Chapter 17: The Woman Inside Her Memory
Lucas fired.
The bullet struck the monitor above Maya’s head.
Glass rained across the operating table.
Maya blinked.
Rebecca’s smile vanished from her face.
“What happened?” she asked.
Lucas kept the gun aimed at her.
“You changed.”
“I heard her voice.”
“You became her.”
Rafe struggled to rise from the table.
Elias pressed him down.
“If that artery opens, you’ll be dead within minutes.”
Maya looked at her reflection in a cabinet door.
For a second, she expected Rebecca’s face to stare back.
Instead, she saw herself.
Or the woman she had always believed was herself.
“Can Rebecca control me?” Maya asked.
Elias removed the metal capsule from Rafe’s implant and placed it inside a scanner.
“She cannot control you like a machine. She can trigger memories, instincts, and emotional responses.”
“So she can make me hurt people.”
“She can convince you that hurting them was your choice.”
Lucas lowered his weapon slightly.
“How do we stop the transfer?”
Elias glanced toward the locked door.
“We reach the central archive.”
“And destroy it?”
“No.”
Maya turned.
“Why not?”
“Because every transferred consciousness is connected to that archive. Destroying it could kill every host.”
“How many?”
“Thousands.”
Rafe looked at the scanner.
“Including me?”
Elias did not answer.
The capsule’s blue light changed to green.
A file appeared on the screen.
DANIEL MERCER MEMORY PARTITION
Rafe read the words.
“This is impossible.”
Elias opened the file.
A video began playing.
Warden Mercer sat in the same medical room twenty years earlier. He looked much younger, but his expression was already burdened.
Rebecca stood behind him.
“State your name,” she said.
“Daniel Mercer.”
“Your purpose?”
“To preserve Adrian Cross’s investigation.”
Rebecca circled the chair.
“And if Adrian fails?”
“I expose Helix.”
“And if exposing Helix threatens Anna?”
Mercer’s confidence disappeared.
“I protect my daughter.”
Rebecca looked into the camera.
“That conflict is why you will be useful.”
The video skipped forward.
Mercer screamed as machinery lowered around his head.
Then the screen displayed a second man strapped into the adjacent chair.
A teenage Rafe Calder.
Maya looked at Rafe.
His face had gone pale.
Rebecca spoke in the recording.
“Host 02 will carry Mercer’s loyalty without his weakness.”
The video ended.
Rafe sat in stunned silence.
“They put Mercer inside me when I was a kid.”
“Only part of him,” Elias said.
“Which part?”
“The part willing to betray anyone to save Anna.”
Rafe looked at Maya.
She understood his fear.
He did not know whether helping her had been his choice or Mercer’s programming.
The locked door suddenly opened.
A young girl stood in the corridor.
She appeared to be around ten years old. Her dark hair had been cut unevenly, and she wore a white hospital gown.
Maya recognized her from the photograph found inside the necklace.
One of the seven identical girls.
The child looked exactly like Maya had at that age.
“Maya?” the girl whispered.
Maya stepped forward.
“What’s your name?”
The girl looked confused.
“Rebecca.”
Elias immediately moved between them.
“Do not touch her.”
“She’s a child.”
“She may be older than all of us.”
The girl began crying.
“Please don’t leave me here.”
Maya looked at Lucas.
He shook his head.
“She could be a trap.”
Everything in Redwater was a trap.
But Maya could not walk away from a frightened child wearing her face.
She knelt several feet away.
“Who put you here?”
“Mother.”
“Rebecca Cross?”
The child nodded.
“She said I was broken.”
Maya lowered her voice.
“Why?”
“Because I remembered the fire.”
The word sent a sharp pain through Maya’s head.
Redwater.
Flames.
Children screaming.
A metal door.
The girl pointed at Maya.
“You were there.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You locked us inside.”
Maya’s stomach turned.
“No.”
“You promised you would come back.”
The child lifted her hospital gown.
A black number had been burned into the skin above her ribs.
08
Maya looked at the photograph.
There had been eight children.
Seven stood beside her.
She had assumed she was the eighth.
But the child before her carried the number 08.
“Which number was I?” Maya asked.
The girl reached into her pocket and removed a charred identity tag.
She handed it to Maya.
The metal plate read:
SUBJECT 01 — REBECCA CROSS
Maya stared at the name.
Rebecca’s voice whispered inside her thoughts again.
You were never my daughter.
May you like
The child took another step forward.
“You were our mother.”
