Chapter 278: Disturbing The Memory

The Sphere represented a time when she and Amber could still dream about the future together, before everything went wrong. By recreating that time, the Hive Mind had given Jade a world where she could pretend that nothing had ever happened. If she accepted it, she might never feel the need to leave.

That was the thing she could conclude from listening to Patrick and Gideon discussion. She wasn’t as smart as the Greenwarden, but even she understands this much.

Unfortunately for the Hive Mind, Jade’s memories of Amber were never entirely happy.

She missed her sister so much that even this imitation could make her cry, but the guilt she carried was inseparable from that longing.

She couldn’t look at Amber without remembering what she had lost, or wondering whether she deserved to have her back at all.

The illusion could reproduce Amber’s face and voice, but it couldn’t erase the truth Jade carried inside her.

Perhaps that was why it wasn’t working as well as the Hive Mind had expected.

Jade looked toward the laboratory building. "Amber, let’s go inside."

Her sister tilted her head. "Why? We can play a little longer."

"There’s something I need to check."

Amber pouted but followed her without arguing. Jade led her toward the entrance, where the automatic doors opened to reveal the familiar white corridor.

She remembered what came next. They would sneak through the restricted zone, discover Tommy’s fate, and return to the Sphere before the memory began again.

But this time, Jade wasn’t going to follow the same path.

She waited until the three adults appeared at the far end of the corridor. Professor Elias Voss walked ahead, followed by the elderly chairman of Ourogen Biotech, while her adopted father brought up the rear.

Their expressions and movements were so familiar that Jade felt her stomach twist.

She had spent years trying not to remember this place, yet now she was being forced to relive it as though she had never escaped.

"Stay here, Amber," she said.

Before her sister could question her, Jade hurried toward the three men.

Professor Voss noticed her first. "Jade? What are you doing here? You should be outside with the other children."

Jade didn’t answer. She stepped forward and punched his stomach.

The professor stumbled backward, clutching his nose, while the chairman stared at her in disbelief. Stepfather immediately caught Jade by the arm before she could reach the other two.

"Jade! What has gotten into you?"

She struggled against his grip, trying to strike him as well. "You lying bastard! You all knew what was going to happen to Tommy!"

The corridor fell silent. Even Amber had stopped moving behind her.

For one brief moment, Jade felt something change. The lights above them flickered, and the chairman’s face seemed to distort, as though the memory had failed to render him properly.

Then the man tightened his grip.

"Calm down. You’re frightening your sister."

Jade froze.

Of course. The illusion was correcting itself, trying to push the scene back toward the way it was supposed to unfold. She could almost feel the memory resisting her, smoothing over the disturbance and forcing the familiar world back into place.

She wrenched her arm free and glared at Adrian. "You’re not my father."

His expression darkened. "Jade."

"No!" She stepped toward him again. "You’re just something pretending to be him!"

The corridor trembled. For a moment, the white walls stretched unnaturally into the distance, and the three adults blurred before her eyes.

Then Amber grabbed her hand.

"Sister, what’s wrong with you?"

Jade turned toward her. The fear on Amber’s face was painfully familiar, and her first instinct was to apologize, to comfort her, to pretend she hadn’t just attacked the people standing before them.

That instinct nearly broke her resolve.

She wanted to stay. She wanted to hold Amber and return to the grass beneath the blue sky, where her sister could still smile at her without knowing what awaited them. But Amber wasn’t truly here, and Jade couldn’t let the Hive Mind use her longing as a cage.

"I’m sorry," Jade whispered, gently squeezing her hand before letting go. "But I can’t stay here with you."

Amber stared at her, confused.

Jade turned back toward the corridor, where the walls had begun to ripple like reflections on water. She didn’t know whether attacking the adults had brought her closer to escaping or whether the Hive Mind would simply force her to repeat the memory again. However, she had finally found something worth testing.

Something else bothered Jade. If she had actually attacked them, the robot guards should have intervened immediately, and Stepfather and Professor Elias should have reacted far more aggressively.

Instead, they had stood there looking confused, as though she had merely done something inappropriate rather than assaulted them.

The entire scene felt strangely sanitized, as if the memory had been reduced to some harmless, child-friendly version of what had really happened.

Before Jade could investigate further, everything around her suddenly turned dark.

When she opened her eyes again, she was back inside the Sphere, standing beneath the familiar blue sky with Amber beside her.

"What a good day. I hope this never ends," her sister said with a gentle smile.

Jade sighed as she looked at her.

"It would never end," she murmured, "if I didn’t do something about it."

Jade decided to stop playing along with the memory.

The next time Amber suggested sneaking out to find Tommy, Jade agreed, but instead of following the familiar corridor, she dragged her sister toward the nearest laboratory and began pounding on its locked door.

When that failed, she shouted at the security cameras, insulted the scientists through the intercom, and even tried to climb over the Sphere’s outer barrier.

None of it worked. The memory simply corrected itself, returning her to the beginning as if her actions had never happened.

She tried other things in subsequent loops. She refused to leave her room, deliberately told Amber that Tommy was already dead, and once even dragged her sister straight to Adrian’s office to demand answers about the children who had been sent away.

Each time, the illusion found a way to push her back onto its familiar path. Sometimes the world went dark, while other times Jade simply blinked and found herself beneath the blue sky again, with Amber beside her and the same children playing on the grass.

The worst part was that Amber continued to behave as though nothing was wrong. She laughed at Jade’s strange suggestions, complained when their plans went awry, and occasionally asked why her sister had become so difficult lately.

Her responses were so natural that Jade sometimes forgot she was speaking to an imitation. Those moments were dangerous. Whenever she caught herself enjoying their time together, the guilt returned, reminding her that the real Amber was somewhere beyond this false paradise.

Still, Jade refused to give up. The Hive Mind wanted her to accept this world, and she would rather tear the entire memory apart than allow it to keep her here.

After what felt like dozens of loops, she began noticing something different. The ripples that appeared whenever she disrupted the memory no longer vanished completely.

At first, they were barely noticeable distortions along the walls, like heat shimmering above a road. Then they began lingering even after the illusion reset, leaving faint irregularities in places that should have been perfectly stable.

Jade paid close attention to them, hoping to discover a pattern. Eventually, she noticed that the distortions were most pronounced near the restricted laboratory, where the memory always broke down before she could properly witness Tommy’s fate.

The next time she and Amber sneaked into the corridor, Jade deliberately slowed down and examined the wall beside the laboratory entrance.

At first, she saw nothing unusual. Then the surface shimmered, and a small dark opening appeared in the middle of the white wall.

Jade stopped breathing for a moment.

The hole was barely as large as her hand, its edges wavering like the surface of disturbed water. Beyond it, she couldn’t make out anything clearly.

It wasn’t another room or corridor, at least not one she recognized. The darkness looked fundamentally different from the artificial shadows of the Sphere.

"What’s wrong?" Amber whispered beside her.

"Nothing. Stay here."

Jade raised her hand and pressed her fingers against the opening. The surface yielded slightly beneath her touch, almost like thin rubber, but when she tried to push her hand through, something resisted her.

She pressed harder, then gripped the edges and attempted to pull them apart.

Nothing changed.

"Damn it."

Before she could attempt anything else, a metallic sound came from behind them. Jade turned and saw a security robot entering the corridor. Its sensor locked onto the two girls, and a warning tone sounded as it raised its mechanical arm.

Unlike the adults in her previous attempts, the machine showed no hesitation. It had identified their unauthorized presence and was preparing to neutralize them.

"Run!" Amber cried.