Chapter 7 - The Third Claire
The woman on the screen had Claire's face.
Not Cassandra's scarred version.
Claire's exact face.
The same hair.
The same posture.
Even the same small mark near her right eyebrow.
She walked through Sanctuary as if she owned it.
Crowe rewound the footage.
"She arrived seven hours ago."
"How?" Marcus asked.
"She used Gabriel's authorization."
Claire watched the woman's movements.
Something felt wrong.
The face was perfect.
The body was not.
Her left shoulder dropped slightly when she walked. Claire had corrected that habit during training at seventeen.
"This isn't another sister," Claire said.
Cassandra looked at her.
"How can you know?"
"She learned my appearance from old recordings."
Crowe enlarged the footage.
The woman reached the archive and placed her hand against a scanner.
The system accepted her fingerprints.
Marcus frowned.
"Genetic duplication?"
Claire shook her head.
"Biometric reconstruction."
"That technology isn't reliable."
"It wasn't."
Cassandra understood first.
"Phoenix improved it."
The footage ended when the false Claire entered a restricted tunnel beneath the archive.
Crowe led them to the same entrance.
The tunnel opened into a medical laboratory hidden beneath the island.
They found rows of empty operating tables.
Human masks floated inside glass containers.
Synthetic skin.
Artificial fingerprints.
Voice-modulation implants.
Claire approached a computer terminal.
The recent user had deleted most of the records, but one file remained.
PROJECT MIRROR.
Its objective was simple.
Create operatives capable of replacing high-value individuals for periods of up to seventy-two hours.
Cassandra stared at the masks.
"How many people have they replaced?"
Claire opened a list.
Judges.
Bankers.
Military officers.
Scientists.
A senator.
And Gabriel Vance.
The replacement had begun twenty-six years earlier.
Claire looked at Crowe.
"You said Gabriel saved me."
"He did."
"How do you know it was him?"
Crowe had no answer.
A sound came from the far end of the laboratory.
Someone was breathing.
They followed the noise to a locked room.
Inside, a man sat chained to the wall.
His hair was gray, his body thin, his face partially hidden beneath a beard.
Claire recognized his eyes.
Gabriel Vance looked up at her.
"My little girl."
Claire could not move.
She had imagined this moment after Marcus told her the grave was false.
She had imagined anger.
Relief.
Questions.
But she felt only suspicion.
"Prove who you are."
Gabriel smiled weakly.
"When you were nine, you broke the kitchen window and blamed the neighbor's cat."
Claire remembered.
"No one else knew."
"You told your mother."
"The replacement."
Gabriel's smile disappeared.
"So you know."
Claire stepped closer.
"How long have you been here?"
"Four years."
"Who imprisoned you?"
"I did."
Cassandra laughed bitterly.
"You chained yourself to a wall?"
"To stop him from using me."
"Vale?"
Gabriel shook his head.
"Something worse."
He lifted his shirt.
A black device had been implanted beneath his ribs.
"If I leave this room, the device connects to Phoenix."
Marcus examined it.
"What does it transmit?"
Gabriel looked at Claire.
"Control."
"Control of what?"
"Protocol Zero."
Claire thought of the global network she had activated after Ethan attacked her.
Gabriel continued.
"The protocol never belonged to you. You were the key that woke it."
A screen behind him suddenly turned on.
The false Claire appeared.
She stood inside Ethan's mansion.
Ethan was beside her.
He looked frightened.
The false Claire placed a hand on his shoulder.
Then she spoke directly to the camera.
"Hello, Claire."
Her voice was perfect.
"You found your father."
Claire's expression remained still.
The woman smiled.
"Now choose."
The camera turned.
Emily was tied to one chair.
Helen was tied to another.
The false Claire held a pistol between them.
"Your witness or your traitor."
May you like
The screen displayed a countdown.
Ten minutes.
