The forest seemed frozen in silent breath. The rain that had pounded the dense foliage hours earlier had given way to a muffled, almost unreal stillness. Wisps of mist crept between the trunks, tracing ghostly arcs that slid over Mayu's boots. Her gaze swept the horizon—wary, focused. At her side, Zéro, calm and impassive, held an old portable terminal, its diodes blinking.
"I'm almost there," Zéro whispered.
"The last node of the phantom network is right here."
Before them rose a colossal tree, its gnarled roots coiling around a metal hatch half‑buried in moss. A faded symbol was still visible: a spiral framed by two circles—the Project's emblem.
Mayu felt her stomach tighten.
"Are you sure this is it?"
"As sure as I can be," Zéro replied. "But this… this is older than we thought."
Zéro crouched, drew a modified access card from her belt, and slid it into a nearly invisible slot. A metallic click, then the hatch groaned open. A breath of cold, dusty air exhaled from the darkness. Below, a rusted ladder led into the bowels of the forgotten complex.
They descended in silence.
The corridor was bathed in sickly yellow light from flickering neon tubes. The grimy white walls bore the marks of time: cracks, mold stains, flaking paint. Yet the strangest thing was the weight—a pressure on the chest, as if the place itself held back its anger.
Mayu instinctively placed her hand on the hilt of her blade.
She felt… something.
A memory?
A dull ache stirred in her skull, pulsing in time with her steps.
Flash. A corridor. A window. Screams. A silhouette.
Then everything vanished.
"This place… I think I've seen it before," she murmured.
Zéro slowly turned to her.
"Impossible. This site was shut down long before you were created."
But Mayu wasn't certain. Something resonated here. An inner voice. An intimate vertigo.
They pressed on until they reached a large circular chamber whose walls were lined with reinforced glass. Behind the panes: shattered vats. Dangling cables. Experiment beds.
But one tank remained intact.
And inside… a figure floated. Feminine. Motionless. Connected to a dozen electrodes. Her face obscured by a breathing mask. Yet even through the liquid, Mayu felt her breath catch.
It was her.
Not a reflection. Another version. Another her. Her double. Her sister. Her echo.
"Code M‑7," Zéro said. "An abandoned prototype. Between your generation and the Phantom Unit. They kept her here… just in case."
Mayu took a step back, fingers trembling.
"Why… why show me this now?"
She had no time to ask more questions.
A beep sounded from the terminal—an unspoken alarm.
Without warning, the tank drained in a blast of scalding steam. The clone collapsed to the floor, shaking, naked, her body wracked by spasms. Black veins pulsed along her arms.
She lifted her head to Mayu.
Her gaze was icy. Unstable. Hungry.
"You… you weren't supposed to live," she whispered. "I was the perfect model. Why you? Why not me?"
Mayu said nothing. She felt the other's pain—a twisted, cold agony nourished by solitude and misunderstanding.
But the clone would not understand.
She lunged.
The impact was brutal. Mayu drew her blade just in time to block a killing blow. They tumbled across the floor, smashing into a metal table. The clangs echoed through the lab. Each strike from the clone was precise, swift, almost inhuman. But Mayu… improvised.
She struck at joints, slipped beneath an attack, countered with the hilt of her blade. She panted, her heart pounding. But she refused to kill her.
"You're not my enemy!" she shouted. "You're like me!"
But the clone, her eyes filled with hatred, lifted a scalpel from the floor.
Mayu closed her eyes.
And struck the clone's neck with a decisive blow.
The body fell, unconscious.
Silence.
Zéro approached slowly, visibly shaken.
"You could have eliminated her. You didn't."
"She's like me. Lost. I was just given a chance. She wasn't."
Mayu looked at the body on the floor. A tear rolled down her cheek.
"How many of us have they kept like this? How many shadows?"
A metallic click sounded behind her. A door unlocked automatically.
A message appeared on the screen of an old terminal:
> "Welcome, Subject M‑8. The final phase begins."
Mayu stared at the words. Her reflection trembled in the screen.
And in her heart, something awoke.
Not fear.
But an icy fury. And a promise.