Chapter 11
Ember
By the time I’ve reread the articles twice, Luke’s already cracked open a soda and started poking around in his usual rapid-fire way. He knows me well enough not to comment on how I fall into research holes—he just makes sure I eat and stay hydrated while I spiral.
“You’ve checked the obvious.” He scrolls the screen. “But if Radley patients are talking, it’s not going to be on mainstream boards. Think more… hidden layers. The places where gamers trade hacks or people swap mods that barely exist.”
I give him a quick glance. “You’re saying my mom’s history could be buried next to cheat codes for zombie shooters?”
“Not next to. Underneath.” He winks, but his fingers never stop moving across the keys. “Encrypted forums. Invite-only. They don’t show up unless you know the breadcrumb trails.”
A pang of unease hits me. “And you know those trails?”
“Better than I should.” His grin is boyish, but I know him well enough to see the steel underneath. He’s dead serious about helping me.
I watch his profile as he works. He’s focused, steady.
Part of me wants to shove him out the door, to keep him safe from this growing nightmare.
The rest of me knows I can’t do this without him.
He sees sides of me I usually keep hidden from others—the obsessive, relentless digging.
And instead of pulling away, he leans in closer.
“Found something.” He angles the laptop toward me. On the screen, a string of numbers and symbols travels through a series of proxy sites. A crude digital breadcrumb trail, just like he said.
My pulse skips. “This looks like… a key?”
“Exactly. A coded reference to a forum that isn’t supposed to exist. People who know about it call it The Ward.”
The name sends a chill straight through me.
I imagine faceless eyes on the other side of the screen, waiting, watching.
“What if it’s a trap?” My voice is smaller than I want it to be.
I hate feeling like a kid. “What if they’re monitoring who tries to get in?
We could be handing them our names. Or this location. ”
Luke covers my hand with his. Warm, solid. “Or we could finally get answers. We’ll take it slow. Layers of protection. No one’s going to know it’s you. We’ll make sure of it—between everything we both know about getting around online, we can do this.”
I want to believe him. I want to believe we can open this door without unleashing something that will swallow us whole.
Still, my finger hovers above the trackpad. One click, and there’s no turning back.
The screen darkens and loads a new page.
Luke’s fingers fly across the keys, layering various protections.
I throw in my thoughts here and there, though he clearly knows what he’s doing.
Every so often, he murmurs a phrase like “VPN shield engaged” or “proxy masked”—little reassurances that we’re taking every precaution.
Finally, he leans back. “Okay. We’re wrapped up tighter than a tournament server. Time to see what’s behind the curtain.”
My throat tightens as he clicks one last link. The screen flashes then resolves into a stark black page. White text bleeds across it:
Welcome to The Ward. Entry by referral only.
Luke grins. “Guess we’ve got the referral.”
A moment later, the page shifts. Threads appear—cryptic titles like Milkshake Protocol, The Lost Year, and Test Subjects Classified A–C.
My blood runs cold. That word “milkshake” again. My pulse races as I scroll. Each post is anonymous, and the usernames are strings of numbers and symbols. Some threads are locked. Others are sprawling, full of jagged memories typed out in fragments.
Woke up with scars I don’t remember getting.
They said we were volunteers. I was ten.
Does anyone else remember the green room?
I freeze. “Green room?”
Luke glances at me. “Ring a bell?”
Too much. Mom used to whisper about a room she called green whenever she had nightmares—though she’d never explain what it meant.
I grip the desk, suddenly dizzy. “Luke, this is real. These people really were at Radley.”
He squeezes my shoulder. “Then we’re exactly where we need to be.”
A new message pops up at the top of the board. Not part of any thread. Just a stark warning in bold red:
THEY ARE WATCHING.
For a heartbeat, neither of us breathes.
Then Luke mutters, “Okay… that’s not creepy at all.”
My stomach knots. I can’t shake the feeling that by opening this door, we’ve already been seen.
He scrolls past the red warning, unfazed. “Could just be scare tactics to keep outsiders away. That’s what I would do.”
But my skin prickles as if unseen eyes are roving over me. “Or it means someone knows we’re here.”
“Then let’s find out what they’re hiding.” His voice is steady, sure. The way he says it makes me feel braver than I am.
He dives deeper, clicking through threads, chasing cryptic links tucked inside replies. Most of them dead-end in error messages or garbled code. But then he freezes, his cursor hovering over a string of faint gray text at the bottom of the screen. It’s barely visible, like a shadow of a link.
“What’s that?” I whisper.
Luke highlights it. The faint text sharpens into words:
Lost Echoes.
He shoots me a look. “Hidden in plain sight.”
My pulse quickens as he clicks. The Ward vanishes, replaced by a darker interface. Black background. White text. But this one feels… colder. Organized. No threads about memories or scars. Just files, lists, and diagrams.
Luke scrolls, and the breath exits my lungs. Facility schematics. Patient logs. Timelines stretching back decades.
“This isn’t just Radley,” Luke murmurs. “There are two others. Look.” He points at the headings.
Radley. North Ridge. Willow Glen.
I stare at the names, my chest hollowing out. “North Ridge and Willow Glen?”
“Both running parallel programs. Connected infrastructure. It’s like… Radley wasn’t the whole machine. It was just part of a bigger project.”
My stomach knots. “So they weren’t caught up in one doctor’s obsession. They were part of something bigger, something systematic.”
“And Laurel is just the face of the experiments. The one paying the price for something much darker.” Luke scrolls faster, his face pale in the screen’s glow. “And whoever kept this hidden wanted it buried deep.”
I grip his wrist before he can click again. “Luke… if we keep going, we can’t pretend we don’t know anything. We’ll know too much. There will be no turning back.”
He looks at me, his eyes steady, unwavering. “Then we’ll learn the truth, together.”
Another link flickers at the bottom of the screen. Blinking like a heartbeat.
Project Elysium—Restricted.
The blinking link pulses on the screen as if it’s alive.
Luke leans closer. “Project Elysium. Sounds like endgame-level stuff.”
A chill runs down my arms. “Or bait. What if this is how they track people who dig too deep?”
He tilts his head, studying me instead of the screen. “Do you want to stop?”
I don’t answer right away. The truth tangles within me—fear twisting with need. I want him safe, and I want myself safe. But more than anything, I want answers. I need to know what swallowed my mom, what threatens Kenzi, what still lurks in the shadows of my family’s past.
“If we open it, we can’t ever close it again.” My voice cracks. “You get that, right? This led Kenzi to where she’s at now, and this could even be what was behind my mom’s death.”
Luke threads his fingers through mine, grounding me. “I get it, and I’m not letting you carry it alone.”
For a long moment, the only sound is the hum of the computers. Then I nod, heart pounding. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
Then Luke clicks the link.
The screen flickers. A loading symbol spins. Words form, slow and deliberate.
We both hold our breath, hands tightening together, waiting for the secrets to spill.