Page 80 of Lost Echoes

She hesitates, torn between sense and heart, then nods once. “You have five minutes.”

When she disappears down the hall, I look back at Phoenix. The hum of the collapsing systems fills the air, a low vibration through the floor.

I press my forehead to his wrist. Don’t feel a pulse.

My heart plummets.

Phoenix’s body is still, his face calm. The boy he once was, buried beneath the programming, finally at rest.

Sofia calls from the corridor. “Kenzi!”

When I stand, the walls tremble. Pipes groan. Dust falls like gray snow.

I look back one last time. Then I run.

The tunnel ahead glows red with warning lights, but every step feels lighter, freer. My body aches, my lungs burn, but at last, none of it matters.

We burst out of a side exit into the early morning air. The cold hits like a shock, and I collapse to my knees on the asphalt, gasping, the smell of smoke and mold clinging to everything.

Behind us, the building shudders, the ground trembling under the weight of its own destruction. Windows shatter outward, releasing plumes of white smoke into the fog.

Sofia stands beside me, breathing hard. “It’s done.”

I nod, staring at the building as it crumbles from within. “Not done. We ended it.”

She looks at me then, really looks, not as her patient but as her equal. “You ended it.”

The words settle inside me like truth and power.

I rise slowly, my knees trembling. The day feels new. Open.

In the distance, through the fading sirens and the crackle of fire, I swear I can hear a child’s laugh, soft and unbroken.

For once, it doesn’t haunt me.

It heals.

40

Kenzi

The house smells of cinnamon. That’s the first thing I notice when I wake—not antiseptic, bleach, or the cold hum of fluorescent lights. Just the scent of cinnamon from something warm baking downstairs.

I lie still, letting the softness of the comforter sink into my skin. It’s too quiet. I used to hate the quiet because it left room for the echoes. Now it’s different because this silence hums with life. With peace.

Outside my window, morning light filters through the pine trees. The world looks ordinary. Whole.

A week ago, it was all headlines.

Experiments Exposed. Government-Funded Program Shut Down. Multiple Doctors Arrested. Several Dead. Children freed.

Now there are interviews, press statements, journalists trying to make sense of it all. But the noise fades a little more each day, and what’s left is this home.

A knock sounds at my door.

“Come in,” I call.

Ember bursts in with too much energy for this early in the morning. She hops onto the bed like she’s six again instead of eighteen. “I made breakfast.”