44. Valaria
Valaria
The nightmares are worse now.
Not the ones with guns or fire—those are easy. Predictable.
The ones that terrify me are softer.
A voice I can’t place saying my name in the dark. A hand I trust turning cold. A reflection that isn’t mine blinking back from the mirror.
I wake tangled in Pietro’s arms, his heartbeat steady under my cheek. His warmth calms me. For a while.
But not forever.
Because I realize I’m standing in the echo of a woman I barely knew. My mother didn’t just die. She vanished inside something she tried to kill.
That’s why, after Pietro falls asleep again, I slip out of bed, pull on my coat. I rifle through the files until I find her name. I call a woman who once worked beside my mother.
I say my mother’s name, “Elira.”
I leave coordinates and a time. That’s all.
If she comes, I want to face it alone—without Pietro. I want closure.
She meets me at the back of an old church.
Torn leather gloves. Grey braid. No smile.
“Your mother was brilliant,” she says. “And terrified.”
“Why?”
“Because she didn’t just help build Oracle One. She program something inside it that she regretted.”
We sit on a bench while the bells toll above us. Dust floats in beams of light. The whole place feels like a memory.
“She knew the project had gone too far,” the woman continues. “The conditioning. The control codes. She was trying to create a counter-sequence. A way to shut it down.”
“And me?”
“You were her failsafe. Nothing can hurt you once the emergency brakes activate.”
I feel it crack in my chest.
She opens a file. A photo of my mother—hair twisted up, eyes burning with the same sharp fire I own.
“She was afraid for you when she realized the truth,” she says. “It was almost too late when she realized what she’d done.”
“Almost?”
She presses a flash drive into my palm.
“She created a failsafe code—it reprograms everything to self-destruct. Now you have it. It’s her legacy.”
As quietly as she came, she slips into the shadows.
Outside, I hear footsteps.
Boots on stone.
Then Pietro appears in the archway.
He looks at me like I’ve just come back to life.
“You always run,” he says. “But I’ll always find you.”
I go to him.
And for the first time, I don’t run.
I fall against him. He wraps his arms around me.
Because I don’t want to fight this alone anymore.