Page 126 of Whispers in the Dark
“I had to. For you. For Dr. Vance. For him.”
Charlotte’s voice dropped, low and steady. “What if I could work a deal? I’ve got people on the inside. If you help me get in, help me expose them… I swear to you, I’ll make sure you don’t disappear in chains, providing what you told me about your role is the truth.”
He looked at her then, really looked. His gaze searched her face, as if weighing what kind of truth she was made of.
“I don’t want the place saved,” Elias said finally. “Not for evidence. Not for trials.”
She nodded. “Neither do I.”
“I want it erased.”
“Good,” she said. “So do I.”
The silence between them stretched tight—sharp and trembling like a tripwire.
Then Elias stood. “I’ll get you the coordinates. One time. One shot.”
Charlotte rose with him. Her voice was steel. “That’s all we’ll need.”
He turned to go, slipping back into the gloom at the edge of the sacristy like he’d never been there at all. But before he disappeared completely, he looked back over his shoulder. “Tell him,” he said, voice quiet, “not everyone in there was lost. Just trapped.”
She took a step after him. “Wait.”
He stopped. Rigid. Silent.
She reached for him. “I need to know more,” she said, breath fogging in front of her. “The drugs. What they were doing to Alex. The things you gave me to bring him back—what were they?”
Elias turned slowly. His expression was unreadable, like stone. “There’s no single drug,” he said. “It’s a process. Four phases. Custom-built for each subject. First, neural softening. Then emotional erasure. Memory fragmentation. Finally, behavioral imprinting.”
Charlotte felt sick. “And they did all that to him?”
“They started. He didn’t advance. Something in him… held. So Monroe added more. Injections into his spine. Torture. And still he held. Then the electrodes. Then he started to fail.” He took a breath.
“Most wouldn’t fight like he did,” he whispered. “They didn’t have someone coming.”
“No,” Charlotte said. “I guess they didn’t.” She stepped closer. “I want to help them. Not just destroy the system. Not just burn it. If there’s a way—any way—to bring them back, I need to know.”
Elias didn’t answer right away. His face cracked, just a little. She saw the grief buried under layers of control. He looked like a man who had seen too much and slept through none of it.
“There’s a reversal protocol,” he said at last. “Dr. Vance started building it. She called it Project Echo. Monroe shut it down, but Vance kept working in secret. It was only effective in the early stages. Past a point, the brain’s too far gone.”
Charlotte’s breath caught. “How many of the twenty-seven can come back?”
He hesitated. “Half. Maybe one or two more.” Elias’s voice was low.
“That’s still people,” she said. “Still lives. And the rest? What happens when we wake someone who can’t come back?” She swallowed the lump in her throat.
“Then you don’t leave them alone.”
He looked at her like he was trying to believe it. “I have everything on a special server my father created. I also helped Dr. Vance store it in the west wing sublevel archive. Vance can access it to continue her work. No matter what, you’ll need her to show you the drugs.”
“Do you think we might be able to help Mara?” she asked softly.
Elias blinked. His voice dropped to a whisper. “I hope so.”
He looked like her girls looked when they fell in love for the first time. She reached out again, and he didn’t pull away. He let her take his hand.
“Listen to me,” he said. “You’ll need more than force. You’ll need timing. Strategy. People who don’t fold under fear.”
