Lupine: Awakened-Chapter 12: Ghost Codes
**"Some ghosts don’t haunt halls.
They haunt the choices we don’t remember making."**
We — Alpha Team — survived Site Delta.
But survival has a cost.
I’m starting to remember a girl with fire in her voice.
Third is seeing ghosts in the lab.
And Parker—he’s haunted by a name he doesn’t remember saying.
Some memories hurt.
Others won’t stay buried.
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Jay
The air tastes like blood and static.
I crouch behind a scorched console, heartbeat louder than the gunfire still echoing in memory. There’s blood on my gloves — mine or someone else’s — drying, flaking off each time I flex my fingers.
No pain.
Not yet.
Across from me, Parker hunches — bloodied, shaking — whispering numbers. Not coordinates. Not serials. Just numbers, like he’s counting the pieces left of himself.
I don’t blame him.
Third’s voice cuts through comms, sharp and clipped.
"Status check. Sound off. Now."
Philip answers first, cool and composed. Malcolm follows with a grunt. Dave sighs. Otto coughs, muttering, "Still breathing. Barely."
My hand hovers over my comm. I almost forget how to speak.
"Alive," I manage. "Mostly."
We’re still in the lab.
The lab tried to survive a war and quit halfway through. Burnt-out screens flicker with dead signals. Overhead lights sputter, spitting shadows that twitch when they shouldn’t. My boots crunch over broken glass — and bone.
Sage is elbow-deep in a control panel, cursing softly as he tries to pull data from a drive that shouldn’t exist anymore. He’s the only one still pretending this mission’s salvageable.
Gabby limps past me and kneels beside Parker, scanning him for infection after the bite.
Surprisingly, there’s none — only scratches and burns. His vest took most of the damage. The burns are chemical, splashed during the fight.
Still, none of us can find the words to steady him.
"You saw it too, didn’t you?" Parker’s voice is raw. Low. Not really needing an answer.
I don’t give him one. My eyes stay locked in the hallway.
The one the wolf disappeared into.
No sound. No blood trail. No prints.
Only claw marks gouged deep into concrete — and the ghost of a laugh, warped, like it came through water.
And something clawing deeper into me.
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The deeper we went, the quieter it became.
Not silence — something worse. The kind of stillness that happens when even the dead are listening.
Sage’s beacon led us to a vault beneath the lab, marked with a cipher none of us could read.
Cyprus hadn’t mentioned this.
Third brushed a hand over the panel. "Scan it."
Sage plugged in the override. The interface sparked, died — then blinked to life again, vomiting corrupted footage across the display: static, flickers of faces, screams without sound.
Then—
A heartbeat.
Mine. Too fast.
A child’s voice, warped and pulling at something I’d buried.
A name we couldn’t hear — but my mouth almost shaped it.
Dave flinched as if burned. Gabby grabbed his arm. Otto stumbled back, wide-eyed. Third clicked his tongue and looked away. Philip swore in French, pressing his temple like something had cracked inside.
I said nothing.
Because I’d seen that hallway before.
Not in a nightmare.
Not in passing.
I remembered locking it.
And I remembered why I was afraid.
Through the static, a soft, automated voice bled into the room:
[Welcome back... Project Remembrance. Alpha Series. Re-integration in progress...]
Then — blackout.
No cure. No samples.
Only a room that knew our names before we spoke.
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I don’t remember how we got out.
One second the lights went out — the next, the static was inside my skull.
Back at base, MedBay lights were too clean. Too bright. Too sterile.
I hated them.
Gabby was getting stitched across from me. Malcolm nursed a cracked rib. Otto had three cracked. Dave sported a black eye and a cheek bandage he kept poking like it might vanish. Philip’s shoulder was out. Sage had only scratches.
I sat still. Let the IV run. Pretended my skin wasn’t crawling.
Parker sat hunched, blanket draped over him, half his body stitched and bandaged — something broken passing as whole.
Otto, usually the jester, hadn’t spoken once.
Then the doors hissed open.
I didn’t recognize them at first. The women. Some rushed in. Some paused like they weren’t sure they belonged.
Gabby’s wife, Althea "Thea" Rojas-Mendoza, Filipino-Spanish interpreter and activist, scolded him for getting hurt — hands trembling.
Otto’s wife, Marissa Chen-Reyes, Taiwanese-American trauma nurse, kissed his forehead like he might vanish.
Philip’s partner, Isobel "Izzy" Flynn-Carver, Irish-Canadian wildlife ecologist, looked like she was about to cry—which terrified him more than any wound.
Dave’s girl, Lila Mahdavi-Nazari, an Iranian-Australian biotech engineer, sat beside him, brushing back his curls with a touch that said this isn’t the first time I’ve patched you up.
Malcolm’s partner, Dr. Elina Kuznetsova-Volkova, Russian neurologist and former government researcher, simply rested a hand on his shoulder, anchoring him.
Sage’s wife, Dr. Naira Qureshi-Latif, Black Pakistani psychologist and former Horizon researcher, eyed him with quiet disapproval as she dabbed medicine onto his scratches.
And me?
No one came.
Same for Parker.
He didn’t look surprised.
Then, there were the nurses...
the way they glanced at us, the way they whispered—
-- "They shouldn’t be remembering this soon." --
-- "It’s accelerating. That white wolf — maybe it triggered something." --
-- "If they remember too much too fast—" --
-- "PROJECT REMEMBRANCE WILL UNRAVEL." --
-- "And if it does... so will they." --
Silence. Then one voice, sharper:
-- "...Stop talking. He’s awake." --
There it was again.
That name.
REMEMBRANCE.
I clenched my fists, letting the IV needle tug against my vein. Pain made things real.
Across from me, Parker turned his head, voice barely there.
"You ever feel like... you forgot someone who mattered?"
I kept quiet.
Because I know I did.
And she wasn’t gone.
She was hiding inside every heartbeat that didn’t feel like mine.
That’s when I noticed — Third never came inside.
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I found him on the rooftop.
Third never liked walls. Even before things went to hell, he’d find the edges — rooftops, cliff faces, the lip of something broken.
Tonight, he sat on the ledge, wind in his hair, boots dangling over empty space, cigarette ember burning low.
"You’re supposed to be in MedBay," I said.
"You’re supposed to be asleep."
I sat beside him without asking. My shoulder throbbed from the landing. Something inside my ribs still wasn’t right. But I didn’t care. I needed air that didn’t smell like antiseptic and regret.
We stayed quiet, watching the base tick with faint light and movement below. No alarms. No screams. Just the fake calm after almost dying.
Finally, he said, "We weren’t supposed to make it out."
I looked at him. "What?"
"That mission." He took a drag, exhaled. "It was a test run. They sent us down there knowing damn well it wasn’t stable. Cyprus didn’t want a cure. He wanted proof we’d survive what comes next."
The words landed like shrapnel. I didn’t bleed — but something inside me did.
"They’re not telling us everything," I said.
He nodded. "No. They’re not."
I hesitated, then said what had been clawing at my throat since we got back.
"There was something down there. In that room. I... I think I knew it. Or her."
Third didn’t flinch. He just stared at the smoke curling off his fingers.
"I saw her too, Jay."
A pause.
"She laughed. Not at me. Just... laughed."
The wind picked up—cold against the back of my neck.
I didn’t ask who.
I already knew.
He flicked the cigarette away, then leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
"Jay," he said, voice low, "when we were inside that chamber — just for a second — I remembered a laugh. A real one. Not mine."
That hit harder than I wanted it to.
Third never talked about the Before. None of us did. But him least of all.
I looked closer.
He wasn’t just haunted.
He was cracking.
And I didn’t know how to stop it — because I felt the same way.
"Do you think we knew her?" I asked, barely above a whisper.
His jaw worked. He almost shook his head.
Then, softer than the wind—
"I think... we loved her."
The words detonated inside me.
I couldn’t breathe.
Because I knew it too.
We sat there, quiet. Listening for a laugh we should have never forgotten.
And somewhere out there...
she was still listening too.
*********
Chapter 11:
"Memories don’t always come back in pieces.
Sometimes... they come back screaming."
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Author’s Note
Petals, you made it to the end of Chapter 12 — and that means you’ve been walking the same dark hallways as Jay and the boys, especially Jay.
Thank you for letting my words crawl under your skin, for chasing whispers and static with me.
If you felt that voice in the static... tell me.
If you have a theory about Project Remembrance, drop it.
I read every comment, and I love watching your puzzle pieces collide.
Your support keeps this story alive — every read, every power stone, every quiet “I need the next Chapter” fuels my late-night writing sessions.
Now breathe. Chapter 13 is coming, and I promise... it’s not going to let you rest.
— M. Poppy
