Chapter 10 - THE NIGHT OF THE FIRE
The authorities moved Ivy, Ellen, Celeste, and Thomas to a secure guesthouse outside Bellhaven.
Sebastian was arrested for unlawful imprisonment, obstruction, and conspiracy based on the cassette recording and evidence found at the estate. He refused to answer questions about Eleanor or the Meridian Archive.
Margaret remained missing.
Three days later, Celeste began recovering memories.
They came in fragments.
Smoke beneath a laboratory door.
A woman screaming.
Margaret carrying Rose toward a car.
Eleanor kneeling in front of Clara.
A needle.
Sebastian’s voice.
A silver box.
Celeste recorded each memory in a notebook.
One morning, she woke with a word written repeatedly across the page.
MERIDIAN.
“I don’t remember writing it,” she told Julian.
Ivy sat across from her at the kitchen table.
“Maybe that’s what Eleanor meant by inherited memory.”
Celeste looked at her.
“Have you remembered anything?”
“Only dreams.”
“What kind?”
“A red door under water. A woman singing. You telling me not to look at the sun.”
Celeste dropped her pen.
“I remember saying that.”
They stared at each other.
Ivy continued.
“We were in a room with mirrors. You covered my eyes.”
Celeste’s face went pale.
“There was a bright light above us.”
“And Dad was arguing with someone.”
The same memory belonged to both of them, though Ivy had been only three years old at the time.
Julian arranged for them to meet Dr. Helena Marrow, a neurologist who had once worked with Elias Vale.
Helena arrived under federal protection.
She was seventy-eight and used a silver cane.
When she saw the sisters together, she began crying.
“You survived.”
Celeste stood.
“You knew our father?”
“I helped him build the Meridian program.”
“What was it?”
Helena opened a metal case.
Inside were brain scans, research notes, and photographs of two children sleeping beneath monitoring equipment.
“Elias believed certain memories could alter gene expression strongly enough to influence future generations. Not detailed events, but patterns. Fear responses. Recognition. Spatial information.”
“Memory passed through blood?” Ivy asked.
“Fragments of it.”
“That’s impossible,” Julian said.
“So were many technologies before someone demonstrated them.”
Helena displayed a diagram.
“Your father discovered that siblings with specific genetic markers could activate complementary memory patterns. One sister might recall a symbol. The other might recall its meaning.”
Celeste thought of the matching pendants.
“The sun becomes whole.”
“Yes.”
“What is the Meridian Archive?”
Helena hesitated.
“A hidden repository containing Elias’s complete research and a list of every government and corporation that illegally funded human trials.”
Celeste’s voice hardened.
“Trials on whom?”
Helena looked at her.
“You.”
The room went silent.
“And Rose.”
Ivy’s chair scraped against the floor as she stood.
“Our father experimented on us?”
“He believed he was protecting you from worse experiments. By the end, he was trying to destroy the program.”
“What happened the night of the fire?”
Helena removed a damaged photograph from the case.
It showed Elias Vale arguing with Eleanor Whitmore outside the laboratory.
“Eleanor was his largest investor. She wanted control of Meridian. Elias refused. That night, someone initiated a fire to erase the records.”
“Eleanor?”
“I believed so for years.”
“But now?”
Helena pointed to a figure reflected in the laboratory window.
A woman stood behind Elias.
She looked almost identical to Eleanor.
“The Whitmore family maintained that Eleanor had no siblings,” Helena said.
“That was another lie.”
Celeste studied the reflection.
“Who is she?”
“Evelyn Whitmore. Eleanor’s twin sister.”
Arthur searched public records.
Evelyn Whitmore had been declared dead at birth.
There were no photographs, school documents, or medical records associated with her.
Helena closed the case.
“Eleanor rescued Clara from the fire.”
“And Rose?” Celeste asked.
“Margaret rescued Rose. Evelyn ordered Sebastian to intercept her.”
Ivy felt cold.
“Which sister was buried three years ago?”
“No one knows.”
Julian’s phone rang.
He answered, listened, and looked toward Celeste.
“Sebastian has agreed to talk.”
“What does he want?”
“To speak with Ivy alone.”
Ellen immediately objected.
“No.”
Julian nodded. “That was my answer.”
“What did he say?” Ivy asked.
May you like
Julian hesitated.
“He said Margaret is alive, but she will be killed at midnight unless Ivy comes to the mansion.”
