Chapter 14 - ORPHEUS
Julian caught Helena before she reached the passage.
She fought with surprising strength, clawing at his face.
“Let me go!”
“Who is Orpheus?”
“If I tell you, we all die.”
“People are already dying.”
Helena stopped resisting.
The woman inside the chamber watched her with hollow eyes.
Helena looked at Ivy.
“Orpheus was the first successful transfer.”
“Transfer of what?” Ivy asked.
“An identity.”
The laboratory seemed colder.
Helena explained that Meridian’s later phase had attempted to copy memory structures from one person into another.
Not simple recollections.
Behavioral patterns.
Preferences.
Emotional reactions.
A complete constructed personality.
“Elias believed the process had failed,” Helena said. “But one subject woke with memories belonging to the project director.”
“Who was the subject?” Julian asked.
Helena looked at the list on the console.
“Subject 006.”
The unknown identity inside the Vale family.
“Who was the project director?” Celeste asked.
“Your mother.”
“Miriam Vale?”
“Yes.”
Ivy stepped backward.
“Our mother created Orpheus?”
“Miriam discovered Eleanor and Evelyn were competing for Meridian. She believed neither could be trusted. She attempted to preserve her own mind inside another person so she could protect you after her death.”
“Whose body?” Celeste asked.
Helena shook her head.
“I never knew.”
The woman in the chamber spoke weakly.
“I did.”
Everyone looked at her.
She pointed toward the photograph with the scratched face.
“Margaret.”
Celeste stared at her.
“Margaret was Subject 006?”
“No. Margaret was Subject 005.”
“Then who was 006?”
The woman’s eyes moved toward Thomas.
Thomas went still.
Ivy remembered how he had called her Rose the instant he awakened.
She remembered the warning carved beneath the hospital.
Trust no one who knew your name before you did.
Julian reached for his weapon.
“Thomas, step away from Ivy.”
Thomas raised his hands.
“I was Margaret’s driver.”
“Margaret was a child in 1958. She didn’t have a driver.”
“I meant in 1993.”
“How do you know the laboratory sequence?”
“I don’t.”
“You were watching Ivy enter it.”
Thomas looked at his daughter.
“I have spent thirty-two years trying to find her.”
Helena whispered, “That is exactly what Miriam would have done.”
Ivy’s voice shook.
“Are you my father?”
Thomas looked wounded.
“No.”
“Are you my mother?”
“I am Thomas Reed.”
“Do you have her memories?”
“I don’t know.”
Celeste stepped between them.
“Stay away from my sister.”
Thomas’s face changed.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
His posture straightened. His fear disappeared. His eyes became calm and distant.
When he spoke again, his voice carried a different rhythm.
“Clara always protected Rose first.”
Ivy felt her blood turn cold.
Thomas smiled.
“So predictable.”
Julian drew his gun.
Thomas pressed a small device in his hand.
The laboratory doors sealed.
Gas began pouring from ceiling vents.
Celeste covered Ivy’s mouth with her jacket.
Arthur collapsed first.
Helena fell beside him.
Julian fired, but Thomas moved behind the central console.
The woman in the chamber screamed.
“Not him!”
“Then who?” Celeste shouted.
The woman pointed weakly.
“Behind you.”
Ivy turned.
Arthur Bell was standing again.
He had only pretended to collapse.
He held a syringe against Julian’s neck.
Julian dropped.
Arthur smiled.
“Thomas was conditioned to distract you.”
Celeste lunged toward him, but the gas weakened her.
Arthur removed a small respirator from his pocket.
“My father served the Whitmores,” he said. “But my mother served Miriam Vale.”
“You are Orpheus?” Ivy whispered.
“Orpheus is not a person.”
He looked toward the archive.
“It is an inheritance.”
Thomas collapsed near the console, gasping as though waking from a dream.
Arthur opened the cylindrical container and removed one glass wafer.
“The director understood that a single body could be killed. So she divided herself among six subjects.”
Helena, barely conscious, stared at him.
“Six?”
Arthur nodded.
“Each carrying one part of Miriam’s identity.”
“Who are they?” Celeste asked.
Arthur looked around the room.
“Some are dead. Some have forgotten.”
His eyes settled on Ivy.
“And one was born carrying more than any of us expected.”
Ivy’s vision darkened.
May you like
The last thing she saw was Arthur lifting her into his arms.
The last thing she heard was Celeste screaming her name.
