"Maya."
The sound of her name cut through the darkness—low, steady, haunted.
Her breath trembled. She pressed her palm against the cold cell wall as if grounding herself could slow the avalanche building inside her.
"I don't understand," she said, barely a whisper.
Daniel moved closer, flashlight flickering. "He locked us in."
"But why?" she asked, eyes straining to adjust.
Then came a laugh. Hollow. Broken.
"You shouldn't have come," the voice said again. "You should've stayed in your clean little city life, Maya. You should've let ghosts stay buried."
"No." Her voice grew stronger. "I came because I had to. Because you vanished. They said you were crazy. That you burned the place down—"
"I did," he cut in.
Silence fell. Even the air seemed to recoil.
"I burned it," he repeated. "To kill what they built in here. What they made of me."
Maya's heart slammed into her chest. "But why disappear? Why leave me alone all those years?"
A pause.
Then footsteps.
Heavy ones, deliberate and slow. A figure moved beyond the bars—a silhouette, tall, lean, with shoulders hunched like the weight of the world still rested there.
"You wouldn't understand," he said. "They took everything from me, Maya. My name. My memories. You. I wasn't just locked away—I was erased."
Her hands balled into fists. "You think I wasn't erased too? I grew up thinking I had no one—feeling insane because I remembered a brother no one else believed in!"
Something inside the cell clicked. A panel near the floor. Daniel rushed over and pulled it open. Behind it was a hidden tunnel—narrow and dark.
"She's telling the truth," Daniel said, looking up. "She never gave up on you."
Footsteps again. Slower this time.
Then, Elias stepped into the light.
Maya gasped.
He looked nothing like the boy in her memories. Taller, leaner, his face hardened with years of pain—but his eyes...
His eyes were still Elias.
"I didn't want you to find me," he said. "But now that you have... maybe it's time you knew what they were doing here."
Daniel stood protectively beside Maya. "What do you mean?"
Elias stared at them both, jaw clenched. "Easton wasn't just a hospital. It was a program. They tested on children. Broke them down. Built new personalities. We weren't patients. We were... experiments."
Maya's blood ran cold.
Elias turned to the hidden tunnel. "There's a room at the end of that hall. One they never logged in files. That's where they kept the 'successful' subjects."
He looked at Maya. "That's where they kept me."