Chapter 8 - Two Nurses Had the Same Face
The nurse beside my bed stared at the woman in the hallway.
Same dark hair.
Same height.
Same face.
Even the same hospital ID badge.
The second woman entered slowly.
Daniel rose from Henry.
Laura moved beside the bed.
My mother gripped my hand.
The first nurse whispered, “Who are you?”
The woman in the doorway answered.
“Sarah Collins.”
The first nurse shook her head.
“That’s my name.”
“No. It’s the name you were given.”
The monitor showed the successor photograph again.
Sarah Evelyn Cross.
A direct descendant.
Senator Cross’s daughter.
My half-sister.
The nurse beside me looked at the screen.
“I was adopted.”
The second woman smiled.
“So was I.”
Daniel looked between them.
“Which one works here?”
The first nurse raised her hands.
“I do.”
The second woman pointed toward the security camera.
“Check the footage.”
Daniel looked at the monitor controls.
The internal camera recording replayed.
The first nurse entered my room before Henry.
She checked my IV.
She adjusted the heart monitor.
She placed something beneath the bed.
Laura saw it.
“Freeze there.”
Daniel paused the recording.
The nurse’s hand held a small black transmitter.
She looked horrified.
“I don’t remember that.”
The second woman stepped closer.
“You were conditioned.”
The first nurse backed away.
Henry smiled from the floor.
“There it is.”
I looked at him.
“You knew.”
“I knew one of them was embedded.”
Daniel turned.
“Which one?”
Henry laughed.
“Evelyn loved redundancy.”
The monitor flickered.
Evelyn’s voice filled the room again.
“My daughters were always my best work.”
Both nurses went still.
The first whispered, “Daughters?”
The second woman’s confidence cracked.
Laura looked at them.
“Twins?”
Evelyn answered.
“Copies.”
The nurse near me touched her temple.
“I have headaches.”
The second woman looked toward the camera.
“So do I.”
Daniel stepped between them.
“No one moves.”
The first nurse started crying.
“I only remember waking up in the locker room.”
The second shook her head.
“I woke up in a car downstairs.”
I looked at the IV.
“What did you put under my bed?”
The first nurse knelt carefully.
She reached beneath the frame and pulled out a slim device.
The screen displayed biometric transfer progress.
99%.
Daniel snatched it.
“The trust verification continued through this.”
The first nurse looked sick.
“I didn’t know.”
Henry sat against the wall.
“She never knows.”
Laura struck his shoe with her cane.
“Stop talking.”
The second Sarah pointed at him.
“He knows which one of us is Evelyn’s operative.”
Henry smiled.
“Maybe both.”
The hospital door began closing again.
Daniel blocked it with a chair.
The second Sarah looked toward the hallway.
“We need to move Amy.”
“No,” the first said quickly.
Everyone turned.
She looked confused by her own response.
Then her hand moved toward my IV clamp.
Daniel caught her wrist.
Her face changed.
Not violently.
Blankly.
She twisted with surprising precision and tried to force air into the line.
The nurse inside her disappeared.
Training took over.
Laura shoved the IV pole away.
The tubing tore free from my hand.
Blood ran across the tape.
My mother screamed.
Daniel controlled the nurse’s arm and forced her away from the bed.
She fought without expression.
The second Sarah grabbed a restraint from the cart and helped secure her.
Then the first nurse blinked.
She looked around.
“What happened?”
Daniel watched her carefully.
“Trigger conditioning.”
Laura looked at Henry.
“What phrase activated her?”
He smiled.
“Successor file.”
The monitor displayed a countdown.
Archive release in 60 seconds.
The second Sarah looked at the screen.
“What happens at zero?”
Evelyn answered through the speakers.
“The network transfers.”
“To whom?” I asked.
The successor photograph changed.
The first Sarah vanished.
The second Sarah vanished.
A third profile loaded.
Amy Carter.
I stared.
Daniel looked at me.
“You’re the successor.”
Henry’s face whitened.
The archive had never been designed to give power to him.
It had been designed to give everything to me.
My mother whispered, “Why?”
Senator Cross appeared on the screen again.
“Because Amy is the only child Evelyn never successfully controlled.”
The countdown reached 45 seconds.
Henry began laughing.
“You think that’s a gift?”
I looked at him.
He shook his head.
“It transfers every company, every debt, every crime, and every dead patient into her name.”
The room went silent.
The archive was not an inheritance.
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It was a legal trap.
📖 Find out whether I accepted the network or destroyed it—and why Henry needed my name attached before the countdown ended. 👇
