MasukShare
Chapter 49(2)
Tanggal publikasi:
2025-05-19 15:01:41Chapter 49: The Red Room
Part 2 The house was quiet, but it wasn't calm anymore. The stillness closed around Isla like a noose, tightening with each breath.She looked at the shredded contents of the "Project Lyra" folder. Brain scan printouts, personality overlays, pain tolerance tests. Pages marked with notes like:
"Subject reacts violently to mother imagery."
"Sensory deprivation behavioral modification had some success."
"Mirror empathy almost complete—98.7% personality match." She could feel her throat tightening. Victor had not instructed her to be loved—he had instructed her to mirror."Do you think I'm still hers?" she blurted suddenly, her voice broke. "Am I still Isla? Or just. Lyra's second coming?
Christopher came to her then, on his knees in front of her, eyes black and blazing. "You are you, Isla. You burst through his programming. You still have doubts. That alone is evidence. If you were merely an echo, you would not be trembling now. You would not be fighting this."
"But what if—"
"Stop," he interrupted, placing his hands over hers. "You're not a clone. You're not a duplicate. You're a tempest. You're alive.".
His words took hold deep within her ribs, centering her in the present.
Coming up behind them, Ethan entered the room, his usual stride tinged with slowness, exhaustion clinging to him like a second skin.
"There is more," he said. "I was able to recover one last encrypted file from the Nest. It is talking about a last phase—the so-called The Reclamation Protocol."
Isla's heart skipped a beat. "What is it?"
Ethan's expression was somber. "It's a full overwrite. Victor wasn't merely attempting to shape you. He meant to erase what wasn't beneficial to him. With the correct stimulus, your memories—your choices—everything would be rewritten to whatever form he desired."
"Can it still be triggered?"
"Yes," Ethan admitted. "If he still has access to the network, he could do it from anywhere."
She felt the world spin.
Christopher's grip on her hands tightened. "Then we take his access away."
Ethan hesitated. "There's only one way to do it. We lure him out. Into the open. He'll never be able to completely sever himself from you. Not until he believes you're either his… or broken."
"So we play on his obsessions," Isla said quietly.
Christopher nodded. "Exactly. But on our terms."
—
The rest of the days were a whirlwind of preparation and psyching. Isla trained harder, both mind and body. She meditated with Ethan in the early morning hours, hand-to-hand combat with Christopher during the day, and watched every single tape Victor had left behind each night.
She no longer flinched at hearing her own younger voice.
She no longer wept when she looked at the scars her mother had tried to hide.
And then, one night, listening to a tape labeled "L.M. - Confession (Final)", something broke wide open.
Her mother's voice filled the room.
"I know you think you're making something better, Victor," Lyra panted on the tape. "But you're not. You're ruining everything that's good. You don't love me. You want to possess me."
Pause.
"I made a mistake loving you."
The tape clicked off.
Isla stared at the recorder. Her pulse was thunderous.
She could almost hear Victor’s voice reacting, enraged, betrayed, devastated. She could imagine how he would have tried to erase that recording—how much it would have hurt him to know that Lyra chose to leave him not out of fear… but out of defiance.
She turned to Christopher and Ethan, who had both entered silently during the playback.
“I’m ready,” she said.
Ethan raised an eyebrow. "Ready for what?"
"To get him to hear her again."
—
They sent the tape as bait.
No message. No warning.
Just the recording of Lyra's final words. Sent to Victor's secure satellite mailbox via one of his dormant accounts.
There was a response in hours.
"Clever girl."
There was another message sent through.
"Finish what we began. Arrive alone. The red room is waiting."
Coordinates were added.
Christopher and Ethan stood with her as she packed a blade, a small transmitter, and a sedative syringe.
“I’ll be wired,” she said. “You’ll hear everything.”
Christopher took her face in his hands. “And if he tries to hurt you—”
“He already has. He just doesn’t know I’m not afraid of him anymore.”
Isla stepped into the night with steady feet and eyes sharp as flint.
She was not walking into a trap.
She was placing it.
---
Bab terbaru
In love with my step father in law chapter 63
Chapter 63: Fault LinesDirector Hale waited in the central command hall.The room was circular, tiered with consoles and suspended holo-displays that hovered like frozen constellations. White emergency lights hummed overhead—clean, clinical, unforgiving. The kind of brightness that pretended nothing had ever gone wrong.Isla and Christopher entered together.Every step Isla took felt like crossing a fault line. The echo Lyra had left behind was gone—she was certain of it—but the absence had weight. Like removing a tumor and realizing the body still remembered the pain.Hale stood near the center dais, hands clasped behind his back. He was older than Isla expected, silver threading through his dark hair, his face carved with the kind of restraint that came from years of choosing containment over truth.“Isla Vale,” he said. “You’ve caused considerable damage.”Christopher bristled. “She stopped a system breach and neutralized an illegal construct.”Hale’s gaze flicked to him. “From ou
In love with my step father in law chapter 62
Chapter 62: What the Light WokeThe corridor bled red.Emergency strobes pulsed along the walls of ECHO-3, washing steel and glass in warning hues that made every shadow twitch. The low alarm continued its three-beat cycle—measured, patient, relentless—like a heart that refused to panic.Isla and Christopher ran shoulder to shoulder.Their boots slapped the floor in sync as doors irised open ahead of them, sealing shut behind. Isla’s mind felt sharper than it had moments ago, as if shattering the mirror had shaken something loose. Fear was still there—but it no longer owned her.“Breach location?” Christopher asked into his comm.Static. Then a distorted reply. “Sector C. Inner labs. No visual confirmation. Whatever it is—it's moving like it knows the layout.”Isla exchanged a glance with him. “So do I.”They slowed near the junction, backs pressed to opposite sides of the corridor. Isla slid the compact pulse weapon from beneath her coat, checked the charge without looking. Her hands
In love with my step father in law Chapter 61
Chapter 61: Shards of the MirrorThe silence was unbearable.Isla sat alone in the observation room of ECHO-3, a vast, high-ceilinged chamber lined with sleek glass panels and flickering holo-screens. A distant hum vibrated beneath her boots—the sound of a hidden world still turning.She stared at the holographic projection of her DNA spiral spinning slowly in midair. It glowed violet, like a cursed constellation. Data poured beside it—words she could no longer make sense of. Words that used to belong to scientists, not to monsters.Behind her, footsteps echoed. Steady. Purposeful.Christopher.“I thought you might come here,” he said quietly.Isla didn’t turn. “It’s strange. Seeing yourself... and realizing you're not entirely yourself.”“You’re not a thing, Isla. You’re not just a blueprint someone rewrote.”She let out a bitter laugh. “Tell that to the report I just read. Lyra didn’t just give birth to me—she embedded herself in me. Consciously. She planned it.”Christopher stayed
In love with my step father in law Chapter 60
Chapter 60: The Vaultbound RiseThe air in the underground chamber was thick—heavy with dust, expectation, and centuries-old secrets that clung to the stone walls like ivy. The Vault of Remnants had not been opened in over four decades, and its presence felt more myth than matter. But tonight, it pulsed.Isla stood in front of the vault door, her fingers twitching unconsciously. Behind her, Christopher and Ethan watched in silence, the tension among them as brittle as ancient parchment. No one spoke. Even the hum of the generators seemed to hush.She could feel it now—the magnetic tug that seemed to know her name. The lock on the vault was encoded to Lyra’s genetic signature, but the tech didn’t account for what Lyra had become. What Isla had become. Half her mother’s legacy, half... something else.Christopher stepped forward. "Are you sure you want to do this tonight? You’re still healing."She shook her head. "Healing is a luxury. And time is a blade pressed to our throats. I can f
In love with my step father in law Chapter 59
Chapter 59: The Threshold ChildrenThe outpost was silent long after the file closed.No one moved. The shadows seemed to cling tighter to the corners, as if even the walls needed time to process what had just been revealed.Threshold Children.Subject Zero.Ark.None of them said it aloud, but the same question hung heavy in the air:What had Lyra made Isla into?And more terrifying—why?---By morning, they were moving again.They left the outpost behind with only a faint heat signature trailing in the snow, covered fast by the wind. Isla walked ahead, wrapped in her insulated gear, hood pulled low, but even now, the light from her hand flickered faintly beneath the glove.Like a heartbeat refusing to slow.The journey to ECHO-3 was brutal.Ice plains gave way to jagged mountain spines. There were no roads. No settlements. Just sky and snow and silence.Ethan navigated using the drive’s coordinates. It pointed to a location that wasn’t on any public map—a place scrubbed from known c
In love with my step father in law Chapter 58
---Chapter 58: Echoes of What WasThey didn’t speak for a long time.The snow muffled their steps as they moved through the tundra, putting distance between themselves and the buried ruin of the vault. The wind whispered around them—soft now, almost reverent, as if the storm itself were holding its breath after what had been unleashed.No one said it aloud, but they all felt it:Something had changed.In Isla.In the world.In what was coming.Ethan was the first to break the silence. “We need shelter. This isn’t the kind of cold you just outrun.”“There’s an outpost thirty miles east,” Christopher said. “Old Cartel relay. Abandoned.”Isla barely heard them.The glowing lines on her hand hadn’t faded. The faint pulse beneath her skin continued, rhythmic and unsettling, like the ticking of a new clock.Inside her, memories surged like tides.Not just hers.Not just Lyra’s.Others.Children’s voices. Screams in sterile corridors. An old song, sung out of tune. A name spoken like a pray
In love with my step father in law Chapter 57
Chapter 57: The Vault of SilenceThe ground trembled again as the vault door split down the middle with a groan older than time. Snow slid from its curved surface like dust falling off forgotten bones. The low-frequency hum built into a thrumming pulse, a sound that didn’t just echo in their ears—i
In love with my step father in law Chapter 56
Chapter 56: The Ghost in the SkyThe shadow was fast.It didn’t fly like a drone or a standard aerial unit—it glided, almost silent, but with a strange distortion trailing behind it, like light warping around something not meant to be seen.Ethan’s hands moved rapidly over the controls, flipping of
In love with my step father in law Chapter 55
Chapter 55: The Awakening ProtocolThe sky was grey and heavy, compressing the air with a tangible tension that was almost. alive.Two hours passed as if in slow motion, like the stretched-out pulse of a heartbeat. Isla waited among the close quarters in the stealth vessel Ethan had adapted—a retro
In love with my step father in law Chapter 54
Chapter 54: Echoes in the DarkThe storm had passed.Not really.Not in Isla's mind, not in her chest, where something still howled and cracked like thunder under her ribs. The skies outside were heavy and bruised, as if the heavens themselves had wept and were now holding their breath.Inside the
Anda juga akan menyukai
Master Odell’s Secret Ex-wife
Eggsoup1.2M DibacaMarried at First Sight
Gu Lingfei32.3M DibacaTriplets on Secret Mission
Lamour Toujours1.3M DibacaForceful Marriage: Young Master's Mute Wife
A Lake’s Depth1.2M DibacaThe Billionaire Serpent King's Bride
Ophelia Noir 16 DibacaNorth & Rye: The Billionaire Hockey Captain Next Door
Ink Bloom64 DibacaHIS CHUBBY STEPDAUGHTER
Fave Scripts163 DibacaAddicted to My Stepbrother
Pearl Hart143 Dibaca
