Name

The safe house was an old, forgotten farmhouse miles from anything. It was their secret place to rest and heal. Now, it was a prison for the woman they called Echo.

She sat on a simple bed in the main room. She wasn't tied up with chains, but with special magnetic cuffs that kept her from moving too much. She sat perfectly still, her purple eyes watching everything they did with an unsettling calmness. She had not spoken or eaten for two days.

“This is a mistake, Kael,” Jax said for the tenth time. He stood by the window, looking out at the empty fields. “Command wanted her gone. By bringing her here, you’ve put us all in danger. The people who made her will come looking for their lost toy.”

“She’s not a toy, Jax. She’s… different,” Kael said, his eyes on Echo. He was trying to figure out what he saw in her eyes back in the server room. That moment she paused. It didn’t make sense.

“Leo, what did you find out?” Kael asked. Leo was busy working at a computer.

Leo looked up. “It’s crazy. She has electronics under her skin and wires connected to her brain. A computer controls her body's basic functions, like breathing and heart rate. Her feelings seem to be blocked by a chemical system.”

“So you can’t just… turn her feelings on?” Kael asked.

“It’s not a switch, Kael. It’s like a cage they built around her mind when she was born. If I try to turn off the system, I could damage her brain. She was made in a lab, Kael. Trained and programmed for one thing: to be the perfect killer.”

Kael walked over to Echo and knelt to her eye level. “My name is Kaelen,” he said softly. “Do you have a name? A real one, not a code name?”

Her eyes stayed on him. “I was not given one.”

“Everyone should have a name,” he said. He thought for a second. “Elara.”

For the first time, her face changed just a little. Her eyes got a bit wider, as if she heard something she couldn't understand. “Elara,” she repeated. “A series of sounds. What does it do?”

“It’s not about what it does,” Kael said. “It’s about who you are.”

“I am Subject 734. Codename: Echo. I am a weapon owned by the Aegis Initiative.”

The Aegis Initiative. Leo started typing fast. A few moments later, he cursed. “Aegis. A secret group that was supposed to have been shut down five years ago. I guess not.”

“They made her,” Jax growled. “And they’ll want her back. We need to leave.”

“No,” Kael said, his mind made up. He looked at the woman—at Elara. “We can’t run. They’ll hunt us forever. But she is the proof we need to expose them.” He looked back at Elara. “You want to be free from them, don’t you? Free from their orders.”

Elara tilted her head. “Freedom. A state of not being a prisoner. My programming does not include a desire for this. But… not having orders would be more efficient.”

It was the most she had said about herself. It was a start.

In the next few weeks, they fell into a strange routine. Kael tried to teach her how to be human. He would bring her a warm cup of coffee and tell her to enjoy the smell. She would just analyze it. “The liquid is warm. The smell is… fine.”

He played music for her. She listened, her head tilted. “A complex series of sounds meant to cause an emotional reaction. I hear the sounds. I do not have the reaction.”

Jax kept his distance, treating her like a bomb that might go off. But Leo was interested. He would talk to her for hours, trying to understand her mind. He found out her creators had a secret way to control her, reset her, or even kill her from a distance.

One evening, Kael found her standing by the window, looking at the moon.

“It is a big rock that circles the Earth,” she said.

“It’s also beautiful,” Kael said, standing next to her. “Sometimes, you don't need to analyze things. You can just… feel them.”

She turned her head and studied his face. “Define ‘beautiful’.”

He tried to find the words. “It’s… when something makes you feel good. Happy.”

“Happy,” she repeated. “A chemical reaction in the brain. I have read about it. I have not experienced it.” She looked back at the moon. “I wish to understand.”

That was new. She would have called it a need to get more information. But to Kael, it sounded like the first sign of a real person inside.

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