Chapter 28: Site One
The transport descended beneath the earth.
Pressure filled Maya’s ears.
The walls trembled as the chamber moved deeper than any prison, hospital, or military bunker she had ever imagined.
Rafe crushed the transmitter beneath his boot.
“It doesn’t matter,” Lucas said. “They already know we’re here.”
The man inside the container closed his eyes again.
His heartbeat remained visible on the monitor.
Maya turned to Subject 08.
“What is Site One?”
“The first laboratory Silas built.”
“You said Ashbourne was the destination.”
“Ashbourne is the entrance.”
“You lied.”
“I guided you.”
Lucas pressed the gun against her forehead.
“One more answer like that and—”
“You won’t shoot this body,” Subject 08 said calmly.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not the only one inside it.”
Her face changed.
The child’s posture softened.
Tears appeared in her eyes.
“Maya?”
The voice was younger and frightened.
“Help me.”
Subject 08’s original consciousness was still trapped inside the body.
Then her expression hardened again.
Evelyn’s older fragment had regained control.
Lucas lowered the gun.
Maya crouched in front of the child.
“How many minds are inside you?”
“Enough.”
“Let the girl speak.”
“She has nothing useful to say.”
The child’s left hand suddenly moved independently.
With one finger, she wrote on the dusty floor:
DON’T TRUST ADRIAN
The older consciousness forced the hand still.
Maya looked at the black container.
The man claiming to be Adrian remained unconscious.
Was his voice genuine?
Or was it another manipulation?
The transport came to a stop.
The outer door opened.
Beyond it stretched an enormous underground station.
Hundreds of tunnels converged beneath a vaulted ceiling.
Hosts stood in silent rows along the platforms.
Prisoners.
Doctors.
Soldiers.
Elderly people.
Teenagers.
Some wore expensive suits.
Others wore hospital gowns.
Thousands had already arrived.
Every person turned toward Maya simultaneously.
The same voice came from all of them.
“Welcome home.”
Rafe raised his weapon.
“There are too many.”
The hosts did not attack.
They stepped aside, creating a path toward a set of towering steel doors.
The black container began moving automatically along the floor.
Maya followed it.
Lucas walked beside her.
Rafe remained close behind.
Subject 08 joined them without being asked.
They passed beneath the steel doors.
Site One was not simply a laboratory.
It was an underground city.
Residential halls stretched into darkness. Classrooms remained filled with old desks. Medical wings contained hundreds of empty beds.
Black-and-white photographs covered the walls.
Children training.
Children connected to machines.
Children standing beside Silas Vale.
In every picture, Silas appeared the same age.
Maya stopped.
The photographs covered more than forty years.
Silas had not aged.
“He was already using hosts,” she said.
Subject 08 nodded.
“The man in the 1954 photograph was not his first body.”
“Then how old is he?”
“No one knows.”
They reached a circular room surrounded by observation balconies.
At its center stood a chair facing a massive white screen.
Warren Vale waited beside it.
Dr. Price stood on the balcony in her original body.
The child carrying another version of Price had reached the room before them.
Two bodies.
One consciousness.
Warren smiled.
“You took longer than expected.”
Rafe aimed his weapon.
“Release the other hosts.”
“They came willingly.”
“You activated them.”
“I reminded them.”
The black container locked into position beside the chair.
Maya looked at Warren.
“Where is Silas?”
Warren gestured toward the thousands gathered behind them.
“Everywhere.”
“That is not an answer.”
“Silas no longer lives in one person. He distributes small portions of himself across the network.”
Lucas understood.
“He has no primary body.”
“Not yet.”
Warren looked toward the vessel.
The man inside opened his eyes.
“Adrian helped design the body because he believed it would attract every Silas fragment into one place.”
“So they could be destroyed,” Maya said.
“Exactly.”
“Then why are you helping complete it?”
Warren’s smile faded.
“Because Adrian misunderstood Silas’s plan.”
The white screen activated.
A live image appeared from Redwater.
Elias and Anna stood inside the archive vault.
Soldiers surrounded them.
Elias looked into the camera.
“Maya, whatever they tell you, do not connect to that vessel.”
Warren raised the remote.
Elias’s body convulsed.
Maya stepped forward.
“Stop!”
“Sit in the chair.”
“Release him first.”
“When the vessel awakens.”
Rafe whispered, “He’ll kill them anyway.”
Maya knew he was right.
But thousands of hosts surrounded them.
A direct fight would become a massacre.
She sat in the central chair.
Metal restraints closed around her arms.
Warren connected cables to the base of her neck.
Lucas raised his gun.
Maya looked at him.
“Wait.”
“Maya—”
“Trust me.”
Lucas’s eyes filled with pain.
“I don’t know how.”
Maya gave him a faint smile.
“Neither do I.”
Warren activated the system.
The white screen filled with light.
Maya’s consciousness was pulled away from the room.
She found herself standing inside an endless field of snow.
A man waited in the distance.
He wore a dark suit and carried a black cane.
As Maya approached, she saw his face.
It belonged to Adrian Cross.
But his voice was the one that had spoken through every host.
“Hello, Maya.”
“You’re Silas.”
“I have worn that name.”
“Get out of my head.”
“This is not your mind.”
The snowy field vanished.
Maya stood inside the synthetic vessel.
She could feel its heartbeat.
Its lungs.
Its closed hands.
Silas walked around her.
“You think Adrian built this body to trap me.”
“He did.”
“No.”
Silas smiled.
“He built it to bring his daughter back.”
Maya’s breath caught.
“The original Maya?”
“Her body died at Redwater. Her complete consciousness did not.”
“Where is she?”
Silas placed one hand over Maya’s heart.
“Inside the part of you that has been pretending to be Rebecca.”
Maya remembered the voice warning her not to let her mother wake inside her.
Perhaps it had never been Rebecca.
Perhaps the original Maya had been trying to emerge.
“What do you want from me?”
Silas’s face changed.
For a second, it belonged to Lucas.
Then Warren.
Then Elias.
Then Maya herself.
“I need you to decide which of us deserves the body.”
The snow split open beneath her.
Thousands of voices screamed from below.
Maya fell into darkness.
Back inside Site One, her physical body stopped breathing.
The synthetic vessel took its first breath.
May you like
Then the man inside opened his eyes and whispered:
“My name is Maya Cross.”
