Allison’s POV
The road was silent again.
After that long trip, after Drew had pulled over at this little old house that looked like it was stuck between now and the past, I thought I’d finally get answers.
But the kind of answers I got?
No. No, I wasn’t ready for it.
It all started when Drew told me to rest. The way his voice softened, like he was being gentle with his words, I already knew something heavy was coming.
“Just sit here for a while, okay? I need to grab something inside the house,” he said, opening the rusty door.
I nodded, still holding the necklace he gave me earlier. The gold locket felt warm against my palm, like it knew what it carried inside. That photo of me and my parents—I never remembered it. And that scared me. A lot.
After a few minutes, Drew came back holding a big folder, almost like a mini book, and sat beside me on the porch.
“What is that?” I asked, squinting at the old papers inside.
He didn’t answer right away. He just breathed in, like he was trying to get enough air to say what he wanted.
“Allison,” he started. “I know I said your dad sent me to find you and protect you. That part is true. But I didn’t tell you the whole thing.”
“What whole thing?” My voice cracked.
He held up the folder and opened it. “This.”
Inside were documents. Pages and pages of reports, photos, handwriting I couldn’t recognize, and what shook me the most is a picture of me when I was little, standing outside a facility. A place I couldn’t even remember going to.
“What the heck is this?”
“That’s you,” he said. “When you were six. That’s the government building where your father used to work.”
“My dad didn’t work for the government,” I said, confused. “He was in business.”
Drew looked at me like I just said something wrong. “No, Allison. He wasn’t. That was the cover. Your father worked for an underground branch of intelligence that focused on mind development.”
“Mind… development?”
He nodded.
“And you were one of their earliest experiments.”
I stood up, the porch squeaking under my feet. “WHAT?!”
“Calm down,” Drew said, standing too, trying to reach my hand.
I pulled away. “No! What do you mean EXPERIMENT?!”
He placed the folder on the table beside us. “Your memories. Your dreams. All those strange things you’ve been feeling and seeing lately—they weren’t natural, Allison. Your mind was part of a project called ‘The Echo Room.’”
“You’re lying,” I whispered. “You’re making this up.”
“I wish I was,” he said, voice barely a whisper. “I met your father there. I was also a part of the experiment, but I volunteered. I was older. But you—you were just a kid. You had potential they’d never seen before.”
“Stop it,” I said, my knees almost giving up. “I’m just a normal girl. I’m just—I have a life, I go to school—I have friends—Zeyon and Leo—”
“I know,” he said. “But you were trained to forget. That locket you have? It has a chip hidden inside. Your memories are stored in there. Some of them.”
My breath caught. I looked down at the necklace. The small heart-shaped locket. I opened it, looking again at the photo.
“Why would they store memories like that?”
Drew looked at me seriously. “Because you were too dangerous with them.”
Silence.
“What do you mean?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Your brain was developing faster than anyone expected. You could read people’s thoughts. You could control emotions. The scientists thought it was beautiful. But your father thought it was terrifying.”
My legs gave up. I sat on the edge of the porch and just stared.
All this time.
All this time I thought I was just normal.
Just a girl who had a crush, had weird dreams, had a little drama.
Turns out I was part of something bigger. Way bigger.
“So what now?” I asked, tears finally falling.
Drew sat beside me again. “Now, we go to the place where you were born. Not the hospital. The lab. It was in the mountains. I can take you there. But I need to be sure you want to do this. Once we go, there’s no turning back.”
I held the locket tighter.
“And Zeyon? Leo? What if they’re looking for me?”
“They are safe,” he said. “They’ve been returned to their town. I made sure.”
“Will I see them again?”
“If everything goes right… maybe. But first you need to understand who you are.”
My heart pounded. Not just because of fear. But because deep inside me, something was waking up. Like a small voice, whispering memories that were never really gone.
I nodded. “Let’s go.”
And just like that, I stepped away from everything I thought I knew, toward everything I had forgotten.
Not knowing the next surprise waiting for me just around the corner.
Because in that lab…
Not everything had been shut down like they said.
Something was still awake.
And it remembered me.