Chapter 5 - The Girl Who Had My Face
The little girl stood beneath the white light at the end of the tunnel.
She was barefoot.
Her hospital gown ended below her knees, and one sleeve had slipped from her shoulder, revealing the pale crescent-shaped birthmark that matched mine.
For one impossible second, I saw myself at nine years old.
Not a resemblance.
Not the vague similarity strangers sometimes noticed between relatives.
She had my face.
The same narrow chin. The same wide brown eyes. The same small indentation above the left eyebrow where I had once fallen against a garden wall.
Even the scar was there.
“Livvy?” she whispered again.
The name struck me harder than any gunshot could have.
Only my mother had called me that.
My father used Olivia. Teachers used Olivia. Marcus sometimes called me Liv when he wanted something.
Livvy belonged to a warm kitchen, scraped knees and bedtime stories.
It belonged to a life that had ended when I was nine.
The silver-haired woman beside me stepped backward.
“No,” she said.
Her voice had lost all authority.
The girl looked at her.
“Mommy?”
The woman covered her mouth.
Evelyn began to cry.
I could hear Owens breathing behind us, each breath shallow and wet. Somewhere farther back in the passage, metal scraped against concrete.
Vale’s people were still searching.
But none of us moved.
The girl took one small step forward.
“Mommy, you came back.”
The silver-haired woman shook her head.
“You are not supposed to be awake.”
The girl’s expression fell.
“You said you’d come before the red lights.”
“What red lights?”
The emergency lamps along the tunnel suddenly changed from white to dark crimson.
A mechanical voice sounded from hidden speakers.
“Lower-theater containment begins in four minutes.”
The steel door behind the girl started closing.
I ran.
The silver-haired woman grabbed my arm.
“Don’t cross the threshold.”
“She’ll be trapped.”
“That is not a child.”
I pulled free.
“She is standing there.”
“She is bait.”
The girl heard her.
Tears filled her eyes.
“I’m not bait.”
The door continued sliding shut.
Evelyn reached it first and placed both hands against the steel. I pushed beside her.
The mechanism fought us.
The girl stood frozen on the other side.
“Move!” I shouted.
She ran through the narrowing gap.
The door slammed closed behind her with enough force to shake the tunnel.
She crashed into me.
I caught her.
Her body was warm.
Her hair smelled faintly of soap and antiseptic.
She wrapped both arms around my waist.
“You got old,” she whispered.
I could not answer.
My hands trembled as I touched her hair.
She felt real.
Far too real.
The silver-haired woman stared at us.
“How long have you been awake?” she asked.
The girl remained against me.
“Three sleeps.”
“Who opened your room?”
“The man with Daddy’s face.”
Marcus.
Or Daniel.
I crouched.
“What is your name?”
The girl frowned as if the question were strange.
“Olivia.”
My stomach tightened.
“Olivia what?”
“Parker.”
Behind me, my mother made a broken sound.
The girl looked past me.
“Why are there two of me?”
No one answered.
The red lights pulsed.
“Containment begins in three minutes.”
The wall speaker clicked.
Vale’s voice returned.
“Very touching.”
The silver-haired woman raised Grant’s pistol toward the nearest camera.
“Turn off the lockdown.”
“You know I cannot do that, Helen.”
The name echoed through the passage.
Helen.
Not a disguise.
Not a dead identity.
My mother.
She aimed at the speaker.
“Open the west evacuation route.”
“You surrendered the right to give orders twenty-two years ago.”
“You need Olivia alive.”
“I need one of them alive.”
The girl tightened her arms around me.
I looked toward the camera.
“Where is my father?”
Vale laughed softly.
“Thomas has always been your father when it was convenient.”
“Let him go.”
“Bring both daughters to the lower theater.”
“No.”
“Then the injured firefighter dies first.”
Owens groaned behind us.
Evelyn knelt beside him and pressed both hands over the wound in his side.
“He needs surgery.”
“I am aware,” Vale said. “The clinic is prepared.”
“You shot him,” I replied.
“I did not order local personnel to interfere.”
The scarred man, Grant, had called it an unfortunate mistake.
Vale spoke about human lives as though they were scheduling problems.
“Why are there two Olivias?”
“Come downstairs and I will show you.”
“I’m not taking her anywhere.”
The little girl pulled away from me.
“He already showed me.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“The room with the glass beds.”
Helen’s face went pale.
“What room?”
The girl pointed toward the sealed door.
“There are children sleeping under the house.”
“How many?” Evelyn asked.
The girl counted silently on her fingers.
“Thirty-one.”
The final number from the sequence.
My eyes moved to the blinking memory card in Helen’s hand.
“What do the other numbers mean?”
The girl looked at it.
“Doors.”
“Which doors?”
“All of them.”
Helen crouched before her.
“Who taught you the sequence?”
“Daddy.”
“Which daddy?”
The girl pointed toward my mother’s locket.
“The boy who got big.”
Marcus.
The photograph showed him at five.
But the girl had called him Daddy.
I knelt again.
“Did Marcus come to see you?”
She nodded.
“He told me not to tell the doctor I remembered.”
“How long has he known you were here?”
“I don’t know.”
“How many times did he visit?”
She held up four fingers.
My chest tightened.
Marcus had entered my life under orders.
He had hidden the archive beneath our home.
He had copied the files.
And four times, at minimum, he had visited a child who looked exactly like me.
A child with my name.
“Did he tell you who I am?”
“He said you were my sister.”
Helen closed her eyes.
Evelyn stared at her.
“You knew.”
“No.”
“He visited the lower level. You must have known.”
“I knew someone was being preserved here. I did not know who.”
“Preserved?” I asked.
Helen looked at the girl’s bare feet.
“We need to leave before the gas releases.”
“What gas?”
“Sedative first. Then something worse.”
The mechanical voice sounded again.
“Containment begins in two minutes.”
Helen handed me the memory card.
“The sequence opens five emergency doors. We need door seventeen.”
“Where?”
“Behind the clinic junction.”
Owens could barely remain conscious.
Evelyn looked at him.
“He will not survive being moved through another mile of tunnels.”
“There is no alternative,” Helen said.
“Yes, there is.”
I looked toward the camera.
“Vale, open the clinic.”
Helen grabbed my shoulder.
“Do not bargain with him.”
“He wants us alive.”
“He wants access to you.”
“Then he can have temporary access.”
My mother slapped me.
The sound echoed through the passage.
The little girl screamed.
I turned slowly.
Helen’s hand remained raised.
For the first time, she looked ashamed.
“I already lost one daughter because I believed I could negotiate with Silas Vale,” she said. “I will not watch the other repeat my mistake.”
“Which daughter did you lose?”
She looked at the child beside me.
The answer was clear.
I touched my cheek.
“You don’t know which of us is yours.”
“I know both of you are.”
“That is not possible.”
“Rosewood made many things possible.”
Vale interrupted.
“She still does not understand, Helen.”
“Be quiet.”
“Tell her what replacement incomplete means.”
Helen aimed at the camera and fired.
The lens shattered.
Vale’s voice continued from another speaker.
“One minute.”
The little girl pressed her hands over her ears.
I held her close.
“Tell me,” I demanded.
Helen looked at the red lights.
“There is no time.”
“Make time.”
“She was born first.”
Helen pointed toward the girl.
“Four minutes before you.”
I stared at her.
“Twins?”
“Not naturally.”
Evelyn whispered, “Helen.”
My mother’s face twisted with pain.
“Vale took cells from the first embryo and created another.”
I looked down at the little girl.
“She is a clone?”
Helen shook her head.
“You both came from the same source, but you were carried separately.”
“By whom?”
“I carried one child.”
Her eyes moved toward Evelyn.
“And I carried the other,” Evelyn said.
The tunnel seemed to rotate around me.
The tattoo on Evelyn’s stomach.
The photograph of Marcus.
The hidden map.
Her connection to my mother before the crash.
“You gave birth to me?”
Evelyn’s lips trembled.
“I gave birth to a child with Helen’s genetic profile.”
“Which one?”
“I was never allowed to know.”
The girl moved from my arms and touched Evelyn’s hand.
Evelyn collapsed to her knees.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
The child studied her face.
“You were in my dreams.”
Evelyn pulled her close and began sobbing.
The mechanical voice announced, “Thirty seconds.”
Helen took the memory card and pressed it into a narrow slot beside the sealed door.
The green light became blue.
A keypad appeared.
She entered 17.
Nothing happened.
“Why isn’t it opening?” I asked.
“The card requires two biological matches.”
She placed her thumb against a glass panel.
The panel turned green.
“Second match required.”
Helen looked at me.
I pressed my thumb against it.
Red.
“Rejected.”
The little girl tried.
Green.
“Emergency route authorized.”
A section of the tunnel wall opened.
Cold air rushed from a narrow passage beyond it.
Helen stared at the two green lights.
One for her.
One for the child.
Not me.
The conclusion appeared on everyone’s face.
The little girl was Helen’s biological daughter.
I was Evelyn’s.
The containment countdown reached zero.
Gas hissed from vents above us.
“Move,” Helen ordered.
Evelyn lifted the girl while I helped drag Owens into the passage.
Helen entered last and sealed the wall.
The gas remained on the other side.
For several seconds, we stood in darkness.
Then low floor lights appeared.
Door seventeen had led us into an old medical corridor.
Faded murals covered the walls: smiling suns, painted animals and children holding hands beneath a rainbow.
At the far end stood a nurses’ station buried beneath dust.
Owens opened his eyes.
“Where are we?”
“Under Hawthorne,” I said.
He gripped my wrist.
“Your father.”
“What about him?”
“I saw where they took him.”
“Where?”
“Elevator marked level four.”
The fourth number.
Door seventeen.
Something at eight.
Something at twenty-two.
Level four.
Thirty-one children.
The sequence was not merely an encryption key.
It was a route.
Helen examined Owens’s wound.
“The bullet passed through, but he is losing too much blood.”
The girl pointed down the corridor.
“The doctor keeps medicine in the blue room.”
“You have been here before?” I asked.
“I live here.”
My throat tightened.
“How long?”
She shrugged.
“Always.”
Helen stood.
“We need the blue room.”
We moved through the corridor.
Most doors were locked.
Small observation windows revealed empty beds, old equipment and walls covered in numbers.
The girl walked beside me.
Her hand slipped into mine.
“What should I call you?” she asked.
I looked down at her.
“Olivia.”
“But I’m Olivia.”
“Yes.”
“Daddy said you use Liv.”
I stopped.
“Marcus told you that?”
She nodded.
“He said one day we would both go home.”
Evelyn turned.
“When did he say that?”
“The last time.”
“Was that recently?”
“Before the loud birthday music.”
Marcus had visited the chamber beneath Hawthorne on the morning of Chloe’s party.
Perhaps while I decorated the backyard and believed he was buying ice.
“What else did he tell you?”
The girl hesitated.
“He said not to trust the woman with silver hair.”
Helen’s jaw tightened.
“Of course he did.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because Marcus believed I killed Daniel.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Do you know where Daniel is?”
“Level four.”
We all looked at one another.
My father had been taken to level four.
Daniel was supposedly imprisoned there.
The sequence had led us toward the same destination.
We reached the blue room.
Its door opened when the little girl placed her palm against the lock.
Inside were cabinets of surgical supplies, blood bags and medicine.
The equipment was modern.
Someone had stocked it recently.
Helen and Evelyn moved Owens onto an examination table.
My mother cut open his jacket and began treating the wound with practiced movements.
“You’re a doctor?” I asked.
“I was trained to be whatever Rosewood required.”
The girl climbed onto a chair.
She swung her feet while watching Helen work.
“Dr. Vale says Mommy was his best student.”
Helen did not look at her.
“Silas Vale lies.”
“He says you made me sleep.”
The surgical scissors stopped.
Evelyn looked at Helen.
“What does she mean?”
Helen continued cutting away the bloody fabric.
“She was placed in long-term suspension after the crash.”
“For twenty-two years?”
“Not continuously.”
The girl frowned.
“They wake me up for lessons.”
“How old do you feel?” I asked her.
“Nine.”
She had been nine for more than two decades.
The thought made me sick.
“What lessons?”
“Memory. Faces. Being Olivia.”
I knelt in front of her.
“What does that mean?”
She pointed at me.
“I learned your school. Your house. Grandpa Thomas. Your wedding.”
My skin went cold.
“You watched my life?”
“On screens.”
“Did they tell you that you were me?”
She nodded.
“Dr. Vale said you were borrowing my life until I woke up.”
Helen closed her eyes.
Evelyn whispered, “That monster.”
The girl leaned closer to me.
“Are you giving it back now?”
I could not answer.
A monitor in the corner suddenly illuminated.
Security footage filled the screen.
Marcus sat inside a white interrogation room.
His hands were secured to a metal table.
Blood ran from his nose.
Dr. Vale stood behind him.
He was tall, thin and dressed in a dark suit rather than a medical coat. His white hair was perfectly combed. He looked directly into the camera as though he knew we were watching.
“Olivia,” he said, “your husband has confessed.”
Marcus lifted his head.
One eye was swollen.
“Don’t listen to him.”
Vale placed a hand on his shoulder.
“He married you under my instruction. He monitored your pregnancies. He provided blood samples from Chloe. He visited the original daughter and prepared her for reintegration.”
I stared at Marcus.
He looked through the camera.
“I was trying to get her out.”
Vale smiled.
“He also placed the message inside Chloe’s pocket.”
The paper.
The sequence.
Rosewood.
I stepped toward the monitor.
“Marcus?”
He lowered his head.
Vale continued.
“He arranged the tattoo’s exposure at the party. He knew a child would recognize his younger face. He knew suspicion would lead you beneath the pool house.”
Evelyn shook her head.
“Daniel’s face, not Marcus’s.”
Vale’s smile widened.
“There has never been a Daniel Rose.”
The room became silent.
He pressed a control.
A second image appeared beside Marcus.
A photograph of Evelyn at nineteen, lying in a hospital bed.
Beside her stood Dr. Vale.
In her arms was a newborn boy.
Marcus.
Evelyn staggered backward.
“No.”
Vale looked into the camera.
“Daniel was a false memory we implanted to ensure her cooperation.”
“That is a lie,” Evelyn said.
“The tattoo was never a memorial. It was an identification marker.”
Marcus strained against the restraints.
“Turn it off, Olivia.”
Vale leaned closer to him.
“Tell her whose son you are.”
Marcus said nothing.
Vale struck him across the face.
The little girl screamed.
I placed myself between her and the screen.
“Stop.”
Vale looked almost pleased.
“Come to level four.”
“Release my father and Marcus.”
“Bring the original daughter.”
“She’s a child.”
“She is property that escaped containment.”
Helen moved toward the monitor with Grant’s pistol.
Vale noticed.
“And Helen must come too.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because only she can complete the family.”
The image changed again.
My father appeared inside a glass room.
He was strapped to a chair.
Across from him sat a man with Marcus’s face.
Older.
Thinner.
His hair was gray, and a long scar crossed his left cheek.
Evelyn dropped to the floor.
“Daniel.”
The man opened his eyes.
Vale had lied.
Daniel existed.
And he was alive.
He looked directly into the camera.
“Evie,” he whispered.
Then he turned toward my father.
“Thomas, tell Olivia the truth.”
My father shook his head.
Daniel’s voice grew stronger.
“Tell her which baby you chose that night.”
My heart stopped.
Thomas looked into the camera.
Tears ran down his face.
“I’m sorry, Olivia.”
Vale placed one hand on the control panel.
A red button illuminated beneath his fingers.
“You have ten minutes to reach level four,” he said. “After that, Thomas chooses again.”
The image divided into two live feeds.
One showed me.
The other showed the little girl holding my hand.
Above us, separate labels appeared.
DAUGHTER A.
DAUGHTER B.
May you like
Between the feeds was a single instruction.
SELECT ONE FOR RELEASE.
