Resurrection

She didn't look like a ghost. She looked like a soldier.

Cassandra Vane stared at him through the glass. She wasn't smiling. Her eyes were hard, void of the fear he remembered from the night she fell.

"Hello, Julian," her voice came through the speakers.

"You're dead," Julian whispered. "I saw you fall."

"You saw me go over," Cassandra corrected. "You didn't look down. If you had, you would have seen the maintenance ledge ten feet below. You always ignored the infrastructure, Julian. You only cared about the façade."

Julian backed away until his back hit the railing. "This isn't possible."

"I lived in the sea caves for three weeks," Cassandra continued, her voice calm, clinical. "Eating crabs and drinking rainwater. Then I hacked the maintenance hatch. I’ve been living in the crawlspaces. In the walls. Watching you. Listening to you lie to her."

She gestured to Mara, who was groaning, beginning to stir on the wet concrete.

"I wrote Veritas, Julian. Did you forget that? You put your name on the patent, but I wrote the code. The house is my body. And you are just a virus inside it."

Julian pulled the gun from his waistband. He had tucked it there before dinner.

"Open the door!" he roared, aiming at the glass. "Or I shoot the glass out and come in there!"

"The glass is bulletproof, Julian. You insisted on it."

Julian turned the gun on Mara. "Then I kill her! I finish what I started!"

"Go ahead," Cassandra said. "She’s useless to me. She was just a prop to make you unravel."

Julian hesitated. He looked at Mara, then at Cassandra.

Mara rolled over, coughing. She looked up, bleary-eyed, and saw Julian pointing a gun at her. She saw the woman in black behind the glass.

"Cassandra?" Mara whispered.

"Get up, Mara," Cassandra said through the speakers. "He’s going to kill you."