The rain came down in sheets as the train cut across the Austrian Alps a silver arrow streaking through a storm.
Inside, Ava Kane sat in the dim glow of the cargo car, staring at the reflection of her own eyes in the window. They glowed faintly gold in the darkness a reminder of everything she couldn't undo.
Adrian sat opposite her, his jacket damp, his jaw set in silence. He'd been quiet since the ambush. The power that had erupted from him the wave that shattered steel and bone still hung between them like a ghost neither dared to name.
The rhythmic clatter of the train tracks echoed through the metal walls. Outside, lightning split the sky in jagged lines, and Ava flinched when she saw it flash across Adrian's face the haunted look, the guilt buried beneath his calm.
"Tell me," she said softly. "What did you see when it happened?"
He looked up, eyes unreadable. "Everything. Every heartbeat in a mile radius. Every cell trying to survive. It was like the world was inside me."
"And now?"
He exhaled. "Now it's too quiet."
Ava closed her eyes. "She's still in our heads, Adrian. Lysandra's network is tethered to the serum. If we stay in one place too long"
"She'll find us," he finished.
Then, after a pause: "So what's next?"
Ava opened her father's encrypted map on her tablet. The next coordinate pulsed faintly Geneva, Switzerland.
Hidden beneath an abandoned particle collider, her father had stored what he called Project Genesis the origin code for the serum before Eden corrupted it.
She turned the screen toward him. "We get there, we cut the tether. Then we disappear."
Adrian gave a short, humorless laugh. "Disappear? With glowing veins and a price on our heads?"
Ava met his gaze steadily. "You've done harder."
He smirked faintly. "Not with someone who argues this much."
Her lips twitched, but before she could respond, the lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then the train lurched violently.
Ava grabbed the wall for balance. "What the?"
Adrian was already on his feet, eyes glowing faintly. "Something's on the tracks."
The train screeched to a halt, metal grinding against metal. The overhead lights died, plunging them into darkness.
Then came the sound faint, mechanical footsteps on the roof above them.
Adrian drew his pistol, motioning for silence. Ava crouched beside him, pulse hammering.
The footsteps stopped.
Then, the ceiling split open.
Metal tore like paper, sparks raining down as a figure dropped through landing in a crouch, fluid and silent.
Ava's breath hitched. "No"
It was her.
Same face. Same build. Same eyes but colder, mechanical, glowing amber instead of gold.
Adrian raised his gun. "Lysandra cloned you."
The clone tilted her head. "Correction," she said, voice almost identical to Ava's but sharper. "Eden perfected me."
THE MIRROR
The clone Unit Twelve stood slowly, her movements too smooth to be human. The rain outside framed her silhouette, lightning flickering behind her like a heartbeat of its own.
Ava stared, frozen between disbelief and horror. "What did she do to you?"
Unit Twelve smiled faintly. "What she couldn't do to you erase fear. Erase failure."
She looked at Adrian, and the faintest hint of something like envy flickered across her face. "He still hesitates for you. How inefficient."
"Stay back," Adrian warned, but Twelve only stepped closer, eyes glowing brighter.
"Do you know what I am, Adrian?" she asked. "I'm what you would've become if your evolution was completed. No conscience. No weakness."
Then she lunged.
Adrian fired three clean shots but each bullet curved away midair, dissolving in sparks before touching her. Twelve moved like liquid light, slamming him into the metal wall.
Ava shouted, "Stop!" but Twelve ignored her, pinning Adrian with inhuman strength.
"You were meant to protect her," Twelve said, voice low and cold. "But you've become her chain."
Ava grabbed a wrench from the floor and swung. It connected with Twelve's head, sparks flying. The clone staggered, turning toward Ava and for a heartbeat, their eyes met.
A flash of memories hit Ava her own childhood, her father's voice, the serum's pain. But they weren't hers alone. They were shared. Twelve gasped as if the connection burned her from the inside.
"Stop fighting me!" Ava shouted. "You're not her puppet!"
Twelve's hand trembled just for a second. "I'm not weak."
Then she slammed Ava backward into the glass wall of the car. It cracked but didn't shatter.
Adrian, regaining his footing, surged forward his hand glowing gold. He grabbed Twelve's arm, and the world exploded in light.
THE LINK
For a split second, all three of them were connected a neural flash of light and memory. Ava's scream merged with Twelve's hiss and Adrian's grunt of pain.
Images flooded their minds Eden's labs, Lysandra's face, the prototype tanks where dozens of other clones floated in suspended animation. Each one looked like Ava. Each one alive.
When the light faded, the train car was half-destroyed. Adrian was on one knee, gasping. Twelve staggered back, sparks bursting from the wound on her arm.
Ava crawled forward. "Twelve, listen to me. You don't have to obey her."
The clone's head tilted, voice glitching. "You don't understand. If I disobey, I die."
Ava's heart twisted. "Then we'll stop her together."
But Twelve's eyes flickered amber fading to red. "Too late."
Outside, the sound of rotors filled the air black Eden drones descending through the storm.
Adrian cursed. "She led them to us."
Twelve met Ava's gaze one last time. "Finish what your father started."
Then, before Ava could stop her, Twelve ran straight toward the open hatch and leapt into the storm vanishing into the rain below.
Moments later, the drones opened fire.
THE ESCAPE
Adrian grabbed Ava's hand. "Move!"
They sprinted through the shattered cars, gunfire shredding the walls behind them. The train's emergency brakes engaged, metal shrieking as the cars derailed one by one.
The world tilted.
They jumped.
The impact knocked the air from Ava's lungs as they rolled down the embankment, hitting cold mud and rock. Explosions lit the mountain behind them the train going up in flames.
When Ava finally opened her eyes, rain was pouring down in torrents. Adrian was beside her, bleeding but conscious.
"You good?" he rasped.
She nodded weakly, pushing herself up. "If 'good' means not dead, then yeah."
He gave a half-smile, grim. "We're losing our touch."
Ava looked back toward the wreckage. "She said there were others more like her."
Adrian followed her gaze. "Then we're running out of time."
THE DECISION
By dawn, they found temporary shelter in an abandoned chapel deep in the mountains. The air was cold, the stone walls cracked and moss-streaked. Candles flickered from a forgotten altar.
Ava sat on the steps, staring at the scorch marks on her hands. "She was me, Adrian. Same memories. Same fears. How do I fight someone who is me?"
Adrian knelt in front of her, gently taking her hand. "You fight for the parts of you she'll never understand your choice, your mercy. That's what Lysandra can't replicate."
She looked up at him, eyes glistening. "And if she kills the others?"
His expression hardened. "Then we end Eden before she gets the chance."
Ava exhaled shakily. "You make it sound simple."
"It isn't," he said softly. "But we'll make it inevitable."
Outside, thunder rumbled again a low, distant growl.
Ava turned her gaze toward the mountains, her reflection flickering faintly in the broken stained glass window beside her.
"She called it perfection," Ava whispered. "But perfection doesn't bleed. And I do."
Adrian smiled faintly. "That's what makes you real."
The wind howled through the chapel, blowing out the candles leaving only the faint gold glow beneath their skin.
EPILOGUE SCENE
Beneath Eden's headquarters, Lysandra stood before a tank of suspended liquid. Inside floated another figure another Ava.
But this one's eyes opened as Lysandra placed her hand on the glass.
"Unit Thirteen," she said softly. "Let's see if your sister can survive your perfection."
The clone's lips curved in a faint, eerily human smile.
"Let me hunt her."