Chapter 9 - The Replacement Program
The armed woman called herself Nora Bell.
According to federal records, Nora had died in a psychiatric hospital twelve years earlier.
According to Nora, that death had been staged when the Hearth recruited her.
“They chose women with no close relatives,” she explained from behind the glass wall of an interrogation room. “Runaways. Patients. Prisoners. People no one would search for.”
Daniel sat opposite her with Reed and Ortiz.
“Why did they want you to become Laura?”
“I resembled her. Surgery handled the rest.”
“Her voice?”
“Training.”
“Her memories?”
Nora looked toward the mirrored glass.
“That was the purpose of the red room.”
Daniel remembered Emily’s drawing.
Both think they are Mommy.
“They put Laura’s memories inside you?”
“Fragments. Emotional responses. Habits. Sensory associations.”
“You remember Emily being born?”
“I remember pain. Rain against the hospital window. Daniel holding my hand.”
Daniel’s stomach turned.
“Those are Laura’s memories.”
“They feel like mine.”
Ortiz asked, “Why did Evelyn abandon the replacement?”
“She did not.”
Nora leaned closer.
“There were two replacements.”
Daniel looked toward the corridor where the wounded woman had vanished.
“The woman who escaped.”
“Subject L-2.”
“What are you?”
“L-1.”
Reed opened a file.
“Why did L-2 appear at the cabin as the real Laura?”
“To make Daniel trust her.”
“She knew private memories.”
“We all do.”
Daniel stood.
“Then where is my wife?”
Nora’s face softened.
“I don’t know.”
“You told me you were pulled from the burning car.”
“I was. The dead woman inside was another subject. Evelyn needed a body to establish Laura’s death.”
“So Laura survived the crash?”
“Yes.”
“You saw her?”
“Not after the road.”
Daniel placed both hands on the table.
“The woman beneath the lake had Laura’s scar. She knew things no one else knew.”
“So do I.”
“What happened to the real Laura?”
Nora looked down.
“She was taken to the Hearth’s primary facility.”
“Where?”
“I never saw it. We called it the Nursery.”
The word made Ortiz visibly uncomfortable.
“Why?”
“Because it was where identities were born.”
The interrogation paused when a technician entered with DNA results.
The woman Daniel had rescued from beneath the lake was not Laura Mercer.
Her DNA matched Nora Bell.
Daniel stared at the report.
“L-2,” Nora said.
The test also showed that Nora and L-2 were not biological twins. They were unrelated women altered to resemble the same person.
Daniel felt as though Laura had died again.
“Where is L-2 now?”
Reed answered.
“She escaped through the ventilation system.”
“With a bullet wound?”
“She had access to a medical supply room and help from inside the facility.”
Daniel looked at Reed.
“You have Hearth members here.”
“We are investigating.”
“You knew about the replacement program.”
“We knew the project existed. We believed it ended decades ago.”
Ortiz crossed her arms.
“You seem to believe many convenient things.”
Reed ignored her.
Nora asked to speak with Daniel alone.
Reed refused until she offered information about Evelyn’s next destination.
“The Silver House,” Nora said.
Daniel remembered the moon symbol.
“What is that?”
“A training facility disguised as a boarding school.”
“Where?”
Nora looked at Emily through the glass.
“I will tell Daniel. No one else.”
Reed ordered the recording equipment shut off, though Daniel doubted it truly was.
Nora waited until they were alone.
“Emily opened the Archive.”
“She never gave Evelyn the sequence.”
“She did not need to speak it. The key stores the Mercer pattern.”
Daniel looked at the silver key sealed inside an evidence bag.
“That is not a key.”
“It is a reader. The sequence is encoded in tissue, voice, and emotional response. Evelyn terrified Emily until the pattern activated.”
“The freezer.”
“Yes.”
Daniel’s anger became almost unbearable.
“What did the Archive give her?”
“Not what. Who.”
He stared at Nora.
“The Archive contains neural records from the original researchers and test subjects. Memory copies.”
“Dead people?”
“Patterns of them.”
“Why does Evelyn want those?”
“She believes one of the stored minds knows how to complete the transfer process.”
“To put one person’s memory into another?”
“To make the transfer permanent.”
Daniel thought of Taylor.
Evelyn had conditioned her since childhood. She had used her as a living key.
“What happens to the original person?”
Nora’s silence answered.
“Their identity is overwritten,” Daniel said.
“She calls it continuation.”
“Who does she want to continue?”
Nora looked toward the mirrored wall.
“Her sister.”
“Margaret?”
“Evelyn has been trying to reconstruct Taylor’s mother for twenty-eight years.”
Daniel understood the horror slowly.
Taylor was not only an access point.
She was a body.
“Evelyn wants to put Margaret’s memories into Taylor.”
“She has already begun.”
Daniel stood.
“Where is the Silver House?”
“Near a town called Hollow Creek.”
Ortiz entered despite the request for privacy.
“That town was evacuated after a chemical spill fifteen years ago.”
Nora nodded.
“The spill was invented.”
Reed checked a secure database.
“A federal contractor still owns six hundred acres there.”
“What contractor?” Daniel asked.
Reed turned the screen.
VALE CONTINUITY SYSTEMS.
Evelyn’s name.
The facility alarm sounded again.
Not an intruder alert.
A fire warning.
Smoke poured beneath the interrogation room door.
Reed ordered an evacuation.
The overhead sprinklers activated, spraying a milky liquid instead of water.
Nora covered her mouth.
“Don’t breathe it!”
Daniel pulled his shirt over his nose.
Agents collapsed in the corridor.
Through the smoke, a woman in a hospital gown approached.
L-2.
Blood stained her shoulder.
She stopped outside Nora’s cell.
The two women with Laura’s face stared at each other.
L-2 entered a code.
The glass door opened.
Nora whispered, “Why?”
L-2 answered in Laura’s voice.
May you like
“Because only one of us gets to go home.”
She drove a syringe into Nora’s neck.
