met.
No words.
Just silent recognition.
They were brothers.
Elsewhere in the chamber, Ayla and Mina accessed the embedded data terminal. But the files they expected—memories, emotional implants, transfer logs—were missing.
Ayla frowned. "Real-time download. Someone is pulling the entire archive right now. Probably to a portable drive."
Mina's face tightened. "They didn't just hide the evidence… they're erasing it as we speak."
Tap… tap… tap.
The sound of metal striking concrete froze them.
A figure stepped out of the shadows of the corridor—thin, silver-haired, wearing a long grey lab coat and leaning on a steel cane.
Dr. Vahl Edevane.
He looked tired, sweat slicking his pale forehead. But his eyes gleamed with cold pride.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" he said softly. "Humans, staring into their own reflections before rebirth."
Caleb raised his gun. "It's over, Edevane. You're coming with us."
Edevane smiled faintly. "I'm afraid not, Captain Vaughn. This entire facility is wired with thermobaric charges. Countdown began the moment you opened the secret door."
Tyler stepped forward, half-rage, half-despair.
"You're burning the truth! You're burning my life!"
Edevane gave him a strange, almost sorrowful look.
"You're chasing the wrong truth, child. Identity is a costume. I merely tailored it. And today… I burn the closet."
Boom.
A distant explosion rumbled beneath the floor. Dust drifted down like snowflakes.
"You have three minutes," Edevane said calmly. "Run… or chase me. The choice is yours."
He pointed down the corridor behind him—two paths:
Left to the emergency lift.
Right to the core data reactor.
Then he turned and walked into the right passage, his lab coat billowing like a ghost.
The alarm blared—a deep, droning pulse. Red lights spun above them.
Caleb snapped to action.
"Priority one: survive. Priority two: get the data. Priority three: stop Edevane."
Tyler looked back at the flickering hologram of the crying baby. It pulsed once more… and vanished.
He clenched his fists.
"I'm going to the core. If my truth is in there—I'll face it, even if it's the last thing I do."
Caleb placed a hand briefly on his shoulder. No words—just a nod.
Mina and Ayla packed their scanners in record time. Jesse began looping security feeds to cover their movements.
Another distant boom shook the chamber.
Then they ran.
Some toward the data.
Some toward the exit.
And far beneath the earth, the countdown to destruction kept ticking, as the ghost of Palimpsest prepared to vanish once again.