The Keeper’s Burden

Jessica sat on the cold stone floor, her breath still ragged, her body feeling both heavy and hollow. The weight of the memory pressed against her ribs, curling around her like unseen chains.

She had spoken the name. Lazarus. It had slipped from her lips as easily as breath, as if it had always been waiting there, just beneath the surface, buried deep inside her mind. The moment it passed her lips, she knew. She had spoken across lifetimes. Every time, she erased it.

She opened her eyes slowly, finding Leanna and Olivia staring at her, their expressions hovering somewhere between concern and sharp-edged fear.

Leanna spoke first. “Jess, what the hell just happened?”

Jessica exhaled shakily, wiping the sweat from her brow. “I remembered.”

Olivia straightened. “Remembered what?”

Jessica’s pulse hammered. She didn’t know how to explain it. How do you tell someone you had lived before? That you had carried the same burden for centuries, passing it from body to body, erasing it every time? That you had held knowledge not meant to be known, and chosen, over and over again, to forget?

She licked her lips, swallowing against the dryness in her throat.

“Lazarus,” she murmured again. “It wasn’t just a project. It wasn’t just an experiment.”

Leanna’s gaze sharpened. “Then what was it?”

Jessica hesitated. The words felt too heavy to say out loud. But she had come this far. And this time, she wasn’t going to run. She inhaled deeply, centering herself, pushing past the nausea, the fragments of other lives clawing at the edge of her mind.

Finally, she spoke the truth, “Lazarus wasn’t about resurrection.” She looked up, meeting their eyes. “It was about containment.”

The words hung between them, settling like dust in the dim candlelight.

Leanna frowned. “Containment?”

Jessica nodded slowly. “Not of people. Not of bodies.” She pressed her fingers against her temple. “Of knowledge.”

Olivia crossed her arms, shifting her weight. “I’m gonna need a better explanation than that, Jess.”

Jessica exhaled, dragging a hand through her hair. “Lazarus was never about bringing people back to life. It was about preserving something. Locking it inside a host,” She paused, jaw tightening. “inside a vessel.”

Leanna and Olivia exchanged glances.

Leanna’s voice was quieter now. “And you’re the vessel.”

Jessica closed her eyes. “I always have been.”

She could still feel the knowledge pressing against her skull, the weight of it waking up inside her. The past lives. The past choices. The truth she had buried again and again. At the center of it, Lazarus.

She inhaled sharply, forcing herself to focus, “The Templars weren’t just protecting relics,” she continued, her voice steadier now. “They were protecting information. A secret so dangerous, so volatile, that it couldn’t be written down. It couldn’t be hidden in vaults or libraries.”

She exhaled, “So they put it in people.”

A silence settled over the chamber.

Leanna’s face was unreadable. “People like you.”

Jessica nodded. “A lineage of vessels. Each one carrying the memory of the last.” She gestured at the walls, at the names carved into stone. “Each one waking up when the world nears revelation. And every time…” She trailed off.

Olivia’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Every time, they chose to forget.”

Jessica swallowed hard. “Every time, I chose to forget.”

She felt sick. Not from the knowledge itself, but from what it meant. She had always assumed she had been an experiment. A mistake. A creation of Vanguard. But the truth was worse. Vanguard hadn’t created her. They had found her. Found the cycle. Found the memory. And tried to control it.

Jessica let out a slow, shaking breath. “I thought Lazarus was about manipulating minds. Rewriting people like me.”

She met Leanna’s gaze, “But it was never about rewriting.” Her voice dropped lower. “It was about waking me up.”

Leanna’s throat bobbed. “And now you’re awake.”

Jessica’s jaw clenched, “For the first time.”

She felt it deep in her bones. This time was different. This time, the cycle was broken. There would be no next vessel. Whatever knowledge she carried, she was the last one who had it.

And now, she had to decide what to do with it. The Decision That Must Be Made

Leanna exhaled slowly, processing everything, rubbing a hand across her face. She wasn’t the kind of person to believe in fate. But this? This was something else.

“So what now?” she asked.

Jessica closed her eyes. She didn’t know. She had spent her entire life uncovering secrets, exposing conspiracies, hunting down the things people wanted to stay buried. But this? This wasn’t just a secret. It was the oldest secret. A truth that had been sealed inside her for centuries. And now, it was awake.

She inhaled, feeling the full weight of it. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

She looked at Leanna. Then Olivia. And she saw it in their eyes. They weren’t going to let her do this alone.

Olivia sighed. “Well. Guess we better figure it out before someone else tries to kill us.”

Jessica smirked faintly. “You say that like it’s not inevitable.”

Leanna shook her head, glancing at the chamber walls one last time.

“Well,” she murmured, “whatever this is, wherever it goes…”

She met Jessica’s gaze.

“We’re in.”

Jessica exhaled. She had spent so long believing she was alone in this. But now, for the first time, she wasn’t. She wasn’t just a vessel. She wasn’t just a keeper. She was Jessica Sanchez. And this time, she wasn’t going to let the memory die.