The second knock came from beneath Nyelle’s feet.
She jumped back, and the old device in the stranger’s hand went dark. For several seconds, none of us moved. I watched the pavement where she had been standing, expecting the silver lines to return, but the concrete remained ordinary, broken only by cracks and scattered pieces of glass.
Then Nyelle looked at me.
"Why did it knock twice?"
"I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me that."
"Veyric."
"I don’t know."
The words tasted worse than I expected. Since the blackout, every answer I had found seemed to lead to another question, but this was different. The message on the device had identified two subjects, and whatever lay beneath the city had answered us separately. It knew I existed, it knew Nyelle existed, and something about our connection appeared to matter to it.
The stranger put the device away.
"We’re not going to the station."
I turned toward him. "You just told us it might be the safest place nearby."
"I told you there was a structure beneath it. I didn’t say it was safe."
"Then why were you taking us there?"
"Because I thought it might offer shelter from whatever is happening aboveground." He glanced at Nyelle. "That message changes things."
"What does second subject mean?" she demanded.
He looked uncomfortable. "The facility used subject classifications for people involved in its experiments. First subject, second subject, sometimes additional subjects depending on the test."
"Experiments on what?"
"Human responses to the structure."
Nyelle stared at him. "You knew they were experimenting on people?"
"I knew they were studying human responses. I didn’t know what they were doing with every person they brought inside."
"That is a very convenient distinction."
"I understand why you don’t believe me."
"Do you?" Her voice sharpened. "Because every time we ask you something, you give us a little piece of the truth and leave us to discover the rest while something tries to kill us."
He accepted the accusation without defending himself.
That made it difficult to keep shouting at him.
I stepped between them before the argument could go further. "You said the device was recovered from the monitoring room. Does it have records of the subjects?"
"Some."
"Then show us."
"The records were damaged."
"Show us what remains."
He hesitated, then retrieved the device.
The screen came alive with several lines of pale text. Most were corrupted, their letters replaced by broken symbols, but a few entries remained readable. I leaned closer, careful not to let my right hand touch the screen.
PROJECT: ORIGIN RESPONSE
SUBJECT 01: INITIAL COMPATIBILITY TEST
SUBJECT 02: SECONDARY RESPONSE TEST
Beneath those entries was a date.
Twenty-four years ago.
My stomach tightened.
"That’s the year I was born," I said.
The stranger nodded.
I pointed at the second entry. "Who was Subject Two?"
"The record doesn’t identify the person."
"Does it say whether the test succeeded?"
He scrolled down.
A short section appeared beneath the damaged text.
SUBJECT 01: RESPONSE CONFIRMED.
SUBJECT 02: RESPONSE SUPPRESSED.
The screen flickered.
A third line appeared, then vanished before I could read it completely.
The stranger tried to restore the entry, but the device returned to the same two lines.
Nyelle had gone very still.
"Response suppressed," she repeated. "What does that mean?"
"I can’t tell you from this record."
"Could it mean they stopped the second subject from responding?"
"Possibly."
"Could it mean they stopped the second subject from remembering?"
The stranger looked at her.
That was answer enough.
I studied the two entries again. The first subject had responded. The second subject’s response had been suppressed. The records were from the same period in which our mother had carried me out of the facility, and Nyelle had just recovered another fragment of a memory involving a room, a machine, and people who seemed terrified of what was happening.
The pieces were beginning to fit together, but not neatly enough to tell us what picture they formed.
"Nyelle," I said carefully, "do you remember being inside the facility?"
She shook her head, then stopped.
"Not clearly. I remember the white room. I remember Mom holding you. And I remember someone telling me to stay quiet." Her fingers curled around the strap of her bag. "But I don’t know whether that was before the machine started or after."
"Do you remember anyone calling you by a number?"
Her expression changed.
For a moment, she looked like the little girl who had been frightened of the dark, standing in the doorway of my room because she didn’t want to sleep alone.
Then she blinked, and the expression disappeared.
"Someone called me something," she whispered. "I can’t remember what."
The device emitted a soft tone.
We all looked down.
The two subject entries had disappeared, replaced by a new message.
SUBJECT 02: RESPONSE DETECTED.
Nyelle stepped backward.
"No," she whispered.
The stranger reached for the device, but the screen changed before he could touch it.
SUPPRESSION FAILURE.
The message vanished.
A low vibration passed through the street.
This time, it didn’t come from beneath our feet. It came from the buildings around us, travelling through the concrete walls and broken windows like a sound too deep for ordinary hearing. Dust drifted from a nearby balcony, and a row of silver lines appeared along the building’s foundation.
They were moving toward Nyelle.
"Get away from the wall," I said.
She obeyed immediately.
The lines continued spreading, branching across the pavement until they formed a rough circle around the place where she had been standing. I pulled her farther away, but the circle expanded with us, maintaining its distance as though the structure had marked her rather than the ground.
The stranger backed toward the opposite side of the road.
"Don’t cross the lines," he warned.
"Why?"
"I’ve seen what happens when a pathway completes itself around a person."
"What happens?"
He looked at Nyelle.
"Sometimes the person disappears."
I tightened my grip on her hand.
The silver lines continued moving, closing the remaining gaps in the circle. Nyelle tried to pull away from the pattern, but I held her steady, unwilling to let her panic carry her into an unknown response.
"Look at me," I told her. "Don’t watch the ground."
She forced her eyes toward mine.
"Whatever this is, it hasn’t taken you yet."
"You don’t know that."
"No. But if it wanted to take you, I don’t think it would be drawing a circle around you first."
"That is a terrible attempt at reassurance."
"I’m working with limited information."
Despite everything, a brief, unsteady laugh escaped her.
Then the final gap in the silver circle closed.
The world went silent.
Nyelle’s hand slipped from mine.
Not because she had pulled away. Her fingers simply passed through mine, as though for a fraction of a second we occupied different places. I grabbed for her again, but my hand met empty air.
She stood less than a step away, perfectly visible, her eyes wide with terror.
"Veyric?"
I lunged toward her.
My fingers closed around her wrist, and this time I felt her skin beneath my grip. She gasped as the silver circle flashed, sending a wave of pressure through the street. The pavement beneath her shoes cracked, and a symbol appeared directly under her feet.
Three overlapping circles.
At the center was the same narrow, vertical mark I had seen on the monitoring device.
The stranger rushed forward, then stopped just outside the silver boundary.
"Nyelle, don’t move!"
She stared down at the symbol.
"I can’t."
Her voice sounded distant.
I tightened my grip on her wrist. "What do you mean, you can’t?"
"My legs." She swallowed. "I can feel them, but I can’t move them."
I tried pulling her toward me.
For an instant, nothing happened. Then a sharp pain tore through my right palm, and the silver circle flickered. Nyelle stumbled forward, falling against my chest as the symbol beneath her feet shattered into thin lines of light.
The circle vanished.
She clung to me, shaking.
I held her upright, my own hand burning badly enough that I had to fight the urge to release her. The silver light beneath my skin faded slowly, leaving a dull ache in its place.
The stranger approached us.
"Are you hurt?" he asked Nyelle.
"No," she answered, though her voice remained unsteady. "I don’t think so."
He examined the pavement where the symbol had appeared.
"It recognized her."
I turned on him. "You said the structures recognized me."
"They do."
"And now they recognize her too?"
He didn’t answer immediately.
"It’s different," he said at last. "The response to you is direct. Whatever happened just now, the structure was trying to establish a connection with her."
"Why?"
"I can’t tell you."
I took a step toward him, keeping Nyelle beside me. "Then tell me what you can."
He looked down at the device in his hand.
"Twenty-four years ago, the facility conducted two separate tests. The first produced a response they could measure. The second was suppressed, and the records were sealed." He lifted his eyes toward Nyelle. "If the second subject is her, then whatever they suppressed may be returning."
Nyelle’s face tightened. "And if it is me, what happens next?"
The stranger didn’t answer.
I was beginning to hate that silence.
Before I could demand a response, the device lit up again. The stranger looked at the screen, and this time he didn’t attempt to hide it from us.
A map appeared.
It showed the surrounding streets, the damaged office building, and the route toward the underground transit station. A single silver point pulsed at the station entrance.
Beside it, a line of text appeared.
SUBJECT 01: APPROACHING.
I stared at the message.
"We’re not moving toward the station," I said.
The stranger frowned. "I haven’t moved."
"Neither have we."
Another message appeared beneath the first.
SUBJECT 02: REQUIRED FOR ACCESS.
Nyelle went pale.
The station was not simply another place with an ancient structure beneath it. Something there required both subjects—or at least the two responses the facility had recorded twenty-four years ago.
And now the device was telling us that Nyelle was required for access.
I looked at the stranger. "What opens at that station?"
"I’ve never seen the entrance."
"That’s not what I asked."
He took a moment before answering. "The surviving records referred to it as a secondary access point. They never explained what it accessed."
I looked toward the distant street.
We had a choice. We could avoid the station and continue searching for somewhere safe, or we could follow the only lead that connected my birth, Nyelle’s suppressed memories, and the structures that had begun awakening beneath the city.
Neither option promised safety.
But leaving the mystery alone hadn’t stopped it from following us.
"Fine," I said. "We’ll go to the station."
Nyelle looked at me sharply. "You just said we weren’t going."
"I changed my mind."
"Why?"
"Because if something has spent twenty-four years keeping you from remembering what happened, I’d rather find out why before it decides to take the choice away from us."
She studied my face, then nodded once.
The stranger started toward the station.
I followed with Nyelle beside me, keeping my right hand away from the silver lines that occasionally appeared beneath the pavement. We had gone only a few steps when the device sounded again.
The stranger stopped.
A final message had appeared on the screen.
ACCESS CONDITION UPDATED.
The next line formed slowly.
SUBJECT 01 MUST ARRIVE ALONE.
I looked at Nyelle.
Then I looked at the stranger.
For the first time since the blackout, I understood that finding the truth might require me to choose between discovering what had happened to us and keeping my sister beside me.
And whatever was waiting at the station had just made that choice for me.