Chapter 30 - The Daughter Who Was Supposed to Obey
I stared at the two women.
Same face.
Same hair.
Same eyes.
Both looked at me.
One was holding a gun.
The other was crying.
Dad stepped beside me.
“Stay back.”
I couldn't move.
“Mom?”
Both women answered.
“Yes.”
My stomach turned.
Samuel laughed softly.
“This is what Carter was designed to solve.”
Daniel stood beside him.
“Identity.”
Robert leaned against the wall.
“Don't listen to either of them.”
I looked at him.
“You know which one is real.”
He shook his head.
“No.”
Daniel smiled.
“He does.”
Robert looked at me.
“I know which one remembers you.”
One Elena lowered her gun.
“I do.”
The other stepped forward.
“I know everything about you.”
I stared.
“What's my first memory?”
Silence.
Both women looked at each other.
One said, “The rain.”
The other said, “The blue blanket.”
My heart stopped.
The blue blanket was not my first memory.
It was Noah's.
The woman who had answered with it had learned information from the program.
The woman who said rain—
I remembered.
Not clearly.
A window.
Rain.
My mother singing.
Dad carrying me.
I looked at her.
“You're real.”
She nodded.
The other woman smiled.
“Maybe.”
Daniel stepped forward.
“Memory is unreliable.”
I raised my weapon.
“No.”
He stopped.
“I don't need my memory to know you.”
I looked at the false Elena.
“You never called me by my childhood nickname.”
She smiled.
“What nickname?”
“Birdie.”
The real Elena began crying.
Daniel's expression changed.
“So.”
He looked at me.
“You figured it out.”
“No.”
I looked at him.
“You just made a mistake.”
He frowned.
“You assumed I needed memories.”
The room went silent.
Leah stepped forward.
“She doesn't.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“The network isn't controlled by memory.”
Daniel raised his weapon.
“Leah.”
“No.”
She moved beside me.
“The anchor isn't a command system.”
“What is it?”
Leah looked at Noah.
“It's a choice system.”
Daniel fired.
Dad shoved me down.
The bullet struck the wall.
Richard's empty weapon fell from my hand.
Ethan tackled Robert.
Diane fired at Daniel.
Chaos exploded.
Samuel shouted.
“Activate it!”
A siren began.
My scar burned.
I screamed.
Leah grabbed my hand.
“Don't fight it.”
“What?”
“Use it.”
“How?”
“Think of the person you would never hurt.”
“Noah.”
“Exactly.”
I closed my eyes.
The world changed.
For one second, I heard every heartbeat.
Dad's.
Ethan's.
Noah's.
Leah's.
Mom's.
Even Daniel's.
Then something else.
A pulse.
A pattern.
A command.
OBEY.
I pushed back.
Not with my body.
With memory.
Rain.
A blanket.
Dad's arms.
Mom's voice.
Noah's first laugh.
Ethan holding my hand.
Leah standing beside me as a little girl.
I felt the command break.
The monitors exploded.
Lights shattered.
Samuel screamed.
Daniel fell to his knees.
“No.”
Leah gasped.
“You did it.”
“I didn't.”
“Yes.”
I opened my eyes.
The system was dead.
Every screen went black.
Robert stared at me.
“You shut down Carter.”
I looked at him.
“Not all of it.”
He smiled.
“Correct.”
A phone rang.
My mother's.
She answered.
Her face drained.
“Who is this?”
She put the call on speaker.
A man's voice came through.
Young.
Calm.
Familiar.
C-13.
“You thought the network was here.”
My heart dropped.
“Where are you?”
“With Noah.”
I spun around.
My son was gone.
Ethan screamed.
“Noah!”
The nursery door slammed shut.
I ran.
Dad followed.
We reached the room.
Empty.
The window was open.
A small bloodstain marked the floor.
Beside it lay Noah's stuffed rabbit.
I picked it up.
There was a note beneath it.
Three words.
THE ORIGINAL WAKES.
I looked at Leah.
“What does that mean?”
Her face had gone white.
“It means C-13 wasn't the final subject.”
“Then who is?”
She looked toward the burning monitors.
“I don't know.”
Dad grabbed my shoulders.
“We'll find him.”
I nodded.
But my mother wasn't looking at me.
She was staring at the blood record still frozen on one surviving screen.
Three names.
Then a fourth.
I walked toward it.
My breath stopped.
The fourth name was not a person I recognized.
It was listed under:
ORIGINAL SUBJECT.
And beneath it was a date.
The date of my birth.
I turned toward Mom.
“What is this?”
She couldn't answer.
Dad looked at her.
“Elena.”
She finally whispered:
“That was the day Carter stopped trying to control you.”
I stared at her.
“What did they do instead?”
She looked at me with tears in her eyes.
“They built something that could.”
The lights flickered once.
Far outside the house, an engine started.
Then another.
And from somewhere below us, from the buried facility we thought we'd shut down, a final screen came alive.
A single message appeared.
WELCOME BACK, C-14.
I tightened my grip on Noah's rabbit.
Ethan moved beside me.
Dad loaded his weapon.
Leah stared at the screen.
And my mother whispered the one thing she had spent twelve years trying to hide.
“Your son wasn't the experiment.”
May you like
She looked at me.
“He was the bait.”
