Rachel reached for the edge of the desk as if the room had shifted beneath her.
“That can’t be me,” she said.
Lucas looked at the photograph, then at his mother. The resemblance was unmistakable. The same narrow chin. The same small scar above the left eyebrow. The same dark hair, though in the photograph it fell loose around her face.
“Mom,” he said quietly. “Who’s the baby?”
“I don’t know.”
Carter moved closer to the monitor. “The date is wrong. It has to be.”
“Then why is Elias there?” Rachel asked.
The question hung between them.
The photograph showed Voss standing in the doorway, one hand gripping the frame. His expression was difficult to read. He wasn’t smiling. He looked as if he had arrived in the middle of an argument and was waiting for someone to tell him whether he should come inside.
Rachel leaned toward the screen. “I’ve never seen this picture.”
“Could be a staged image,” Carter said.
“Then why does it have a medical record attached?”
A second window opened automatically. It displayed a document with the heading NEONATAL REFERENCE STUDY. Most of the text was scrambled, but several phrases remained legible.
SUBJECT: R. MILLER.
REFERENCE DEVELOPMENT: INCOMPLETE.
BIOLOGICAL LINK: VERIFIED.
Lucas’s eyes moved down the page. “It says your name.”
Rachel didn’t answer.
The document listed a series of dates. Some were years before Lucas was born. Others were from the months following his birth. Beside each date was a measurement, a code, or a short note about neural response patterns.
Carter read silently for several seconds. “This is a medical study.”
“Was I part of it?” Lucas asked.
“No,” Rachel said at once.
But her voice lacked certainty.
He looked at her. “How do you know?”
“Because I would never have allowed it.”
“That’s not the same as knowing.”
She flinched as if he had struck her.
Carter placed a hand on the desk. “We need to separate what this file claims from what actually happened. A record can be altered. A photograph can be misdated. We need corroboration.”
Rachel opened the document’s metadata. A list of access stamps appeared. One entry was dated three days before the first Ghostwing test. Another was dated the morning after the forty-seven-second loss of contact.
The final access stamp was only twelve minutes old.
“Someone’s been in this archive,” Rachel said.
Carter looked at the portable relay. “And they’re still connected.”
The monitor flickered. A new file opened without input.
It was a video.
Rachel’s face appeared on the screen, framed by the interior of a small office. She was wearing a flight suit. Her hair was pulled back, and a dark bruise marked one cheek.
The date in the corner was eleven years earlier.
“Recording for the restricted medical archive,” the younger Rachel said. “I’m making this statement because the official record does not reflect what happened during the reference study.”
Present-day Rachel went rigid.
The recording continued.
“I was told the study would measure pilot stress response and improve emergency coordination. I was not told that my biological data would be used to generate a secondary reference profile. I did not consent to that process.”
Carter’s expression changed.
On the screen, younger Rachel glanced toward someone outside the camera’s view.
“I was also not told that the profile would be connected to a child.”
Lucas stopped breathing for a moment.
The recording ended abruptly.
Rachel stared at the blank screen.
“I never made that,” she whispered.
Carter stepped closer. “You may have been required to record it during the investigation.”
“No. I would remember.”
“Rachel, you were injured after the test. You were under medication. There were gaps in your recollection.”
She turned toward him. “You said I was cleared.”
“I said the medical board cleared you to return to flight duty.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Carter looked away.
Lucas felt a cold anger settle in his chest. The adults around him kept speaking as though his life were a collection of files they had misplaced. His name appeared on records from before he could speak. His father had authorized something connected to him. His mother had made a recording she didn’t remember. And every time he asked a question, someone seemed to discover another reason they couldn’t answer.
“Was I born because of this project?” he asked.
Rachel turned sharply. “No.”
“Then why does the archive have pictures of me before I was born?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why does the plane recognize me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did Dad put my profile in the system?”
Her expression crumpled for a fraction of a second before she pulled it back into place.
“I don’t know, Lucas.”
He stepped away from her.
For a moment, she reached toward him. Then she let her hand fall.
Carter moved to the terminal. “There’s another file.”
The screen displayed a directory labeled ORIGINAL REFERENCE DESIGN. Within it was a single document with a warning icon.
REQUIRES DUAL AUTHORIZATION: VOSS / MILLER.
Rachel stared at the names. “Why would my authorization be required?”
“Because the original architecture may have been built from your response data,” Carter said.
“But the system was supposed to use a pilot reference, not a child.”
“Maybe that distinction came later.”
Lucas looked at the file. “Can we open it?”
Carter shook his head. “Not without both credentials.”
Rachel studied the screen. “My credentials were used on the original authorization record.”
“That doesn’t mean the system will accept them now.”
She placed her palm against the biometric reader beside the monitor.
The reader flashed amber.
IDENTITY CONFIRMED.
A second prompt appeared.
SECOND AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED.
Carter leaned over the desk. “We need Voss.”
Rachel withdrew her hand. “No.”
“Rachel—”
“He’s heading for the core. We don’t know what he’ll do if he gets there.”
“Then we need to know what this file contains before we confront him.”
A low vibration passed through the room. The monitor briefly lost signal, then returned with a new message.
CORE ACCESS: ACTIVE.
Carter’s face tightened. “He’s inside.”
Rachel pulled the portable relay cable free. The monitor went dark, but the equipment case continued to hum.
She opened it. Inside was a compact transmitter with a small display. A thin red line ran across the screen, pulsing in time with the vibration beneath the floor.
“What is that?” Lucas asked.
“An active link,” Carter said. “The tower is using this room as a relay.”
Rachel unplugged the transmitter’s power cable.
The red line vanished.
For a second, the room seemed to settle.
Then the transmitter’s backup battery engaged, and the line returned.
Carter swore under his breath.
Rachel closed the case. “We’re taking it with us.”
“Why?”
“Because if it’s carrying the tower’s signal, it may tell us what Voss is doing.”
She lifted the case. Lucas reached for the portable drive, but she stopped him.
“Let me.”
They left Room 6 and hurried down the corridor. Behind them, the archive lights flickered one by one. A heavy door slammed somewhere in the building.
Carter checked his radio. “The eastern hangar is still accessible. We can reach the tower through the maintenance bridge.”
Rachel shook her head. “That bridge is exposed.”
“So is every other route.”
Lucas glanced at the case in his mother’s hand. “What if the signal is coming from the aircraft, not the tower?”
Carter looked at him.
“What if the plane is sending something back through the relay?”
Rachel stopped walking.
The transmitter pulsed again.
Its small display had changed.
REFERENCE RESPONSE RECEIVED.
Beneath that, a second line appeared.
ORIGIN: SUBJECT LUCAS MILLER.
Rachel set the case down so abruptly that it struck the floor.
“No,” she said.
Lucas stared at the screen. “I didn’t do anything.”
“I know.”
But the transmitter continued to pulse.
A third line appeared.
MEMORY PATTERN MATCH: 12%.
Carter crouched beside it. “That’s not possible.”
Rachel’s voice was low. “What does it mean?”
“It shouldn’t be able to measure memory patterns. The system was never designed to read thoughts.”
“Then what is it reading?”
Carter looked up at Lucas. “It may be comparing your current biological response with the stored reference.”
Lucas felt the familiar pressure behind his eyes.
This time, a sound seemed to rise beneath the mechanical hum. Three soft tones, evenly spaced.
He knew them.
He didn’t know how he knew them, but his body reacted before his mind could catch up. His fingers tightened. His breath stopped. The tones seemed to come from somewhere deep inside him.
Rachel crouched beside him. “Lucas?”
He blinked hard.
“I’ve heard that sound before.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Carter looked at the transmitter. The display now showed a new message.
REFERENCE MEMORY FRAGMENT AVAILABLE.
Rachel pulled Lucas away from the case.
“We’re done here.”
But the screen changed once more.
PLAYBACK AUTHORIZATION: PENDING.
Then, from the transmitter’s tiny speaker, a child’s voice whispered:
“Don’t let them wake me.”
Lucas went cold.
The voice sounded exactly like his own.
They reached the maintenance bridge in silence.
The bridge stretched between the eastern hangar and the tower’s lower access structure. Its grated floor allowed Lucas to see the dark space beneath his feet. Far below, emergency vehicles stood beside the runway. Their lights swept across the walls, revealing the enormous shape of the aircraft parked in the distance.
The aircraft’s nose was angled toward the tower.
Rachel stopped at the bridge entrance. “We go in, we find Voss, and we get the core under control. No one touches Lucas’s profile.”
Carter nodded. “Agreed.”
Lucas looked at the aircraft. Its surface reflected the red lights in thin, broken streaks. It seemed less like a machine now than something waiting.
“Mom,” he said, “what if the system is trying to remember me?”
Rachel turned toward him. “It doesn’t know you.”
“But it has my voice. It has my profile. It has pictures from before I was born.”
“That doesn’t mean it has your memories.”
“What if it does?”
She didn’t answer.
They crossed the bridge.
At the far end, a security panel displayed the tower’s status. The main door was unlocked. Beyond it, a narrow stairwell descended toward the calibration chamber.
Carter took the lead. “Stay close.”
Halfway down the stairs, they heard a metallic impact below.
Then Voss’s voice.
“Stop the sequence!”
A second voice answered.
It was the same artificial voice from the old recording.
“Reference incomplete.”
Rachel raised her weapon and moved toward the chamber door.
Lucas followed her.
Through the narrow window, he saw Voss standing at the original core. The silver cylinder lay open beside him. Several cables ran from it into the control housing. The core itself glowed faintly, its internal rings rotating at different speeds.
Voss was arguing with a speaker mounted above the console.
“You have enough data,” he said. “Terminate the process.”
“Reference incomplete.”
“Then remove the secondary profile.”
“Removal denied.”
Voss slammed his hand against the console.
Rachel pushed the door open.
“Step away from the core.”
Voss turned.
For the first time since Lucas had seen him, his face showed something close to fear.
Click here to continue reading: PART 16: THE ORIGINAL CORE
The Moment My Teacher Turned My Proudest Memory Into a Joke in Front of the Entire Eighth Grade
Part 15 of 40
