Chapter 17 - The Woman on the Screen
The truck never reached the platform.
A steel barrier crashed down between the approaching headlights and the train.
Gunfire struck concrete.
The blue truck reversed into darkness.
Emily's stomach tightened, but Evelyn merely looked amused.
"Your father still knows when not to enter a room."
"That is why he's lived this long."
Armed guards escorted Emily and Brandon from the train.
Palisade had been built inside the mountain during the Cold War. Concrete corridors extended away from the platform. Rusting military signs remained on the walls, but modern cameras watched every doorway.
Evelyn led them into a control room.
The same video of Margaret appeared across a wall-sized screen.
This time the woman looked directly into the camera.
"Emily."
Emily walked closer.
"Tell me something no one else knows."
The woman smiled sadly.
"When you were seven, you broke the blue lamp in the library and blamed the cat."
Emily froze.
Brandon stared at her.
"Did you?"
"Yes."
Hope became dangerous inside her.
Then Margaret lifted a cup.
Her right hand trembled.
Emily's hope vanished.
She remembered chemotherapy.
The nerve damage had affected Margaret's left hand.
Never the right.
Emily walked to the screen.
"Turn around."
The woman hesitated.
"What?"
"Turn around."
Evelyn's expression sharpened.
Emily touched the screen.
"You mirrored the footage."
Silence.
She pointed toward a small scar visible above Margaret's eyebrow.
"It should be on the other side."
Brandon slowly understood.
"This isn't live."
Emily looked at Evelyn.
"It isn't even a woman sitting in a room."
The image distorted.
Margaret's face froze.
Then dissolved into thousands of digital points.
Brandon stared.
"A simulation."
"A reconstruction," Evelyn corrected.
Emily turned on her.
"You used my dead mother to manipulate me."
"I demonstrated the weakness of memory."
"No. You demonstrated yours."
Emily stepped closer.
"You thought grief would make me want her alive badly enough to stop checking."
For the first time, anger replaced Evelyn's calm.
Then alarms sounded.
One of her guards entered.
"We lost camera six."
Another alarm.
"Camera four."
Evelyn reached for a radio.
Only static answered.
Emily smiled.
"My father isn't trying to enter your room."
Evelyn looked toward the monitors.
May you like
Emily finished quietly.
"He's taking away the building around it."
