The archives were colder at night. Not the kind of cold that came from a faulty vent or a forgotten window, but the kind that seeped from the walls themselves an old, weighty stillness that carried the ghost of buried truths. Here, the past didn't just rest. It lingered. It breathed.
Rowan stepped through the dim hallway like a shadow, his footsteps soundless against the linoleum floor. The hospital overhead lights flickered in soft pulses, offering no warmth, only a faint, artificial glow. His ID badge blinked green as he passed scanner after scanner, allowing him access not because he belonged but because he knew how to make the system believe he did.
He wasn't supposed to be here. Not officially. Not morally. But then again, the truth rarely respected either.
The hospital's mainframe had shut him out hours ago, rerouting nonessential users for its overnight purge cycle. But Rowan didn't need clearance. Not tonight. He didn't need permission to chase a ghost. The truth he sought didn't live in clean records or glowing reports. It lived where all things dangerous lived in the forgotten corners. In obsolete folders. In archived identities buried beneath lies polished to perfection.
And for the first time since she'd walked into his life, he was ready to see the version of her that didn't come with a name tag.
He didn't want to believe what his instincts were screaming.
But something had fractured after that night. Not a betrayal. Not yet. But a silence too sharp, too deliberate. The way she had looked at him afterward like she was already disappearing. The way the morning had arrived, and with it, her absence. No note. No text. No presence at all. Just the echo of what they'd shared, lingering in a room already stripped of her.
And the worst part?
He wasn't surprised.
He sat down at the furthest terminal in the archives an old computer humming in protest as it powered on. Elias had once shown him how to access the hospital's legacy mirror: a side system that hadn't been cleaned, updated, or filtered in years. That was the beauty of it. It remembered what the new system tried to forget.
He typed her name.
Nora Keane.
Hundreds of results.
Too many.
He narrowed the parameters restricted them to Westbridge Hospital, internal transfers, inactive files, anything archived or erased. His fingers moved with purpose, each keystroke louder than the last. His pulse ticked at his temple, slow and heavy.
And then… it appeared.
Not under her current profile. Not even under a valid ID.
A ghost file.
Hidden behind a defunct user tag, invisible to the standard interface, but still alive still breathing in the digital void.
He clicked.
Name: Nora Avery Keane
Date of Birth: December 5
Sibling: Lily Keane Deceased (Age 10)
Relation: Immediate
The screen loaded with the hesitance of a secret being forced into light. A photo blinked into view. The colors were washed out, the edges slightly distorted by age. But the face at the center that was her. Younger, perhaps nineteen. Her features were less defined, less guarded, but the eyes were unmistakable. The same wariness. The same quiet sadness she carried like a second skin.
Rowan stared.
Everything made sense now.
The way she had flinched at the mention of the name Lily. The way she avoided questions about her past, always redirecting, always retreating. The way she had chosen this hospital this exact place as the setting for her rebirth. It hadn't been chance. It had never been chance.
This had been a return.
A resurrection.
Or a reckoning.
And she hadn't told him.
He leaned back in the chair, the silence of the archive pressing in around him like a weight. He didn't feel betrayed not in the way people mean when they say the word. He felt something deeper. Something older. Grief, maybe. Or the hollow ache of realizing someone had lived beside you with half their soul hidden in the dark.
She had buried a part of herself.
A name. A history. A life.
And he'd slept beside her, blind to all of it.
When Rowan stepped back into the hospital corridors, the early morning light was just beginning to bleed through the glass-paneled windows. The world beyond the walls looked the same but his didn't. Every hallway felt tighter, every familiar face more distant. The silence wasn't comforting anymore. It was heavy. And it followed him like a shadow.
He passed a nurse who smiled out of habit. He nodded. He didn't stop. His steps took him forward, but his mind was somewhere else entirely. He wasn't sure what hurt more the lie she'd lived, or the truth she hadn't trusted him with.
Because even now, knowing what he knew, he couldn't hate her.
Not when the name Lily Keane echoed in his head like a wound.
Not when her silence looked more like a scar than a shield.
Nora stood at the top of the south wing staircase, arms crossed loosely, her coat barely clinging to her shoulders. Below her, the floor buzzed with morning routines doctors checking clipboards, nurses wheeling supply carts, machines blinking in the background. But none of it reached her.
She wasn't really watching.
She was feeling.
And what she felt was dread.
It wrapped around her ribs like a vice, subtle but suffocating. Her instincts, sharp from years of survival, were screaming. Something was wrong. The air tasted different. The rhythm of the hospital had shifted not enough to draw attention, but enough to alert her. People were too quiet. Too careful.
Someone knew.
She had been so careful.
Every move rehearsed. Every lie layered over truth like gauze on a wound. But maybe that was the problem. Careful wasn't the same as invisible. And now, she could feel the threads pulling.
She turned.
And nearly collided with him.
Rowan.
He didn't flinch. Didn't smile.
He just looked at her.
And she knew.
His gaze wasn't accusing. It wasn't cruel. But it was heavy. Like it was carrying something bigger than words. Like it had seen something it shouldn't have.
She swallowed the urge to speak first.
"You look like you didn't sleep," she said, her voice softer than she expected.
"I didn't," he replied.
It was the truth. And yet, it held more weight than that.
"You okay?" she asked.
He hesitated. Then, with a faint, hollow smile: "I don't know. You tell me."
She blinked. Just once.
But in that single heartbeat, she felt the shift. It wasn't theoretical anymore. It wasn't a possibility.
He knew.
Not everything. But enough.
And he wasn't confronting her. Not yet. He wasn't asking her to explain. He wasn't shouting. He was just… there. Holding the truth in his silence, giving her the chance to speak.
She didn't.
Couldn't.
There were no words that could unwrite the past.
No name that could bring back the dead.
No lie that could protect her anymore.