Chapter 15 - The Voice Calling From Beneath the Water
Federal handwriting experts concluded that the message matched Anna Mercer’s known writing with near certainty.
The ink was less than twenty-four hours old.
Rebecca’s mother had supposedly died five years earlier.
Her grave had contained no coffin.
No body had ever been independently identified.
The death certificate had been signed by a doctor connected to Project Lullaby.
Rebecca sat at the kitchen table until sunrise.
Marcus placed Anna’s old recordings beside the new note.
“Your mother may be alive.”
“Or someone wants me to believe she is.”
Emma entered carrying her blue-room drawing.
She had added a new figure during the night.
A woman stood beneath the water.
Rebecca pointed to it.
“Who is she?”
Emma answered without hesitation.
“The first mother.”
Elise appeared behind her.
“She is calling us.”
Rose remained in bed connected to a portable cardiac monitor. Her implant continued transmitting false data, though technicians believed the network was adapting.
Agent Reed arrived with Detective Ortiz.
“We found a pattern in the implant signal,” Reed said. “It is not only sending Rose’s location. It is receiving audio.”
“From where?” Marcus asked.
“A hydroelectric station beneath Briarwood Reservoir.”
The reservoir beside Anna’s cemetery.
The same place hidden inside the twins’ combined song.
The station had been sealed for decades after a structural accident. Officially, its lower chambers were flooded.
Unofficial satellite scans showed active power consumption underground.
Rebecca read Anna’s new message again.
I am alive, and Rose must not trust me.
“Maybe she is inside the reservoir,” Rebecca said.
Ortiz looked at the children.
“Or someone there is using her identity.”
A federal team prepared to enter through the old turbine tunnels.
Rebecca was told to remain at the protected house.
This time, she agreed.
Not because she was afraid to go, but because the girls needed someone who chose to stay.
Marcus joined Reed and Ortiz.
Before leaving, he kissed each child.
He held Rebecca longest.
“If Anna is alive, I will bring her back.”
Rebecca looked at the letter addressed to him.
“Do not trust the first person who looks like her.”
The team entered the reservoir shortly after midnight.
Their helmet cameras transmitted through a secure channel.
Rebecca watched from a monitor while the girls slept upstairs.
The tunnels were dry.
Fresh electrical cables ran along the walls.
At the lowest level, agents found a steel door painted blue.
Marcus looked into his camera.
“Another blue room.”
Reed opened it.
Beyond stood hundreds of servers.
Rows of screens displayed hospital rooms, bedrooms, schools, and nurseries around the world.
Project Lullaby had not ended.
It had multiplied.
At the center of the chamber stood a glass tank filled with clear liquid.
A woman floated inside.
Her hair had turned white, but Rebecca recognized her face.
Anna Mercer.
Her eyes opened.
Alarms erupted.
The woman struck the inside of the glass.
Marcus approached.
Words appeared on the tank screen.
DO NOT RELEASE SUBJECT A.
Reed ordered the team back.
Anna pointed desperately toward a second door behind the servers.
The door began opening.
A voice came through Marcus’s radio.
It sounded exactly like Rebecca.
“Bring her to me.”
Marcus froze.
At the coastal house, Rebecca heard the same voice through Rose’s cardiac monitor.
Her own voice.
But she had not spoken.
Rose sat upright upstairs.
Emma and Elise opened their bedroom door at the same moment.
All three children walked into the hallway.
Rebecca climbed the stairs.
“Girls?”
They stood side by side.
Their eyes were open, but their faces were empty.
Together, they began singing the complete lullaby.
Every locked file on Rebecca’s phone opened.
Names, locations, photographs, and live video feeds flooded the screen.
One video showed Marcus inside the reservoir.
Another showed Anna in the glass tank.
A third showed Rebecca standing in the hallway with the children.
The camera angle came from directly behind her.
Rebecca turned.
No one was there.
Then a hidden panel in the wall slid open.
Cold air entered the hallway.
A staircase descended beneath the house.
The coastal home had been built over another facility.
A woman’s voice drifted upward from the darkness.
“Rebecca, do not let them finish the song.”
The voice belonged to Anna.
At the reservoir, the glass tank began draining.
Marcus raised his weapon.
The second blue door opened completely.
A little girl stepped through.
She was older than Emma, Elise, and Rose.
Perhaps seven.
She wore a hospital gown and carried a red baby blanket.
Marcus stared at her face.
She looked exactly like Rebecca.
The child smiled.
“My mother told me you would come.”
“Who is your mother?” Marcus asked.
The girl pointed toward the glass tank.
Anna shook her head violently.
The child’s smile widened.
“Not her.”
Back at the house, the three girls stopped singing.
The hidden staircase lights turned on one by one.
Far below, footsteps approached.
Rebecca pulled the children behind her and reached for the emergency pistol Agent Reed had taught her to use.
A shadow appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
Then a woman stepped into the light.
She had Rebecca’s face.
The same eyes.
The same scar near the chin.
She looked older, thinner, and completely calm.
Rebecca raised the weapon.
“Who are you?”
The woman smiled.
“I am the daughter Anna kept.”
Behind Rebecca, Rose whispered:
“She is the one who remembers everything.”
May you like
The lights went out.
And from somewhere beneath the house, hundreds of children began singing.
