Chapter 20: The Girl Who Stole Maya’s Life
Maya opened her eyes inside a memory.
She stood beside the lake from her childhood.
The sky was bright blue. Adrian sat near the water, repairing an old fishing reel.
Lucas was twelve again.
A little girl stood beside him.
The real Maya Cross.
She had chestnut hair, hazel eyes, and a scar above her eyebrow.
Maya approached her.
“You’re alive?”
The girl looked toward Adrian.
“Not the way you think.”
“Where are you?”
“Everywhere they placed me.”
The landscape flickered.
The lake became the Redwater laboratory.
The real Maya was strapped into a chair while Rebecca adjusted the transfer equipment.
Lucas lay unconscious nearby.
Rebecca had not created Lazarus to save Lucas.
She had used Lucas’s illness as an excuse to experiment on her own daughter.
Adrian discovered the truth too late.
“Rebecca transferred you?” Maya asked.
The real Maya nodded.
“Into Subject 01.”
Maya stared at her.
“Into me?”
“Only part of me.”
That explained the childhood memories.
Adrian had not simply assigned Maya a false identity.
He had recognized pieces of his daughter living inside her.
“Are my memories mine?” Maya asked.
“Some.”
“And the rest?”
“Mine. Rebecca’s. The other children’s.”
Maya looked at the real girl.
“Who am I?”
“You’re the person who carried all of us and still chose differently.”
The memory shifted again.
Maya saw the night of the Redwater fire.
Subject 01 unlocked the laboratory doors.
Subject 08 escaped.
But the real Maya’s body remained inside the transfer chamber.
Adrian tried to free her.
Rebecca stopped him.
Then another man entered the room.
Daniel Mercer.
He shot Rebecca.
Maya’s biological mother fell beside the central archive.
Mercer looked into the chamber containing the real Maya.
“We can save one of them,” he told Adrian.
Adrian looked between his daughter and Subject 01.
“No,” he said. “We save both.”
The fire reached the laboratory.
The memory ended before Maya saw what happened next.
She opened her eyes in the archive vault.
Subject 08 remained unconscious beside her.
The upload had stopped at sixty-seven percent.
Rafe stood near the chair.
Elias held Lucas upright.
Every screen displayed a single message:
PRIMARY IDENTITY UNRESOLVED
Maya pulled against the restraints.
“Did it work?”
Elias examined the terminal.
“Rebecca’s upload stopped.”
“Then release us.”
“I can’t.”
A second message appeared.
TWO PRIMARY CONSCIOUSNESSES DETECTED
Maya looked at Subject 08.
“No. She carries the shutdown code.”
Elias shook his head.
“The second consciousness isn’t inside her.”
“Where is it?”
His eyes moved toward Maya.
“Inside you.”
The real Maya Cross and Rebecca were both active within Maya’s mind.
The archive could not determine which one should control the network.
Rafe examined the live facility map.
“Someone is coming.”
Hundreds of security doors opened throughout Redwater.
Figures moved through the corridors.
Some wore prison uniforms.
Others wore medical clothing or military gear.
Every surviving host connected to Lazarus was being summoned to the archive.
Lucas suddenly lifted his head.
His memories had partially returned.
“Maya?”
She looked at him.
“Do you know who I am?”
He hesitated.
“You’re my sister.”
Maya almost cried.
Then Lucas raised his gun and pointed it at her.
“But I don’t know which one.”
The vault doors began opening.
Warden Mercer entered first.
Anna walked beside him.
Behind them came Dr. Price, Captain Shaw, two versions of Rafe, and four men carrying Lucas’s face.
Elias stepped in front of Maya’s chair.
Rebecca’s voice emerged from the speakers.
“Every identity returns to its source.”
The hosts surrounded the central chamber.
Subject 08 regained consciousness.
She looked at Maya with terror.
“What did you hear inside the transfer?”
“The real Maya said she survived.”
Subject 08 began shaking her head.
“No.”
“She said she exists inside me.”
“That wasn’t Maya.”
Maya’s blood ran cold.
“Then who was it?”
Subject 08 looked toward Lucas.
“The real Maya never entered the transfer chamber.”
“But I saw her.”
“Rebecca created that memory to stop you from shutting her down.”
Maya heard footsteps behind the chair.
A woman entered the vault.
She wore a black coat, and her face had been altered by years of surgery.
Lucas dropped his weapon.
“Mayfly?”
The woman looked at him.
Then she turned toward Maya.
“My name is Maya Cross,” she said. “Adrian got me out of Redwater before the fire.”
Maya stared at her.
“That’s impossible.”
The woman removed a silver bracelet engraved with the name Maya.
It matched the bracelet found inside Adrian’s empty coffin.
She approached the central console.
“You were never supposed to find this place.”
“Why?”
“Because Rebecca isn’t trying to take over your body.”
The woman looked toward the hundreds of approaching hosts.
“She has been hiding inside mine.”
Her expression changed.
Her shoulders relaxed.
Her head tilted slightly.
The same smile Maya had seen in the chamber appeared on the real Maya’s face.
Rebecca spoke through her daughter’s mouth.
“Thank you for opening the network.”
The archive upload restarted.
Sixty-eight percent.
Sixty-nine.
Seventy.
All the hosts turned toward Maya’s chair at once.
Subject 08 whispered the final portion of the shutdown code.
Maya repeated it.
The console asked for one last command:
SELECT THE IDENTITY TO BE ERASED.
Two names appeared on the screen.
REBECCA CROSS
MAYA CROSS
Maya reached toward the controls.
May you like
But both names belonged to more than one person.
And before she could choose, someone standing behind her pulled the trigger.
