Long before Eleven opened the first gate, before Hawkins was a name whispered in dread, there were others. The lab had different names back then, different faces running its halls. But even then, it was cold, clinical, merciless.

They were known simply as 001 and 000.

Peter Ballard—Patient 001—was the first success. Gifted, precise, powerful. But 000, codename Cassandra, was the anomaly. Not because she was stronger, though she was. Not because she was more dangerous, though she could be. But because she survived everything they did to her—and still held on to herself.

The doctors never favored Cassandra. Quite the opposite. She was their obsession, their problem, their ticking bomb. They broke her down more times than she could count—tests that pushed her to the edge, days spent isolated in that small white room. They told her she was unstable, a threat to their work. But it was never about instability. It was about fear.

Peter was the only one who saw her for who she truly was. He didn’t see her power as something to be controlled. He saw it as something to be understood. They were children then, but even as time passed, something deeper grew between them—beyond the walls, beyond the experiments. A silent, unspoken tether. Where others feared her, Peter never did.

By the time more children were brought in—Ten, Three, Eleven—they had already formed something no one else in that place had: a bond built not on power, but choice. Years passed in that endless concrete maze, and when they stole glimpses of each other in the corridors, it was all that kept them grounded.

But then Cassandra saw something Peter didn’t.

She saw what was coming.

She knew the lab wasn’t just testing them anymore. It was grooming them. Building weapons. And Peter—he was brilliant, but too trusting. He believed he could change things from the inside.

Cassandra didn’t believe anymore.

So she left.

It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t clean. It was chaos—doors shattered, alarms screaming, blood. And when she ran, she didn’t look back. She thought Peter would follow.

He didn’t.

Years passed in hiding. Cassandra changed her name, her look, buried her power deep. But the guilt was always there—because in her escape, she hadn’t just broken the lab.

She’d broken him.

When they finally captured her again—dragged her back in chains, older, rougher around the edges—the first thing she saw was him.

Peter.

Unchanged, yet colder. There was a void behind his eyes that hadn’t been there before.

“I thought you were dead,” he said.

“I had to go,” she whispered. “I thought you’d come with me.”

“You left me to rot.”