The Archive

The basement elevator descended into the bedrock of the sea stack. The air grew colder, smelling of formaldehyde and ozone.

The doors opened.

It was a laboratory that rivaled any hospital, but it lacked the humanity. Rows of glass tanks lined the walls. Inside them floated organs—hearts, lungs, livers—all oversized, all pulsating with that same iridescent fluid Julian injected into her.

Elena walked down the aisle, her claws clicking on the metal grate floor.

She reached a desk covered in monitors. She woke the system. It scanned her retina.

**ACCESS GRANTED: SUBJECT 02 (SARAH).**

She froze.

* Subject 02.*

She opened the file named **SUBJECT 01 (ELENA).**

A video log appeared. Julian, younger, looking exhausted and desperate, speaking to the camera. Behind him, in a hospital bed, lay a woman. She looked exactly like the "Elena" Julian wanted her to be. But she was frail, wasted away.

*"Subject 01... My wife... terminal degeneration. The treatments failed. She passed at 0400 hours."*

The video cut to black.

Elena opened the next file. **ACQUISITION: SUBJECT 02.**

It was surveillance footage. A hiking trail. The man from the locket walking with a woman—Sarah.

Julian stepped out from behind a tree. He held a tranquilizer gun. He shot the man first, then the woman. He dragged the woman’s body into a van.

Elena put a hand to her mouth. The memories crashed into her like a tidal wave. The hike. Mark. The smell of pine needles. The sting of the dart.

She wasn't Elena. She was Sarah. She was a hiker. She was a kidnap victim.

She opened the file marked **PROTOCOL: CHIMERA.**

* Objective: Splice human genome with regenerative DNA from Hydractinia and apex predator sequences. Goal: Create a biological host capable of infinite cellular regeneration. Purpose: To recreate Elena in a vessel that cannot die.*

He wasn't curing her. He was building a wife who would never leave him. He was turning Sarah into a pet monster.

"You weren't supposed to see that."

Sarah spun around.

Julian stood by the elevator. He wore a white lab coat stained with pink fluids. He held a syringe gun.

"It's messy," he said, walking toward her, his face filled with disappointment. "The memory retention. It fights the rewriting process. I told the graft to consume the hippocampus, but your brain is stubborn, Sarah."

"You killed Mark," Sarah growled. The sound wasn't human. It was a low, vibrating rumble in her chest.

"Mark was weak," Julian sneered. "I made you a god. I gave you immortality. And you cry over a dead man?"

"I am not your wife," she snarled.

"Not yet," Julian said. "But the final procedure will fix that. A total frontal lobotomy. We scrub the personality, leave the motor functions. You won't know who you are, but you'll know you love me."

He raised the syringe gun.

Sarah lunged.

She moved faster than she ever had in her life. She cleared the distance in a single bound.

But Julian was ready. He pressed a button on his remote.

Electricity arced from the ceiling grid. A shock collar—hidden under the high neck of her dress—activated.

Sarah screamed as 50,000 volts slammed into her nervous system. She convulsed and fell, darkness taking her.