Chapter 13
The Girl Who Had Her Face
Claire did not climb toward the voice.
She climbed through the hatch beneath the bed and entered the spare room with the envelope hidden inside her coat. The room was empty again. Rain moved across the window. The woman in the wool coat was gone.
Daniel came through after her, then Tess. Lucy remained below, listening to the passage.
“You heard her,” Claire said.
Daniel looked at the bed. “I heard a voice.”
“My voice.”
“It could have been a recording.”
“The camera was live.”
“We do not know that.”
Claire walked to the wall where the hidden panel had been. The seam was visible now, the paint cracked from the brass nail. Behind the panel, the corridor had become a dark line.
The doorway opened by itself.
Claire stopped.
On the other side stood a young woman with Claire's face at twenty-eight: dark hair cut to the jaw, narrow chin, left eyebrow slightly higher than the right. She wore a cream sweater and held a paper cup in both hands.
She was not a perfect copy. The eyes were lighter. The mouth was wider. There was a thin scar below her lower lip that Claire did not have.
But the resemblance was enough.
Tess whispered, “Mom?”
The woman looked at her. “No.”
Daniel raised his weapon.
The woman flinched before he spoke.
Claire saw it: the response was not fear of the weapon, but anticipation of an order. Somebody had trained her to obey the shape of a threat.
“What is your name?” Daniel asked.
The woman looked at Claire.
“Which one do you want?”
“Your name.”
“The name on the file is C-12.”
Claire felt the room lose its temperature.
“C-12 is the cabin.”
“The cabin is where they kept you.”
“Who are you?”
The woman lifted the paper cup. Her hand trembled once, then became still.
“I was supposed to be your response.”
“To what?”
“To the parts of you that would not cooperate.”
Tess took a step toward her. “Did my mother make you?”
The woman's eyes moved to the envelope beneath Claire's coat.
“Mara designed the first training set. Owen paid for the second. Dr. Sen stopped the third.”
“Lucy said she was built from Mara's work.”
“Lucy is not a model.”
“Then what is she?”
The woman looked toward the passage.
“She is the person who remembers what happened to the children.”
The sentence changed the shape of the room.
Daniel lowered his weapon a fraction. “What children?”
The woman stepped backward.
“You should ask your wife.”
His face emptied.
Claire saw it before he could hide it: the old shame, the sealed settlement, the thing that had never entered the county file.
“My wife is dead,” Daniel said.
“That is what the paperwork says.”
“Where is she?”
The woman smiled without warmth.
“In the archive.”
She dropped the paper cup.
The floor filled with white vapor.
Claire grabbed Tess and pulled her toward the door. Daniel fired into the ceiling, but the shot became a dull thump inside the fog.
The woman disappeared.
When the vapor cleared, the corridor was empty. Only the paper cup remained, crushed beside a small black key.
On the key's tag, in Claire's handwriting, were the words:
FOR THE DAY YOU ASK ABOUT THE CHILDREN.