Chapter 4 - The Lighthouse Beneath the Ruins
Samuel was moved toward secure medical care while Emma, Ortiz, and Margaret drove to the abandoned lighthouse at Harbor Road. During the journey, Margaret admitted she had funded the project after losing her daughter and grandchild during childbirth. What began as an attempt to save mothers became a system of control she convinced herself she could manage.
Beneath the burned keeper's house, they found Room Seventeen. Seventeen glass cradles stood inside. Sixteen were empty. The last held photographs and files on women who had been monitored for years.
Emma discovered photographs taken outside her elementary school and documents naming her Maternal Candidate 12. Her unborn child was labeled Continuation Subject A-17.
An old recording showed Evelyn refusing consent for reproductive-cell preservation while Margaret threatened Emma's safety. Another recording showed Emma unconscious during the embryo transfer and implant surgery. Samuel warned Daniel that the embryo was genetically modified.
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Remote access suddenly activated every screen in the room. Live feeds showed women and children still being watched. A man's voice welcomed Emma home and claimed that the body rescued from the clinic was not Samuel Morgan but Patient Zero.
Records listed the real Samuel as dead nineteen years earlier. The man who had performed Emma's surgery appeared on-screen wearing Samuel's face. He told them he was the one who had completed the procedure.
