Chapter 15 - THE LAST LOCK
My mother’s blood soaked my hands while alarms tore through the laboratory.
My father pressed both palms against her wound.
“Stay with me.”
She looked at him.
“I’m tired of hiding.”
Kane raised the gun again.
Jason kicked the back of his knee from the chair.
Hayes tackled Kane before he could fire.
Agents restrained both men.
Ross disappeared through the emergency exit after Leonard.
I ran to my daughter’s incubator.
The oxygen countdown continued.
Three minutes.
The damaged control panel rejected every command.
My father looked toward the server.
“The sequence can unlock it.”
“I don’t remember it.”
“You do.”
My mother’s breathing became shallow.
She reached for my hand.
“The lullaby.”
I closed my eyes.
Not because I trusted the program.
Because eight babies were suffocating.
My mother began singing.
Weakly.
The same melody from the monitor.
My father joined her.
Memory opened inside me.
The laboratory from childhood.
Colored lights.
Seven spoken words.
The final sequence.
I entered it into the control panel.
Access denied.
Leonard had changed the system.
The countdown reached ninety seconds.
Jason shouted from the floor.
“Use the drill.”
Everyone looked at him.
“What?” I asked.
“The monitor frequency device was hidden inside the drill battery.”
He had used the same tool to torture me because he needed the signal close to my body.
Hayes recovered the drill from an evidence case taken from Jason’s vehicle.
My father removed the battery.
Inside was a transmitter chip.
We connected it to the server.
The incubator locks released.
Oxygen flowed.
Seven babies began crying.
My daughter lifted one tiny hand.
I pressed my finger against the glass.
She wrapped her fingers around it.
Behind me, my mother stopped singing.
I turned.
Her eyes were closed.
“Mom?”
My father lowered his head.
Medical agents rushed toward her.
I could not tell whether she was breathing.
Before I could reach her, gunfire echoed from the emergency tunnel.
Ross returned alone.
Blood covered his sleeve.
“Leonard escaped.”
“Where?”
“He activated a helicopter from the eastern roof.”
Kane laughed from the floor.
“You still think Leonard built this program?”
Ross turned toward him.
“Who did?”
Kane smiled.
“The children did.”
Nobody understood.
Then every monitor in the laboratory changed.
A live video feed appeared.
A young woman sat inside Leonard’s helicopter.
She looked directly into the camera.
She had my eyes.
My mother’s mouth.
A scar near her left shoulder identical to mine.
She spoke with a calm voice.
“Hello, Emily.”
I stared at the screen.
“Who are you?”
The woman smiled.
“The second survivor.”
Behind her, Leonard sat restrained with blood on his face.
Not in control.
Her prisoner.
She looked toward my daughter’s incubator.
“You saved Subject Eight.”
“She has a name.”
“I know.”
The woman leaned closer to the camera.
“Grace.”
I had never told anyone the name I chose.
My father looked terrified.
“How do you know that?”
She ignored him.
“My name is Claire.”
The helicopter rose into the storm.
Before the feed cut out, she said,
“Mom told me you died in the fire.”
My mother’s eyes opened weakly from the floor.
She stared at the screen.
Then whispered,
“Emily, she is your twin.”
The feed vanished.
My daughter cried inside the incubator.
Kane began laughing.
Leonard remained missing.
May you like
Claire was alive.
And somewhere beyond the storm, a woman with my face had taken control of the program that had created us both.
