The key glimmered in Clara's hand, as if it carried a fragment of living light.
It was heavy, old, its edges marked by a thin engraving: R-07-LS.
Since the moment they'd found it, Adrian hadn't stopped staring at it, turning it over in his fingers like it might unlock a lost memory.
Morning filtered through the curtains of the apartment, a pale, hesitant light.
On the table lay gauze, a half-empty cup of coffee, and a stack of unopened files.
The air smelled faintly of iron and unease.
"R-07-LS," Clara whispered, eyes fixed on the key.
"Maybe it's an internal Mnemosyne code. Maybe it opens something."
Adrian, sitting across from her, lifted his gaze slowly.
That same sharp calm gleamed in his eyes, the look he always had right before he uncovered something dangerous.
"It could," he murmured. "But this letter here -S. You see it? It reminds me of one thing… Silence."
Clara froze.
"The Silence Protocol?" she asked.
A shiver crawled down her spine.
"We need to go back."
"To the cabin?" Adrian's tone was incredulous.
"Clara, that place is cursed. I don't know if…"
"It's the only place that can still speak to us," she interrupted softly.
"Maybe this key… is the truth Rinaldi didn't want us to find."
He studied her for a long moment before nodding.
"Fine. But this time, I'm not letting you walk in there alone."
The road back to the woods was slick with rain and shadow. Fog licked the windshield as the trees rose like black towers around them. Neither of them spoke. Every turn of the wheels felt like a descent into the past.
When they reached the cabin, silence pressed against their skin. The roof sagged; the broken windows reflected nothing.
Blood still marked the warped floorboards like a memory that refused to dry.
Clara hesitated at the doorway.
"I can still smell him here," she murmured.
Adrian said nothing. He scanned the room, every movement precise, controlled.
Then something behind a fallen shelf caught his eye, a panel of wood slightly ajar.
Beneath it, a plate of cold steel. And at its center, a keyhole.
He crouched down.
"The key," he said quietly.
Clara knelt beside him, the small piece of metal trembling between her fingers.
"It fits."
Adrian met her gaze. "Ready?"
"I'll never be ready," she whispered.
And turned the key.
A metallic click echoed through the room.
The floor rumbled, then slid aside, revealing a narrow staircase spiraling down into darkness. A breath of damp air rose to meet them, ancient, stagnant, cold.
Clara switched on her flashlight and began to descend. Every step creaked under their weight, and with each one the air grew thicker, harder to breathe. At the bottom, a steel door awaited them.
Etched into it, a single word: LEGACY.
"'Legacy,'" Adrian murmured. "Whose?"
The door groaned open.
Before them stretched a buried archive, rows of metal shelves, dormant computers, old fluorescent lights hanging like skeletons.
The smell of dust and rust filled their lungs.
On the wall, faded letters read:
Mnemosyne Archive – Restricted Section.
Clara moved among the files, her beam flickering across labels bleached by time.
Until she saw one folder that didn't belong.
New. Untouched. On its cover, printed in neat black ink: Project AURORA – Phase 1.
Her breath hitched.
"Aurora," she whispered. "Why that name?"
She opened it. Her hands trembled so violently the pages slipped free. She gathered them again, and then she saw.
Subject: VOSS, C. – Successful gestation.
Biological father: MOREAU, A.
Outcome: Female birth – Neurological control positive.
Placement: Facility L – Silence Protocol.
Clara froze. The flashlight rolled from her grasp, its beam spinning wildly across the floor.
"No…" she breathed. "No… no, this can't…"
Adrian picked up the file, scanning the pages. And then he saw them: three ultrasound prints, a report bearing Clara's signature, her handwriting, and finally, a photograph.
A newborn baby with a white cap, tiny and perfect, staring at the camera with Adrian's same blue eyes.
Underneath, a small hospital bracelet:
Aurora Voss-Moreau.
"My God," he whispered. "Clara…"
But she folded forward, pressing her forehead to the floor, her voice breaking apart.
"They took everything from me, Adrian!"
Her cry echoed off the metal walls.
"My life, my memory, and now I find out they took her too!"
Tears streamed down her cheeks, soaking the concrete.
"I don't remember her! I don't remember feeling her move inside me, I don't remember holding her… and she has your eyes, Adrian!"
Her voice cracked into a sob that tore through the silence.
"She has your eyes and I've never even seen them!"
Adrian knelt beside her, speechless.
He reached for her, but she shoved him away.
"Don't touch me! You can't fix this! You can't understand what it's like knowing there's a part of you alive out there that doesn't even know you exist!"
He closed his eyes, fists clenched.
"Clara, we'll find her."
"Where?" she screamed. "Where is she, Adrian? Who told her everything was fine when she cried? Who taught her to smile, to breathe, to sleep without me?"
Her voice broke into heaving sobs.
He gathered her anyway, even as she struck his chest with her fists.
"Don't-touch-me" she gasped, then collapsed against him, shaking.
"Clara," he whispered into her hair. "She's not gone. Not erased. Just trapped. And I swear to you, we'll bring her back."
Their foreheads touched; their breaths mingled, ragged and slow.
The lights above them flickered.
A low click echoed in the dark.
Then, a flash of pale blue. A monitor in the far corner came to life, crackling with static.
Clara lifted her head, eyes swollen with tears.
On the screen was a white room. A small table. A box of crayons. And a five-year-old girl, sitting cross-legged, drawing a sun and two figures holding hands. Her hair was the same chestnut brown as Clara's, and her eyes, the exact shade of Adrian's blue.
Clara stumbled forward, trembling.
"Adrian… look."
The child raised her head, as if she had heard her mother's voice through the screen.
Those impossibly blue eyes looked straight at them. And for one eternal second, the world stopped. Then, in a soft, trembling voice, the girl said:
"Mommy?"
The screen flickered once, twice, and went black.
Clara stood frozen. Her mouth opened but no sound came out. Then the sobs broke free, raw and shaking.
"She said it… Adrian, she said it, she called me Mommy…"
Her knees buckled. Adrian caught her, pulling her against him as her whole body shook.
"We found her," he whispered. "Clara, we found her."
She clung to him, burying her face in his chest.
"I'm not closing my eyes again until I have her back. I swear it."
The bunker fell silent once more. Only their breathing filled the air, unsteady but alive.
Clara lifted her head, her tears catching the faint light.
"She has your eyes, Adrian…"
A broken smile curved her lips.
"I could never forget them. Even when they took them from me, I think I've carried them inside me all along."
Adrian pressed his lips to her forehead.
"Now we know what they did to us. And what we have to do."
The key lay on the floor beside them, cold and still. Yet in its metallic reflection, a faint shimmer remained, as if, somewhere out there, a pair of blue eyes were still watching them, waiting to be found.