Chapter 8 - THE WOMAN BENEATH THE GRAVE
My father pressed both hands against the reinforced door.
“Evelyn, it’s me.”
The voice answered immediately.
“Prove it.”
He began reciting the lullaby from the baby monitor.
His voice cracked halfway through.
The lock released.
The door opened onto a small underground shelter.
Medical equipment lined one wall.
Paper files filled steel cabinets.
My mother stood beside a hospital bed.
Older.
Thinner.
Alive.
I forgot the pain in my leg.
I forgot the agents.
I forgot everything except her face.
“Mom.”
She did not move toward me.
Instead, she raised a gun.
“Take one more step and I shoot.”
My father froze.
“Evelyn.”
“She may not be Emily.”
The words struck harder than Jason’s hand ever had.
I looked at her.
“What are you talking about?”
My mother’s eyes filled with tears, but the gun remained steady.
“Kane created duplicates.”
Ross stepped between us.
“Explain.”
“Not clones. Identities.”
She pointed toward my face.
“Women with altered records, surgery, implanted memories. Kane wanted access to Thomas’s work.”
My father shook his head.
“This is Emily.”
“How do you know?”
“She remembered the song.”
“So did the others.”
The shelter became silent.
My mother looked at my stomach.
“How far along?”
“Six months.”
“Show me your left shoulder.”
I pulled the torn shirt aside.
A small crescent-shaped scar rested near my collarbone.
Her gun lowered slightly.
“What?” I asked.
“I gave you that scar when you were three. You fell through the greenhouse glass.”
I remembered.
Not the fall.
Her holding me afterward.
Her blouse covered in blood.
The gun lowered completely.
She crossed the room and touched my face.
Then she collapsed against me.
For several seconds, neither of us could speak.
My father wrapped his arms around both of us.
I should have felt whole.
Instead, I felt the emptiness of eighteen lost years.
Ross searched the shelter.
“Kane knows this location?”
“No,” my mother said. “But Leonard did.”
She opened a cabinet and removed several drives.
“These contain the original defense files and proof of Kane’s network.”
“Then why hide?” I asked.
“Because the access sequence was incomplete.”
She looked at my stomach.
“Until now.”
I stepped back.
“No.”
“Emily—”
“My baby is not part of this.”
“The pregnancy restored the hormonal pattern needed to recover your memory.”
“You knew this would happen?”
She did not answer quickly enough.
My father looked at her.
“What did you do?”
My mother’s face crumpled.
“I gave Jason the fertility clinic address.”
The room went still.
I felt as though the floor had vanished.
“You led him to me?”
“I needed the sequence activated.”
“You knew what he was.”
“I knew he was working for Leonard. I did not know he would hurt you.”
“You watched me marry him.”
“I watched from a distance.”
My breath shortened.
“You could have stopped it.”
“If I revealed myself, Kane would have found all of us.”
I pointed toward my bruised body.
“So you let him find me instead.”
She began crying.
“I was trying to save thousands of lives.”
“And you sacrificed mine.”
The baby monitor started beeping.
A signal had been detected outside the shelter.
Ross checked the screen.
Multiple armed vehicles were entering the cemetery.
My mother looked at the drives.
“Kane found us.”
Then my father saw a blinking transmitter attached beneath the monitor battery.
May you like
His face went pale.
“Jason planted a tracker.”
