Part 1: The Room

All this time I thought he was the villain, but as I watched the blood drip from my fingertips, I realised it was all a matter of perspective.

The knife clattered from my hand and spun across the wooden floor, stopping just short of the ornate rug we argued about last week. The antique grandfather clock chimed the half-hour. Thirty minutes past midnight.

He wasn’t moving.

I stared down at him—Sebastian Ward. The man who had ruined my life. Or saved it. I wasn’t sure anymore.

The crimson on my skin looked surreal in the moonlight slanting through the shattered window. My heart pounded like a war drum, drowning out the sirens echoing through the narrow London streets. I hadn’t called anyone. Not yet.

My phone buzzed in my coat pocket. Once. Then again.

Unknown Number.

I didn’t answer.

Instead, I turned back to the body. He was still breathing.

Faint. Shallow.

I should’ve felt relief. But all I felt was confusion—and the growing sense that nothing was as it seemed. Because on the floor beside him wasn’t just blood. It was paper.

A torn piece of a letter. Burned around the edges.

> “...they’ll come for you next. Tell no one. Especially not—”

Especially not who? Him? Me?

Before I could finish reading, the door behind me creaked open.

I froze.

I hadn’t locked it.

“Lena?” A woman’s voice. Familiar. Low. Urgent.

It was Evelyn.

My sister.

But Evelyn had been dead for five years.

Part 2: The Ghost Sister

“Evelyn?” I whispered.

She stood in the doorway, soaked from the rain, trench coat clinging to her frame like a second skin. Her face looked gaunt, older than I remembered, with deep-set eyes that had seen more than they should have.

I took a step back, nearly tripping over Sebastian’s unconscious body. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

She tilted her head. “I was. But death has its loopholes.”

Her gaze dropped to the blood on my hands, then to the man on the floor. Her expression didn’t change. No shock. No horror.

Just calculation.

“Sebastian was right,” she said softly. “You weren’t ready for the truth.”

“What truth?” I asked, voice shaking. “That you faked your death? That you left me to think I was alone?”

Evelyn stepped closer. “No, Lena. That we’re not the only ones playing this game.”

Then she pulled a flash drive from her pocket and tossed it onto the rug. “Everything’s on there. The Institute. Project Harrow. Why he lied to you.”

I looked down, then back up—but she was gone. The door swung lazily in the wind.

Sebastian stirred with a groan.

I picked up the flash drive with trembling fingers.

And plugged it into my laptop.

---

Part 3: Project Harrow

The files were encrypted.

Dozens of them.

One folder stood out:

> [HARROW / SECTOR-6 / L. WARD]

My name. My file.

I clicked.

A video loaded—grainy footage of a hospital room. A much younger me strapped to a bed. Monitors beeped erratically. Someone off-camera said, “Increase dosage. Subject 9’s memory core is still resisting.”

The girl in the bed screamed.

Me.

I recoiled from the screen, bile rising in my throat. None of this made sense. I had no memory of it. No memory of… them.

Another file opened on its own.

A photo. Evelyn. Sebastian. And my mother.

Smiling.

Beneath it:

> "Operatives Ward & Ward: Embedded deep. Extraction scheduled 06/06/2025"

Extraction?

Today’s date.

A sudden crash downstairs jolted me. My laptop went black.

Power cut.

The only sound was Sebastian’s coughing behind me—and then, a low, male voice from the stairwell:

> “You weren’t supposed to find that.”

---

Part 4: The Man in the Stairwell

I bolted from the room and slammed the door behind me, dragging a dresser in front of it. Footsteps echoed up the stairs, calm and deliberate.

This wasn’t a burglar.

This was a hunter.

My phone had no signal. Of course.

I darted toward the fire escape. As I opened the window, I caught a glimpse of him—tall, military build, wearing black tactical gear. Not police. Not local.

I climbed down two flights and dropped to the alley below.

My hands were still bloody.

I ran.

Rain lashed my face as I fled through the backstreets of London. Every dark corner felt like a trap. Every face a threat. I ducked into a condemned bookstore two blocks over and slammed the door shut behind me.

Inside, it smelled of mildew and dust and memories.

A rustle behind one of the shelves made me freeze.

Then a voice—female, young—whispered:

> “If you’re looking for Evelyn, you’re too late. They took her.”

---

Part 5: The Underground

She stepped into the moonlight filtering through the broken window.

Teenage. Maybe seventeen. Dirt-smudged face. Gray hoodie too big for her.

“I’m Mara,” she said. “Evelyn sent me in case things went bad. Which… they clearly did.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Who are ‘they’? What do they want from me?”

Mara hesitated, then handed me a folded page—like it had been torn from an old journal.

Scrawled in Evelyn’s handwriting:

> Lena—if you’re reading this, it means Harrow breached the surface. It’s more than just memories. You were part of the program. So was I. So was he. The truth is buried in the compound under Saint Augustine’s. You need to remember what they took.”

Saint Augustine’s.

The abandoned asylum on the outskirts of the city.

I looked up at Mara. “You’re coming with me.”

She nodded. “But we need to hurry. Because once you remember…”

She stopped, eyes wide.

I followed her gaze—and saw the red laser dot slide across my chest.

Gunfire shattered the window.

---

**To be continued…**

Would you like Parts 6–10 next? The next arc will dive into Lena’s repressed past, what Project Harrow *really* is, and why she might not be the victim—or the hero—she thinks she is.