Chapter 15 - The Voice Behind the Final Memory
The laboratory door locked behind them.
Adrian’s security officers remained outside, unable to override the system.
Mara stood beneath the final photograph.
The woman holding the syringe was unmistakably her.
She looked approximately eighteen.
Julian was five.
Adrian examined the image.
“It may be altered.”
“Or the archive removed the memory.”
A screen activated.
Julian appeared.
He had Adrian’s dark hair and Lillian’s gray-blue eyes. A thin scar crossed his forehead.
Adrian stepped closer.
“Julian.”
The young man showed no emotion.
“You look exactly as I imagined.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You always begin with the sentence that costs you the least.”
Adrian absorbed the accusation.
“You have every right to hate me.”
“Hate requires a stable identity.”
Mara looked at the photograph.
“Did I inject you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You chose to complete Gideon’s procedure in exchange for your freedom.”
“That isn’t true.”
“You were eighteen. He offered you a new identity, access to his money and a life outside the institute.”
Mara shook her head.
“I would never hurt a child.”
“You had already been rewritten six times. Which version of you are you defending?”
Adrian moved in front of her.
“Enough.”
Julian looked at him.
“You still protect her.”
“She is not responsible for what Gideon forced her to do.”
“He did not force her. He convinced her.”
Mara stared at the screen.
“What identity did I transfer into you?”
Julian’s face remained calm.
“Yours.”
The room seemed to lose air.
“That makes no sense.”
“Gideon copied your childhood memory pattern into me because your brain was the only stable Orpheus model. He needed a second living archive.”
“You carry my memories?”
“Some of them.”
“Then why do you believe I chose myself over you?”
“Because after the transfer, you begged Gideon to erase your memory of me.”
Mara’s legs weakened.
A fragment surfaced.
A child screaming her name.
Blood on her hands.
Gideon saying, You can carry the guilt or surrender it.
Her own voice answering, Take it away.
Mara pressed her palms to her temples.
Adrian held her.
“You don’t have to believe him.”
“I remember asking Gideon to erase something.”
Julian watched.
“The truth is returning.”
“No,” Mara whispered. “Only a fragment.”
“Fragments are all any of us have.”
The laboratory floor opened, revealing a staircase.
Julian’s voice came through speakers.
“Come downstairs alone.”
Adrian said, “No.”
Julian looked at him through the screen.
“If you follow her, the twins’ synchronization files will be released publicly. Every government and corporation funding Orpheus will know their biological value.”
Mara turned toward Adrian.
“Stay.”
“I won’t let you go alone.”
“He wants me.”
“He wants to destroy you.”
“Maybe he wants me to remember.”
Adrian gripped her hand.
“You are not whatever photograph he shows you.”
“I need to know whether I hurt him.”
“And if you did?”
Mara looked toward the stairs.
“Then Lillian’s story is not only about what was taken from her. It is also about what she allowed herself to forget.”
She descended.
At the bottom was a circular room lined with mirrors.
Julian stood in the center.
He was real.
Not a recording.
For several seconds, neither moved.
Mara saw pieces of Adrian in his face, but also something painfully familiar in the way he watched exits and measured distance.
“You came,” he said.
“You knew I would.”
“Because I remember being you.”
Mara looked at the mirrors.
“Why bring me here?”
“To finish what you began eighteen years ago.”
He pressed a control.
A medical chair rose from the floor.
Mara stepped back.
“I will not enter another machine.”
“You misunderstand.”
A second chair appeared.
Julian sat in it willingly.
Electrodes lowered around his head.
“I do not want to put memories inside you,” he said. “I want to return yours.”
“Why?”
“Because Gideon hid the last sequence in the only place Celeste would never search.”
“Inside you.”
“Yes.”
Mara moved toward him.
“What does it contain?”
“The night of the fire. Your mother’s betrayal. My procedure. And the identity Gideon gave you before you became Lillian.”
“What identity?”
Julian looked into her eyes.
“The one that proves Elena Rook was not your mother.”
Mara stopped.
“Then who was she?”
“A scientist trying to steal you from the woman who gave birth to you.”
“Who gave birth to me?”
Julian smiled faintly.
“You already met her.”
The door above exploded.
Adrian shouted Mara’s name.
Julian activated the system.
The mirrors filled with images.
Celeste as a child.
Gideon carrying a newborn.
Elena arguing with a woman whose face remained hidden.
The hidden woman turned slowly toward the camera.
Before Mara could see her face, every screen went black.
A gunshot echoed from the staircase.
Julian collapsed against the chair.
Blood spread across his shirt.
Mara screamed and caught him.
A shadow moved behind the mirrors.
Adrian reached the bottom of the stairs with his weapon raised.
“Who fired?”
Julian’s lips moved.
Mara leaned closer.
“She’s alive.”
“Who?”
“The woman who started Orpheus.”
His hand closed around Mara’s wrist.
“She has been inside Hawthorne House since before the twins were born.”
The lights went out.
When they returned, one mirror stood open.
A secret passage disappeared into darkness.
Julian’s chair was empty.
Only his blood remained.
Adrian searched the passage while Mara noticed something on the floor.
A black dress button.
The same kind Mrs. Finch wore every day.
Mara looked toward the staircase.
Her phone rang.
The call came from Hawthorne House.
She answered.
Mrs. Finch’s voice was calm.
“The twins have been asking for you.”
Mara could barely speak.
“Where are they?”
“Safe for the moment.”
“What do you want?”
“To return what belongs to you.”
A child cried in the background.
Then Mrs. Finch began singing the lullaby.
Not Lillian’s version.
The original version.
The one Gideon had claimed only Subject Zero could remember.
Mara’s blood turned cold.
May you like
Mrs. Finch finished the final line and whispered, “Come home, my daughter.”
The call ended.
