The Darkness I Carry

Chapter 33: Vanishing Point

Leah flushed the card down the holding cell toilet before midnight.

She watched it go plastic teeth, red ink, circling the bowl in grim silence before the flush took it. The water was rust-streaked and slow, but it worked. The little disc spun once, then vanished. Gone. Like it had never existed.

Like she had never existed.

She didn't watch the water settle. Just stood there with one hand still on the flush handle, her reflection flickering in the metal of the sink. She looked like a ghost in a borrowed body. Her eyes weren't hers anymore.

They came for her before the sun rose.

No sirens. No cuffs. No Miranda rights.

Just a van. Black and soundless. Two agents in matching charcoal suits. No names. No words. One nodded, the other opened the door.

Caleb stood on the steps of the station, shoulders hunched against the cold. His shirt was still stained with her blood. Or maybe someone else's. He didn't try to speak. Didn't try to reach for her.

He just watched.

But he followed.

The drive was silent. Miles of forest gave way to dead roads, to stretches of land that didn't exist on any map. She watched the locks on the doors. The reinforced floor. The way the van never stopped not for food, not for fuel, not for questions.

They weren't afraid of her.

That was the part that made her cold.

They knew what she was.

And they had built the cage after.

Division Nine wasn't a prison. It wasn't even a facility.

It was a wound in the earth.

A surgical cut, hidden beneath the skin of the world. No guards. No signage. No digital footprint. The entrance was a hollowed-out tree trunk at the edge of a forgotten clearing. One step inside and the elevator dropped fast, silent, deep.

Once the doors closed above her, there was no more sky.

Just metal. Just white.

The halls were curved, smooth, designed to disorient. The lights flickered at unnatural intervals. There were no windows. No clocks. No sound but her own footsteps and the soft electric hum of a place built by people who had never intended anyone to leave.

The woman was waiting in the room.

The same one from before.

This time, her suit was hidden beneath a white lab coat. Her hair was tied back. No clipboard. No security detail.

Just her.

"Leah," she said.

Not Eleanor this time.

Leah didn't sit. Just stared.

"I flushed your little card," she said. "Guess that means you have to kill me now."

The woman smiled.

"If you wanted out," she said calmly, "you would've run. You're here because you want to know what they took from you."

"What you took."

"I wasn't part of the original program," the woman said. "I'm the janitor. Cleaning up the mess left behind."

Leah gave a dry laugh. Just one. Hollow.

"You think this is cleanup?"

"No." A pause. "I think this is inheritance."

The woman stepped aside, revealing the table behind her.

On it sat a single folder.

Brown. Thin. The upper-right corner burned black, like it had been saved from a fire, or meant to burn and didn't.

"Your file."

Leah didn't move.

"You get one look," the woman said. "Then it disappears. Forever."

A long silence stretched between them.

"But once you open it… there's no going back."

Leah stepped forward. Her boots made no sound on the floor.

She reached for the folder. Opened it.

Inside:

A photo blurry, old, but clear enough. A six-year-old girl stared into the lens, her chin smeared with blood. Her expression wasn't shocked or guilty. Just... feral. Alert. Her eyes had the same cold depth Leah saw in the mirror now.

Beneath that, a military crest: black eagle, two crossed syringes behind it. No country name. No insignia. Just implication.

A printed list labeled Behavioral Triggers. Redacted lines of phrases, smells, voice modulations. One line had no blackout:

"Smell of copper - induces orientation response in Subject 01."

Another redacted page, labeled: Patient Zero Surviving Subject.

One sentence at the bottom was left untouched:

"Instincts sharpened beyond moral limits. Useful in urban containment."

Leah stared at it. Not the details those didn't surprise her. It was what wasn't there.

No mention of a family, No birthday,No location, Just function. A purpose and A weapon.

She closed the file with one hand and looked up.

"You didn't bring me here to stop me."

"No," the woman said. "We brought you here to aim you."

Behind the mirror, Caleb stood.

They hadn't told him why they flew him out here. Hadn't told him she'd be behind the glass.

They just gave him a chair. And a window. And said: Watch.

So he watched.

Watched her open that file like it didn't weigh anything. Like it wasn't a coffin full of truth. He watched her take it in without blinking, without a tear, without hesitation.

She didn't flinch.

Because she already knew.

He didn't understand her.

But he understood what they wanted now.

Someone had to choose Her, Or what came next.

Leah cracked her knuckles. The sound echoed in the sterile room like distant gunfire.

"So what now?" she asked.

The woman didn't answer right away.

She stepped back, opened a metal drawer, and pulled out a second folder.

This one was black

Thicker, Heavier.

A paperclip held a single grainy satellite image to the front. A building. Fenced. Hidden.

"You already know," the woman said, "what they made you to do."

Leah didn't take it.

Not yet.

"You think giving me a list makes you safe?"

"No," the woman said. "It makes you dangerous to the right people."

Leah's fingers curled slightly.

She could feel it again. That hum beneath her skin. That itch in her spine.

Not rage.

Not even violence.

Direction.

Behind the glass, Caleb turned away.

He didn't want to see what came next.

But he already knew.

They weren't making her into something.

They were giving her permission.

Back in the room, Leah finally stepped forward.

She opened the black folder.

Her lips parted just slightly.

And then she smiled.