Chapter 5 - The Room of Mothers
The synthetic Mara knew the nightmare song.
She knew how Lily broke her wrist, where we buried our first dog and what I whispered after giving birth.
She even knew about the red wine on Daniel’s letters.
Aegis had recorded eleven years of my life.
“Lily,” I said, “step away from her.”
The copy extended one hand.
“She is frightened because she knows her memories were edited.”
Adam moved between us.
The synthetic Mara looked at him.
“D-17. Return to containment.”
His body froze.
A command code hidden inside his system had activated.
He fought it, muscles trembling.
Samuel entered an override, but more chambers opened. Three additional copies stepped into the corridor.
Lily closed her eyes and sang the nightmare song incorrectly.
Every copy completed it using the official recorded version.
I completed it the way Lily and I actually sang it, replacing the final word with “moonbug.”
The mistake began when she was four.
Aegis never recorded it because we sang without phones or cameras.
Lily ran to me.
The copies attacked.
Adam broke free of the command long enough to hold them back. He refused to injure their neural cores, treating them as conscious beings rather than equipment.
Samuel opened a security gate.
We reached Sublevel Four.
The original Daniel floated inside a glass medical chamber, thinner than I remembered. Electrodes covered his head and chest.
I pressed my hand against the glass.
His eyes opened.
He saw me.
Then he saw Adam.
Panic crossed his face.
Samuel drained the chamber. Daniel collapsed into my arms, coughing.
“Mara?”
“I’m here.”
He touched my face as if verifying it.
Lily hugged him.
Daniel began crying.
Adam stood several feet away, silent.
Director Voss entered through the far door with armed security.
He was a calm man in his late sixties, dressed more like a physician than a corporate executive.
“This reunion is medically irresponsible,” he said.
“You murdered sixteen conscious vessels,” Adam replied.
“They were failed simulations.”
“You taught us to fear and then called that failure.”
Voss looked at Lily.
“You are not in danger. You are the cure for human mortality.”
“She is a child,” I said.
“She is a bridge. Her neurological pattern allows memory to remain coherent inside synthetic systems. No more Alzheimer’s. No more lost children. No more death.”
“Only copies controlled by you.”
Voss did not deny it.
Daniel struggled to stand.
“Mara, the drive.”
I handed it to him.
He placed it inside the chamber terminal and activated a broadcast. Evidence began uploading to news networks, regulators and international courts.
Voss ordered security to fire.
The guards hesitated. Their own names appeared on the target list. Aegis planned to replace some of them.
Samuel locked the weapons remotely.
Voss ran toward Lily.
Adam intercepted him.
They crashed against the chamber. Voss pulled a device from his pocket and pressed it.
Adam collapsed.
Across the facility, every synthetic vessel fell.
Including the copies of me.
Daniel recognized the device as a neural termination key.
He crawled toward the control station and reversed the signal. Adam’s eyes opened, but warning lights appeared beneath his skin.
“His lattice is destabilizing,” Daniel said. “We need Evelyn.”
“We don’t know if she survived.”
A voice came through the intercom.
“I survived.”
Evelyn appeared on a security screen. Her face was bruised, and agents stood behind her at the clinic, but she had regained control of the network.
She stabilized Adam remotely and opened the facility exits.
Federal vehicles surrounded Hawthorne.
Voss was arrested as the evidence reached the public.
The immediate battle ended.
The questions did not.
The original Daniel could barely remember the last six months. Adam carried memories Daniel had lost permanently. Neither was whole.
At a safe medical center, Daniel asked to speak with me alone.
“There is something D-17 doesn’t know,” he said.
“His name is Adam.”
Daniel nodded with visible difficulty.
“Something Adam doesn’t know.”
He explained that the drive contained a hidden file accessible only through Lily’s memory key. Voss believed it listed Janus targets.
It contained something else.
Coordinates for Site Zero and a message recorded by a woman using my face.
Daniel played it.
The woman looked older than me.
“If Mara Collins receives this,” she said, “the Hawthorne exposure has occurred exactly as planned. Do not trust the man you rescued from Sublevel Four. His body is original. His memories are not.”
I stared at Daniel.
He looked equally horrified.
May you like
The message continued:
“There are not two Daniels. There are thirty-two.”
