Chapter 5 - The Original
Amelia stared at the speaker.
“Adrian?”
“Listen to me. I’m coming down. Do not touch the controls.”
The woman inside the tank hit the glass again. Her hair floated around her face. Tubes ran into her arms. She was thinner than Amelia, scarred along the temple and shoulder, but the resemblance was impossible to deny.
The tank continued to empty.
A red message flashed across the control panel.
AUTOMATIC RELEASE IN 01:44.
“Who is she?” Amelia demanded.
Adrian’s breath came hard over the speaker. “I don’t know.”
“You told me not to let her out.”
“Because this lab was built by my father. Nothing here is safe.”
The woman placed her palm against the glass.
Amelia raised her own hand. Their fingers aligned through the barrier.
A memory opened inside her.
She was twenty-four, laughing in the rain beside a woman with the same face. They called each other Lia and Mia. One impulsive, one careful. One born seven minutes before the other.
Twins.
Amelia staggered.
She had never had a sister.
Yet she remembered birthday cakes with two sets of candles. Matching bicycles. A promise made beneath a blanket fort: if one of us disappears, the other will remember.
The countdown reached thirty seconds.
Adrian arrived with Marcus and shut down the release sequence. The liquid stopped draining at the woman’s waist.
She collapsed against the glass.
Adrian looked at Amelia. “What did you remember?”
“A sister.”
“No records show you had one.”
“Records can be changed.”
Marcus examined the control system. “This tank has been sustaining her for years. Deep sedation, muscle stimulation, nutrient delivery.”
“For how many?”
He checked the logs. “Eight years, eleven months.”
Since the accident.
Adrian opened a medical terminal. Patient data filled the screen.
SUBJECT A1: MIA LANE
SUBJECT A2: AMELIA LANE
Amelia Lane. Her name before foster care, before the accident, before Adrian.
The files showed that Amelia and Mia had been identical twins enrolled in a cognitive study at Saint Catherine’s as children. Their mother, Rose Lane, had worked in the hospital laundry. After Rose died, both girls entered foster care. At sixteen, Mia vanished from all records.
“She didn’t vanish,” Amelia whispered. “They kept her.”
Adrian found a video dated two days after the crash.
His father appeared on screen beside Dr. Voss.
“The accident damaged Subject A2’s memory,” Voss said. “She can be stabilized, but the Mirror model requires continuity. A1 remains the stronger candidate.”
Adrian’s father looked toward someone off camera. “And the Hart heir?”
“He believes the woman he loves survived.”
Amelia stopped breathing.
Adrian stepped away from the screen as if struck.
The video continued.
“We can place A1 into A2’s social identity,” Voss said. “Memories can be guided. Habits can be trained. He may never know.”
The recording ended.
Amelia looked through the glass at the unconscious twin.
“Which one am I?”
Adrian shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
He reached for her. She backed away.
“Did you love Amelia before the accident?”
“Yes.”
“And after?”
“I loved you.”
“That is not an answer.”
The laboratory lights failed.
In darkness, metal scraped against metal. Marcus shouted. A door opened where no door had been before.
When emergency lights returned, the tank was empty.
Water spread across the floor.
A trail of wet footprints led into the hidden passage.
May you like
On the glass, written from the inside in blood, were four words.
VANESSA IS YOUR SISTER.
