Chapter 9 - Elara
The live feed lasted six seconds.
Then the screen went black.
Maren remained standing beside the table, supported by one hand, unable to look away.
Her own face had spoken to her from the cellar.
Same gray eyes.
Same dark hair.
Same slight angle of the chin.
Even the same small scar near the throat.
Reed whispered, “What the hell…”
Evelyn seized the radio from an agent.
“Team Three, report.”
Static.
“Team Three?”
No answer.
The lead security agent, Russell Dane, moved toward the west corridor.
Evelyn stopped him.
“The floor is wired.”
“We have two hostages below.”
“And an unknown operative who just breached our system.”
Russell looked at Maren.
“She has her face.”
“She may also have her access.”
Maren pushed away from the table.
“I’m going down.”
Reed laughed in disbelief.
“You can barely stand.”
Maren looked at the overturned wheelchair.
“Then bring the chair.”
Russell righted it.
One of the guards restraining Reed said, “Police are eight minutes out.”
Celeste smiled faintly.
“Seven would have been more poetic.”
Evelyn turned toward her.
“You think Elara is working for you.”
“I know she is not working for you.”
“What did you promise her?”
Celeste’s eyes moved to Maren.
“A name.”
Maren stiffened.
“Whose?”
“The child Edmund chose.”
Evelyn crossed the room and struck Celeste across the face.
The wine glass fell and shattered.
Reed surged against the agent.
“Don’t touch her!”
Celeste straightened slowly, blood at the corner of her mouth.
Then she laughed.
“You still have not told Maren.”
Evelyn’s expression hardened.
Celeste continued.
“You call her your daughter, but you do not know whether she is Maren or Elara.”
Maren felt the room tilt again.
Evelyn said nothing.
That silence confirmed it.
The twins’ identities had been switched so many times that neither Evelyn nor Celeste knew which child Edmund had raised.
Maren could be Elara.
The woman in the cellar could be Maren.
Even her name was borrowed.
Russell inspected the dining room floor plan on a tablet.
“The main cellar entrance is blocked by debris. There is another access point through the kitchen storage room.”
Kline shook his head.
“Celeste sealed it years ago.”
“Not completely,” Maren said.
Everyone looked at her.
She remembered the numbers hidden behind the fourth photograph.
0417-22-9.
She entered them into the black phone.
Nothing happened.
Then she separated them.
04-17-22-9.
Fourth photograph.
Seventeenth stair.
Twenty-second panel.
Ninth key.
A map.
“My father left a route,” she said.
She rolled toward the staircase.
Russell followed.
Evelyn caught the chair.
“Maren, wait.”
“Which name should I answer to?”
Pain crossed Evelyn’s face.
“The name you choose.”
“I did not choose it.”
“No,” Evelyn said. “But you lived it.”
Maren looked back at the black screen.
“And she did not.”
She continued toward the stairs.
At the seventeenth step, she found a small indentation beneath the wooden edge. Russell pressed it.
A panel opened beside the staircase.
Inside were nine brass keys.
Maren took the ninth.
The twenty-second framed panel along the dining room wall contained a hidden lock.
The key turned.
A section of wall opened inward, revealing a narrow passage descending beneath the mansion.
Cold air rose from below.
Russell switched on a flashlight.
“I go first.”
Maren transferred into a compact emergency chair one of the agents brought from the medical kit. Russell carried it down the steps while Evelyn followed.
Reed called after them.
“Maren!”
She looked back.
For the first time that evening, he appeared genuinely afraid.
Not for her.
For himself.
“Do not leave me with her,” he said, glancing toward Celeste.
Celeste’s smile disappeared.
Maren almost laughed.
“You chose her long before you chose me.”
Then the panel closed between them.
The passage descended steeply.
The walls were unfinished stone, older than the rest of the mansion. Electrical cables had been installed along the ceiling, some recently cut.
Halfway down, they found the first body.
One of Evelyn’s agents lay unconscious beside the wall.
Russell checked his pulse.
“Alive.”
A small dart protruded from his neck.
Kline examined it.
“Fast-acting tranquilizer.”
Evelyn looked ahead into the darkness.
“Elara was trained.”
“By whom?” Maren asked.
Evelyn did not answer.
The passage ended at a steel door.
From the other side came a woman’s voice.
Identical to Maren’s.
“You took your time.”
Maren’s hand tightened on the chair.
Russell aimed his weapon.
“Step away from the door.”
The woman laughed softly.
“Maren knows you won’t shoot.”
“How would you know what I know?” Maren asked.
“Because I have been reading your life for twenty years.”
The steel door unlocked.
It opened slowly.
The cellar was larger than Maren expected, lined with metal shelves and archive boxes. Lila and her brother were no longer tied to the chairs.
They stood near the far wall, frightened but unharmed.
Between them and the doorway stood the woman from the screen.
Elara.
She wore black trousers, a dark coat, and leather gloves. A thin silver pendant rested at her throat.
Maren recognized it.
She owned the other half.
Her father had given it to her on her sixteenth birthday, saying the broken design was intentional.
Elara looked at Maren’s pendant.
Then touched her own.
“Edmund always loved symmetry,” she said.
Evelyn stepped forward.
“Elara.”
The woman’s face changed.
Not with affection.
With rage.
“Do not call me that.”
“What should I call you?”
“The daughter you abandoned.”
Evelyn stopped.
“I searched for you.”
“You searched for the useful version of me.”
Maren looked between them.
“Did you send the message?”
Elara smiled.
“Yes.”
“Did you trigger the explosions?”
“Only the first.”
“Who triggered the second?”
Elara’s smile faded.
“That is the problem.”
A red light appeared on the far wall.
A digital timer activated.
04:59.
04:58.
04:57.
Elara turned toward it.
“I did not set that.”
Celeste’s voice came through hidden speakers.
“No,” she said. “But I knew you would bring them together.”
The steel door slammed shut.
May you like
Locks engaged.
The timer continued counting down.
