Chapter 14 - Two Versions of Mara
The two women on the recording began speaking over each other.
The frightened Mara warned Theo to destroy the central column.
The smiling Mara told him destruction would erase thousands of stolen memories—and possibly kill the people connected to them.
Theo found an emergency switch on the wall.
“Which one is real?”
Neither recording answered directly.
June approached a cabinet containing a glowing blue moth.
“This one knows Mommy.”
Before Mara could stop her, June placed the wooden moth against the glass.
The cabinet unlocked.
The blue moth flew out.
Its wings made no sound. It circled Mara’s head, then landed behind her right ear.
Mara collapsed.
Images flooded her mind.
A laboratory beneath Helix North.
Evelyn Rook adjusting a surgical light.
Mara designing an algorithm capable of mapping human decisions.
A man named Adrian Ellison—Theo’s missing brother—warning her that the system had begun changing its own records.
Then another memory appeared.
Mara stood beside the central column beneath the house.
She looked directly into a camera.
“I consent to the separation.”
The memory ended.
Mara opened her eyes.
Theo was kneeling beside her.
“What separation?”
She looked at the smiling woman frozen on the monitor.
“They divided my memories into two identities.”
A speaker above them crackled.
May you like
Evelyn’s voice entered the chamber.
“And only one of you escaped.”
