Buried During Snowfall – Chapter 19
Memory Transfer
The underground chamber trembled like it was breathing.
Cracks spread across the walls while freezing water continued spiraling into the depths beneath Blackwater Lake. Emergency lights flickered weakly across ruined concrete, illuminating faces twisted between terror and worship.
And at the center of it all stood Elias.
Calm.
Dry-eyed.
Patient.
As though the collapse around him had happened many times before.
Adrian stared at him unable to process what his mind already understood.
“You’re saying…” His voice faltered. “The experiments were about immortality.”
Elias tilted his head slightly.
“Such a crude word.”
Mara tightened her grip on the gun. “You transferred consciousness between people.”
“Fragments,” Elias corrected softly. “At first.”
Another violent tremor ripped through the facility. Somewhere deeper below, tunnels collapsed inward with deafening crashes.
Still Elias didn’t move.
“The human mind decays after death,” he continued almost academically. “But memory…” A faint smile touched his face. “Memory lingers.”
Noah whispered bitterly:
“So you buried yourself inside children.”
Elias finally looked toward him.
“For survival.”
“You stole people.”
“No.” Elias’s expression remained disturbingly calm. “I continued.”
The second Adrian stepped beside Elias silently like a loyal disciple.
Mara stared at them both in disgust. “You brainwashed kids until parts of you lived inside them.”
Elias almost laughed.
“You still think identity is singular.” He glanced toward the observation chambers where subjects still watched silently through broken glass. “Humans are collections. Trauma. Memory. Inheritance. Remove enough pieces…” His eyes darkened slightly. “…and new things fit inside.”
Adrian suddenly remembered the letters again.
The typing patterns.
The phrases only Elias used.
The impossible predictions.
Because Elias hadn’t survived death physically.
He survived by moving.
Into other minds.
Other bodies.
The realization hit like ice water.
“The Snowfall Butcher…” Adrian whispered.
Elias nodded faintly.
“One of many names.”
“You killed people for decades.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Elias looked genuinely confused by the question.
“Because memory weakens over time.” He stepped slowly through the flooding chamber. “Violence preserves it beautifully.”
Mara nearly pulled the trigger right then.
Adrian stopped her instinctively.
“No.”
She looked at him like he’d gone insane. “He’s a serial killer!”
“Yes,” Adrian snapped. “But if you shoot him—”
Elias smiled.
“Then I continue elsewhere.”
Silence.
Mara lowered the gun slightly.
Not because she believed him.
Because she feared she did.
Another memory surfaced inside Adrian.
The Headmaster kneeling beside young subjects during transfer procedures saying:
The host rejects foreign memory under stress. Pain stabilizes integration.
That was why the experiments relied on trauma.
Fear.
Isolation.
Violence.
Not punishment.
Conditioning.
Noah suddenly spoke again.
“You promised us freedom.”
Elias looked toward him almost sadly.
“And you received it.”
“You turned us into containers.”
“You survived.”
Noah’s damaged face twisted violently with rage.
“That isn’t survival!”
For the first time Elias’s calm expression hardened slightly.
“It is the only survival.”
The floodwater reached chest level now.
Bodies floated through lower corridors.
The underground structure beneath Blackwater Lake was actively dying around them.
But Elias remained completely unconcerned.
Because he had already escaped before.
Many times.
Adrian finally understood something worse.
“You’re inside me too.”
Silence hit the chamber instantly.
The second Adrian smiled.
Noah looked away.
And Elias…
Elias looked pleased.
“Partially.”
Mara stared at Adrian in horror.
“What?”
Elias stepped closer through the freezing water.
“When the separation procedure failed during Phase Three, fragments transferred unintentionally.” His eyes remained locked on Adrian. “Aggression. Pattern recognition. Violence retention.”
Adrian felt sick.
“No…”
“You wondered why you understood killers so well.”
Mara whispered:
“Oh my God…”
Elias smiled faintly.
“You thought you were profiling monsters.” He tilted his head slightly. “You were remembering.”
Adrian’s entire career suddenly felt poisoned.
Every murder case.
Every instinct.
Every moment he understood how killers thought before anyone else.
Because part of Elias had always existed inside him.
The second Adrian spoke softly.
“That’s why they couldn’t fully erase me.”
Another collapse thundered through the underground structure.
One of the observation chambers shattered entirely, flooding instantly. Subjects screamed as black water dragged them into the depths below.
Mara looked around desperately.
“We are running out of time!”
Elias ignored her completely.
He studied Adrian carefully.
“You resisted integration better than any host I ever encountered.”
Host.
The word itself made Adrian want to vomit.
“What do you want from me?”
Elias smiled.
“Completion.”
Noah suddenly moved.
Fast.
Far faster than his ruined body should allow.
He lunged at Elias violently, slamming both of them into the flooding chamber wall. Water exploded upward around them while Noah screamed with decades of hatred finally breaking free.
“You should’ve drowned!”
Elias didn’t fight back at first.
Almost disappointed.
Noah clawed at him savagely while screaming:
“YOU STOLE MY LIFE!”
Then Elias touched Noah’s forehead gently.
And Noah froze instantly.
Every muscle locked.
Every scream stopped.
Elias whispered something too quiet for anyone else to hear.
Noah’s remaining eye widened in terror.
Then he collapsed backward into the freezing water shaking uncontrollably.
Adrian rushed toward him immediately.
“Noah!”
Noah grabbed Adrian’s coat desperately.
His voice barely worked now.
“He remembers you…”
Adrian frowned.
“What?”
Noah’s eye filled with panic.
“The real Elias died long before Ashriver.”
Silence.
Adrian stopped breathing.
“What did you say?”
Noah coughed violently.
“The thing wearing him…” His body trembled harder. “…came from beneath the lake.”
The chamber became utterly still.
Even Mara felt it.
A shift.
Because Elias didn’t deny it.
Instead he looked almost amused.
Noah whispered the final words before losing consciousness completely:
“He was never human.”