They left under the cover of darkness.
No press, no entourage, no record.
Just Adelina and Nathan, shadows slipping through the edges of a fractured empire. The jet waited at a private airstrip outside the city, cold and humming quietly like a living thing. As they ascended into the black sky, Adelina stared out the window, unsure whether she was running toward answers—or being pulled deeper into something she could never leave.
The journey to Romania was long and silent. Nathan slept fitfully, jaw clenched even in rest. Adelina didn't sleep at all.
She couldn't.
Too much of her world had already crumbled.
Too much truth had come from people she trusted too late.
By the time the sun rose over the Carpathians, a frost had settled into the valleys below, cloaking the mountains in silence. The ancestral estate loomed on the horizon—a massive structure of dark stone and endless windows, hidden deep in the pine forests.
Nathan didn't speak as the car carried them down the winding drive.
Adelina watched the trees blur past, heart steady but heavy. Somehow, she knew whatever waited beyond those walls was older than her, older than any lie she'd been told. This wasn't just a building.
It was an origin.
The facility was beneath the estate.
Hidden under layers of limestone and forgotten corridors, accessed through an old elevator disguised as a wine vault.
They descended in silence.
The air grew colder with each level.
When the doors opened, Adelina stepped out into a tunnel lit with flickering emergency lights. Nathan led her forward, past reinforced doors and retinal scanners, until they reached the heart of the compound.
A chamber.
Circular. Clinical. Immense.
The walls were lined with cryo-units and data consoles. A dozen servers hummed in the background, lights blinking in an eternal code.
But it was the archive wall that stopped her cold.
Photos.
Dozens of them.
Women. Girls. Identical faces. Different eras.
All of them: her.
The first photo was dated 1891. Hand-colored. A girl in a corseted gown, standing beside a grand piano. The next—1924. Then 1946. Then 1973. Adeline Blackstone. Then her.
Adelina's breath caught.
"They've been trying to recreate her," she whispered.
Nathan nodded. "Not just recreate. Preserve. Refine."
He handed her a folder from one of the drawers.
Inside: detailed genetic breakdowns. Notes on tissue compatibility. Neural pattern overlays. Instructions for something called Phase Synchronization.
"They used the women in your bloodline," Nathan said. "Each generation. They found the ones who showed the right traits—the right resonance—and guided their development. Some were trained. Some were altered. A few… didn't survive."
Adelina ran her fingers over one chart. It matched her biometric data to someone born in 1932. The overlap was 97.8%.
"What is this really?" she asked.
"A legacy experiment," Nathan said. "Disguised as lineage."
She turned slowly to face him.
"And me? Am I the final product?"
Nathan hesitated.
"You're the first to retain consciousness with external memory. The first who wasn't entirely rewritten. That's why Elena cares. That's why they're all afraid."
Adelina moved toward one of the sealed cabinets. Nathan unlocked it for her.
Inside: handwritten journals. Thick, leather-bound. She opened one.
Pages of elegant cursive. Lab notes. Observations. Emotional conditioning techniques.
"Subject Ad-73 exhibited unusual memory bleed. Transfer interrupted due to neural instability."
Another line:
"Consciousness began merging with prior host identity after procedure failure. Reversal impossible."
She dropped the journal.
This wasn't just science. It was madness written in blood.
In the far corner of the chamber was a locked panel. Nathan keyed in the code.
The door slid open.
Inside: a glass case. Cracked. Empty.
Above it: a nameplate.
SUBJECT E.
Elena.
Adelina stepped back. "She was part of this."
Nathan's voice was hollow. "She was the last attempt before you."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I wasn't sure," he said. "Until we got here."
She turned back to the cracked case.
There were blood smears on the inside. As if someone had fought to escape.
And won.
Adelina stared at the empty cradle and felt a sickness rise in her chest.
"She wasn't trying to expose them," she said slowly. "She was trying to finish what she started."
Nathan stepped beside her. "This wasn't about justice. It was revenge."
"But why warn me?"
He shook his head. "Maybe she sees herself in you. Or maybe she wants you to take her place."
Adelina turned to him, heart pounding.
"I need to know what she remembers. And why she survived."
Before Nathan could respond, the lights above them flickered.
A siren blared.
Motion sensors lit up on the console beside them.
Incoming signal.
Adelina ran to the screen.
An aircraft. Unmarked. Headed straight for the estate.
Nathan's eyes widened. "How did they find us?"
Adelina's voice was calm.
"They didn't find us."
She turned to the cracked chamber, her voice barely a whisper:
"They're coming to bring her back."