The Echo in the Blood

The chamber was silent. Dust hung thick in the air, disturbed only by the slow flicker of torchlight against the stone walls. Jessica stood motionless, her breath steady, controlled—but inside, something was breaking.

“You are the reason it begins again.”

The words still echoed through her skull, heavier than the weight of the dagger she had seen in her vision. The figure in the chair hadn’t moved again. But Jessica could feel them watching her.

Jessica exhaled slowly, her fingers curling into fists. Then, her voice low, she asked: “How long?”

There was a pause then, the figure finally spoke again.

“How long has the wheel turned?”

“How long have you been part of it?”

The answer came soft, almost reverent.

“Longer than memory.”

Jessica’s pulse ticked up. She had expected something absurd. Something she could dismiss. Something she could fight against, but the calm in her voice was worse than any lie.

“You have existed, not as you are. but always as you were meant to be.”

Jessica’s eyes narrowed. “And what does that mean?”

The figure tilted its head slightly.

“You believe the body makes the self. That identity is a shape, a structure, something fixed.”

“But identity is not a body.”

“Identity is the mind.”

Jessica swallowed. “And you’re saying my mind…”

“Has never truly been yours.”

The air felt heavier. The cold of the chamber wasn’t just from the stone anymore. Jessica clenched her teeth. “You’re telling me I’m not real.”

“No.”

“We are telling you that you are not the first.”

A slow breath.

“And that you will not be the last.”

Jessica’s fingers itched toward her knife. Her chest was tight, a slow, curling dread working its way through her ribs. She thought of Vanguard. Of Project Lazarus. Of everything she had burned, everything she had left behind. She had spent years trying to outrun the experiment that created her. Trying to prove she was more than the mistakes of a corporation that had tried to make her something she wasn’t.

And now? Now they were telling her it had never been about Vanguard. That she had always been this. A name. A pattern. A thing that had been written into history before she was even born.

“How?”

The figure exhaled.

“The same way it has always been done.”

“Through the blood.”

Jessica’s stomach twisted. Blood. It had always come back to blood. The experiments. The testing. The hidden records in the Vatican’s archives. The name that had followed her across centuries. Her name, Jessica Sanchez.

Her throat was dry. “You’re saying I’ve been…”

“Not you.”

“But those before you.”

“The memory of the mind does not pass through generations.”

“But the memory of the body does.”

Silence. Jessica exhaled through her nose. She understood now. Not reincarnation. Not resurrection.Something simpler. Something worse. Genetics.

Jessica’s thoughts raced. Vanguard had tried to control memory transfer. Project Lazarus was meant to rewrite a person’s identity, to erase the old and install something new. But the Templars, they hadn’t needed to invent it. They had already known. She thought of the names in the Vatican archives. The list of people who had existed across centuries. The men and women who had been born again and again, not as themselves, but as something close enough to be familiar.

“You mean the mind isn’t being transferred. The memories are.”

The figure nodded.

“Your blood carries echoes.”

“A name passed from generation to generation, always circling back to itself.”

“Not reborn.”
“But remembered.”

Jessica felt her stomach twist. Because now, the truth was finally sinking in. The names on the wall, they weren’t the same person repeating. They were generations of people carrying the same ghost inside them. Pieces of a memory that refused to die. Her name, Jessica Sanchez. The same way Iacopo di San Luca had always returned. Not a man. A memory.

Jessica took a slow step back. Her mind was racing, but she couldn’t afford to fall apart now. Not yet. She exhaled sharply.

“And what happens now?”

The figure was silent for a long moment. Then, softly…

“That is up to you.”
“But know this.”
“If you run, it will not stop.”
“If you burn it down, it will not die.”
“This is older than us all.”
“And it will continue, with or without you.”

Jessica clenched her fists. Because she knew that was true. She had spent her life trying to break free from the past. But she had never considered that the past would continue without her. That it would simply find another way.

She swallowed hard. She thought of Vanguard. She thought of the experiments. She thought of all the people who had died trying to understand something that should have never been uncovered. Then she thought of Mr. Black. Of what he had done to protect her. Of what he had known all along. And of the one thing he had never told her.

“Why did he let me live?”

The figure tilted its head.

“Because he understood what lived inside you.”

Jessica exhaled slowly. She knew what that meant.

“He let you live…”

“…Because you were already part of the cycle.”

Her stomach turned. She was never supposed to leave. But Mr. Black hadn’t stopped her. Because he had known. That one day, she would come back anyway. That one day, she would remember. And that nothing would ever really change. Because it never had. Because it never could. Because it was always her.