The lights in the underground clinic hummed with a cold, sterile glow too bright, too white, the kind of light that stripped every shadow from a person and left only truth behind.
Elara hated it instantly.
The place didn't smell like a normal medical bay. It smelled like metal, ozone, and secrets. Instruments were arranged on the tray beside her scalpels, scanners, micro-fiber probes none of them meant for ordinary patients.
Dr. Kade glanced at Adrian with a tension Elara didn't miss.
"You're sure she's ready for this?"
Adrian didn't answer immediately. His jaw clenched once, twice, before he managed to say, "We don't have a choice anymore."
Elara sat on the examination table, the thin fabric of the clinic gown cold against her skin. Her pulse hammered too loudly in her ears.
"This isn't necessary," she whispered. "It's just a fainting spell. People faint."
Kade exchanged another look with Adrian the kind of look people give each other when they're hiding something.
Adrian stepped closer, kneeling so his eyes met hers.
"Elara… what happened last night wasn't normal."
Her breath caught. Because she knew he was right.
The blackout.
The ringing in her skull.
The burning sensation down her spine
like a wire being pulled too tight.
And worst of all, the moment she opened her eyes again, Adrian stood there looking at her like he had seen a ghost wearing her skin.
"Elara," Kade said softly, "I need you to lie down. We're going to scan the base of your neck and your upper spine."
She didn't move.
"Why?"
Adrian swallowed hard. "Because Dr. Kade reviewed the thermal footage from last night."
Kade tapped a monitor. The display flickered to life a silhouette of a human body recorded with heat-sensing lenses.
It was her.
Her outline glowed yellow… except for one place.
At the base of her neck, just above the spine, a small circular patch burned white-hot, brighter than anything else in the frame.
Elara stared. "What… what is that?"
Kade took a slow breath. "That is what we're trying to find out."
Adrian squeezed her hand. "Please. Let us check."
Her resistance crumbled.
She lay down.
The scanner descended over her, a thin white arc pulsing with blue light. As it hummed, memories flickered inside her head flashes she couldn't place.
A dark room.
Someone whispering her name.
A needle.
A burning sensation, years ago, that she had dismissed as a childhood fever.
The scanner clicked.
Kade inhaled sharply.
Adrian's voice hardened. "What did you find?"
Kade didn't answer immediately. He magnified the scan.
The image zoomed in on the base of Elara's skull.
There embedded just beneath the fourth cervical vertebra something glinted.
Metal.
Round.
Symmetrical.
And not natural.
Elara's voice trembled. "What… what is that?"
Kade stepped back, as if the words tasted sour in his mouth.
"It's an implant."
The room seemed to tilt.
Adrian's eyes widened, horror bleeding into his expression. "Don't tell me—"
Kade nodded once.
"It's not medical. And it's not legal."
Elara's breath hitched. "I've never had surgery. Not in my life."
Kade's jaw clenched. "Then it was done before you were old enough to remember."
The monitor shifted to display a cross-section of the implant.
Sharp edges.
A micro-coil.
An inactive storage core.
Old tech but dangerous tech.
"What does it do?" Elara whispered.
Kade hesitated.
"I'll only know for sure if we extract it."
Adrian's voice dropped into a low, lethal register.
"Is it safe?"
Kade didn't sugarcoat it.
"No."
Silence pressed down on the room.
Elara looked between them, searching their faces, and for the first time she realized the truth they had been dancing around:
They weren't just worried about her health.
They were afraid of what she might be.
"What happens if we leave it there?" she whispered.
Kade pinched the bridge of his nose. "It might activate. It might transmit. It might fail. Elara… that thing shouldn't be inside any human body. And someone put it there deliberately."
Adrian stepped closer, resting his forehead against hers for a brief moment fragile, intimate, desperate.
"I'll be right here," he murmured. "I won't let anything happen to you."
She closed her eyes.
"Do it."
Kade moved fast.
Lights dimmed. Machines came alive. A mechanical arm lowered, holding a micro-scalpel so fine it was nearly invisible.
"Local anesthetic," Kade said. "And then we begin."
Cold numbness spread down her spine.
"Adrian…" she whispered.
He caught her hand instantly. "I'm here. I'm here."
Kade's gloves rustled.
A single incision.
A breath held.
A sound metallic, unmistakable clicked beneath her skin.
Adrian tensed. "Kade?"
Kade didn't answer.
He gently extracted something, lifting it into the sterile glow of the lamp.
Elara forced her eyes open.
And saw it.
A tiny disc.
Black.
Older than it should be.
Marked with a symbol she didn't recognize… but Adrian did.
His face drained of color.
"Kade," he whispered hoarsely, "that's a Helix sigil."
Kade froze. "…Impossible."
Adrian shook his head, voice trembling with fury.
"No. It's real. And if Helix put this in her…"
He looked at Elara, horror and protectiveness warring in his eyes.
"…then they've been watching her for years."
Elara stared at the tiny black disc in Dr. Kade's gloved hand a device so small it could vanish if he curled his fingers. But all she could see was the weight of years suddenly crashing over her, the sense that every memory, every quiet corner of her life, might not have belonged entirely to her.
Her voice cracked.
"What… what does Helix want with me?"
Adrian didn't speak at first. He looked like he was trying to hold himself upright by sheer will — shoulders rigid, jaw clenched until the muscle tremored.
Kade set the implant on a sterile tray, the metallic click echoing like gunfire.
"We won't know the full story until I run diagnostics," he replied, voice low. "But I can tell you one thing already…"
He tapped the scanner screen.
The implant's structure magnified, revealing engraved circuitry — graceful loops intersecting around a hollow center.
"That design is pre-Protocol," Kade said. "We don't build tech like this anymore. No one does except—"
"Helix," Adrian finished, voice tight with hatred.
Elara swallowed. She had heard the name whispered before not in full context, just fragments. A shadow organization. Military-adjacent. Black-budget. Rumors said they monitored certain bloodlines, certain children born under unknown parameters.
But rumors were rumors.
This…
This was inside her body.
Adrian squeezed her hand, grounding her before her breath could spiral out of control. "Elara, listen to me," he said, voice soft but urgent. "Nothing about who you are changes because of this. You're still you."
She tried to nod, but emotion clogged her throat.
"How long?" she whispered. "How long has this been inside me?"
Kade didn't hesitate. "Based on tissue integration and scarring… since you were around five or six years old."
Elara flinched. That age matched the year her mother started avoiding doctors… and the year she stopped talking about certain nights.
The room suddenly felt too small.
Too cold.
Too bright.
Elara wrapped her arms around herself. "My mother knew," she whispered. "Didn't she? She had to know."
Adrian stepped forward, catching her by the shoulders.
"Elara"
"She knew," she said again, chest trembling. "She kept this a secret from me."
Adrian hesitated, then exhaled shakily. "Maybe she didn't know the details. Maybe she thought it was something else. Or maybe… she was trying to protect you."
Elara pressed a hand to her eyes. "Protect me from what?"
No one answered.
Because the truth was too heavy to guess.
Kade cleared his throat, his voice gentler now. "There's more."
Adrian turned sharply. "What else?"
Kade grabbed a diagnostic tablet, bringing up a different scan deeper layers of the implant.
"This isn't just a locator," he said slowly. "It's a regulator."
Elara blinked. "A… regulator?"
Kade nodded. "It monitors neural activity. Hormonal fluctuations. Emotional spikes. Something in you… triggered this device last night."
She felt her stomach flip. "Triggered… how?"
Kade looked straight at her. "You had an emotional surge strong enough to overpower a dormant implant."
Adrian's breath caught.
"Elara," he said quietly, stepping closer, voice scraping with fear he tried to hide, "what were you thinking about when you fainted?"
She shook her head not because she couldn't remember, but because she could.
Adrian's back turned to her as he walked away, rain hitting the window in thick sheets. The weight in his shoulders. The storm in his voice. The way he whispered Mara's name like it was a wound he couldn't stitch shut.
"I was thinking… about losing people," she whispered. "About losing you."
Adrian froze.
Kade went still.
Elara's voice broke. "Something in me must have snapped."
Adrian turned back, eyes wide, raw with emotion. "Elara… don't ever think"
But a sudden whine cut through the room.
The implant on the tray glowed.
A faint, pulsing red.
Kade's eyes widened. "That shouldn't be happening. It's inactive, it has no"
The glow sharpened.
Adrian shoved Elara behind him instinctively. "Kade!"
Kade grabbed a containment shield and slammed it over the tray just as the implant emitted a sharp, piercing tone like a scream compressed into a frequency only machinery could produce.
Elara clutched Adrian's arm, shaking. "What is it doing?!"
"I don't know!" Kade snapped. "It's drawing power from nowhere this isn't possible"
The implant flickered once.
Twice.
Then projected a tiny red hologram above the tray grainy, glitching, but unmistakable.
A symbol.
A circle divided into three blades like a spiral devouring itself.
Adrian cursed under his breath. "They're signaling. It's transmitting to something
or someone."
Elara's blood ran cold.
"Someone knows," she whispered. "Someone knows it's been removed."
Kade's hands shook as he tried to shut it down. "I can't override it. The command protocol is locked. Adrian"
But Adrian was already moving.
He pulled out his comm unit, speaking to someone on the other end. "Activate scramble protocols. Now. Burn channel three, seal the perimeter, and shut down all inbound signals. We're compromised."
Elara stared at him.
"You knew this could happen?"
He didn't turn toward her.
"I knew Helix never leaves dead ends."
Kade slammed his palm against the panel. The containment field flared brighter, holding the signal barely.
The hologram flickered again.
This time, it wasn't a symbol.
It was numbers.
A countdown.
00:02:15
00:02:14
00:02:13
Elara's lips parted. "What… what happens when it reaches zero?"
Kade swallowed. "If this is Helix tech?"
He looked at Adrian.
Adrian answered for him voice low, grim, absolute:
"It's not a bomb."
Elara felt relief wash through her—
Until he added:
"It's a summons."
Her heart stilled.
"A summons for what?"
Adrian finally turned, meeting her eyes and in them she saw fear she had never seen before.
"For extraction," he said.
"For you."
The clinic fell into suffocating silence.
The countdown continued.
00:01:57
00:01:56
00:01:55
Elara felt the world sway beneath her feet.
"Adrian," she whispered, "they're coming for me?"
He stepped forward, cupping her face so gently it shattered her.
"Yes," he said.
"But they'll have to kill me before they touch you."
Her breath hitched.
He leaned in, voice trembling with something too raw to name.
"I'm not losing you, Elara. Not to them. Not to anything."
The lights flickered.
The ground trembled.
A low hum began vibrating through the floor the sound of an incoming aircraft descending far too close.
Kade's voice dropped to a whisper.
"They're here."
The countdown hit 00:01:00.
Adrian pulled Elara close, lips near her temple, breath shaking.
"Run with me," he said.
"No hesitations. No looking back."
Her hands curled into his shirt.
"Yes," she breathed.
And together, they ran as the world above them shattered.
In a world buried beneath sorrow, one whisper can change everything.
Discover my latest novel " WHISPERS BENEATH THE ASHES".