Chapter 14 - The Tower of Mirrors
Whitmore Meridian headquarters rose sixty stories above the city.
By the time Lena and August arrived, police surrounded the building.
Employees had been evacuated, but internal cameras showed movement on the executive floor.
Patient Eleven had disabled the elevators.
Lena and August used a private emergency lift activated by her temporary authority.
Marcus hid inside the service compartment above them despite Lena’s instruction that he remain outside.
At the sixtieth floor, the doors opened onto darkness.
The executive corridor was lined with glass walls.
Emergency lights reflected their images endlessly.
Lena saw herself in every direction.
Some reflections seemed to move a fraction too late.
August walked beside her, breathing heavily.
“Are you afraid?” Lena asked.
“Yes.”
“Of dying?”
“Of discovering I deserve to.”
They entered the boardroom.
Charles remained tied to the chair.
Patient Eleven stood behind him.
Patient Twelve waited near the windows.
The gun rested on the table.
“Where is Owen?” Lena asked.
Patient Twelve answered.
“I don’t know.”
“You were made from his memories.”
“Fragments of them.”
Patient Eleven pointed toward Charles.
“He knows the last verified location.”
Lena approached her own copy.
“Why are you helping Adrian?”
“I’m not.”
“You kidnapped him.”
“I rescued him before the hospital erased his conditioning.”
“Conditioning isn’t a life.”
Patient Eleven’s eyes hardened.
“Easy for you to say. Every person you loved confirmed your identity. Every mirror agreed with your name. Imagine waking each morning knowing your memories were selected by strangers.”
Lena looked at Patient Twelve.
He appeared exhausted.
“Did she force you to come?”
“No,” he said.
“Why did you?”
“Because I remember Owen discovering Charles’s involvement.”
Charles shouted, “He is not Owen.”
“No,” Patient Twelve said. “But the fear I remember is real.”
Lena faced Charles.
“What happened on the mountain road?”
Charles looked toward August.
“Tell her,” August said.
Charles laughed bitterly.
“You don’t get to pretend you’re innocent.”
“Tell her.”
“Owen found the Continuity patients. He copied their files. Adrian ordered me to stop him.”
“Why would you obey Adrian?”
“Because he had proof I had diverted company money.”
“Halcyon Ridge?”
Charles nodded.
“I thought it was a private fund. I used some of it to cover investment losses. Adrian contacted me. He said he would expose me unless I recovered Owen’s files.”
Lena’s voice shook.
“What did you do?”
“I met Owen at the lake house. He refused to give them to me.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“Did you force his car off the road?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
Charles looked toward Patient Twelve.
“There were two Owens at the lake house.”
Lena stopped.
“One was your brother,” Charles said. “The other was already conditioned.”
Patient Twelve closed his eyes.
Charles continued.
“They fought. One was injured. Adrian’s men arrived. They placed a body in Owen’s car and burned it.”
“Which body?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where did they take the survivors?”
“One went to Northstar.”
“And the other?”
Charles looked at August.
“August took him.”
Everyone turned toward him.
August appeared confused.
“I did not.”
Charles shouted, “You were there.”
“I was at the estate that night.”
“You arrived at the lake house after Adrian’s men left. You took one Owen with you.”
August shook his head.
“I don’t remember.”
Patient Eleven picked up the gun.
“You remembered enough to change the succession order.”
She aimed at August.
Lena moved between them.
“Put it down.”
“He knows where your brother is.”
“Then killing him won’t help.”
“He built the program.”
“He may also be one of its victims.”
Patient Eleven’s arm trembled.
For the first time, Lena saw fear in her copied face.
“You don’t understand,” the woman whispered. “The final memory event requires one of us to die.”
“What?”
“Adrian designed identity conflicts to end through elimination. When two subjects claim the same life, only one is allowed to leave.”
“I’m not playing his game.”
“You already are.”
The boardroom screens activated.
Adrian Voss appeared.
“Precisely.”
Marcus dropped from the ceiling compartment behind him on one of the screens.
But it was not a live image from the boardroom.
It showed Marcus somewhere else inside the building, tied to a chair.
Lena looked toward the ceiling hatch.
It stood open.
Marcus had entered the service space with them.
Someone had taken him before the elevator arrived.
Adrian smiled.
“Lena, you have consistently mistaken rescue for victory.”
“Where are you?”
“Inside the only identity no one has questioned.”
The boardroom doors locked.
Gas began entering through the vents.
Patient Eleven fired at the ceiling.
The bullet struck a sprinkler pipe.
Water poured down.
August collapsed.
Lena knelt beside him.
His pulse was weak.
“Sedative,” Patient Twelve said. “Not poison.”
Adrian’s voice filled the room.
“At last, the intended toast.”
The silver decanter had never been designed only to kill August.
The first glass was a public performance.
The real drug was now in the ventilation system, delivered after Lena had brought August to the tower.
Patient Eleven tried the door.
Locked.
Charles struggled against his restraints.
Patient Twelve struck the glass wall with a chair.
It did not break.
Lena searched August’s pockets.
She found a small brass key.
The same type Marcus had placed on her tray outside the records room.
She inserted it into a hidden panel beneath the board table.
A section of the wall opened.
Behind it was a private safe room.
They dragged August and Charles inside.
Patient Eleven entered last.
The door sealed before the gas reached them.
Inside the safe room, one screen remained active.
A live image showed Marcus.
A masked man stood behind him.
Adrian’s voice said, “You have saved August again.”
Lena looked at the screen.
“What do you want?”
“For you to understand the cost.”
The masked man removed his mask.
He had August’s face.
Not an approximate resemblance.
Not a younger version.
An exact duplicate.
The real August beside Lena stared at the screen.
The duplicate smiled.
“One of us built Whitmore Meridian.”
He placed a hand on Marcus’s shoulder.
“One of us spent thirty-five years believing he did.”
Lena looked down at the unconscious man beside her.
The duplicate continued.
May you like
“At sunrise, the board will meet. Only one August Whitmore will leave this building.”
The screen went dark.
