Nobody entered the room.
The opening was only a few feet wide, but darkness seemed to fill the entire chamber beyond it. Cold air rolled into the laboratory, carrying the stale smell of metal, dust, and something faintly medicinal.
The woman stepped toward it.
Michael caught her arm.
“You don't get to walk in there.”
She looked down at his hand.
“You still think this is about permission.”
He released her.
Jason stared into the darkness.
“I've been here.”
“No,” Michael said.
Jason looked at him.
“I have.”
“You've seen it in memory.”
“I know what the door sounds like.”
That silenced Michael.
I looked at the woman.
“What's inside?”
She answered without turning.
“The part of your family history Edward couldn't destroy.”
The stranger moved toward the opening.
“I've never seen this door.”
“That is because Edward didn't show it to you.”
The stranger looked offended.
“He trusted me.”
“He trusted you with what he wanted you to believe.”
That landed harder than I expected.
The stranger lowered his eyes.
The woman entered first.
After a moment, I followed.
Emily stayed close behind me with the baby.
Jason and Michael came next.
The chamber was larger than the laboratory above.
Old monitors lined one wall. Along another stood rows of narrow storage units, most of them empty. At the center was a circular platform surrounded by transparent panels.
On the far wall, someone had painted a single word.
EDEN.
Below it, another sentence had been scratched into the concrete.
WE WERE NEVER THE BEGINNING.
Jason stopped.
“That wasn't in my memory.”
Michael walked toward the wall.
“It wasn't supposed to be.”
I touched the scratched letters.
“Who wrote it?”
Michael didn't answer.
The woman did.
“Your mother.”
I turned.
“My mother knew this room?”
“She helped build it.”
That contradicted everything I had been told.
The woman watched my face.
“Evelyn was not simply a subject.”
“What was she?”
“A carrier.”
“For the fourth sequence?”
“Yes.”
The word seemed to echo.
The stranger suddenly said, “That's impossible.”
The woman looked at him.
“You knew.”
“I knew she carried something unusual.”
“You knew the program started before Edward and I were involved.”
He went pale.
“You're saying Eden existed before them?”
“Years before.”
Michael stepped closer.
“Then why did Edward say Mother was the beginning?”
“Because that was the story he needed you to remember.”
I looked at the circular platform.
“What happened here?”
The woman walked around it.
“The first experiments weren't about creating children. They were about preserving biological responses.”
“Memory,” I said.
“Not memory as you understand it.”
She tapped the transparent panel.
“Patterns. Reactions. Learned biological responses. Information that should disappear when a body dies but occasionally doesn't.”
Michael stared at the platform.
“That sounds like the tapes.”
“It is the same research.”
Jason rubbed his temple.
“I remember screaming.”
The woman turned toward him.
“You were not screaming.”
Jason looked confused.
“You were laughing.”
He shook his head.
“No.”
“You were laughing because Michael was making faces at you.”
Michael went still.
Jason looked at him.
“You remember?”
Michael swallowed.
“I remember you.”
The words were almost inaudible.
“I remember holding you.”
Jason's face collapsed for a moment.
“You weren't supposed to be there.”
“I wasn't.”
“Then how?”
Michael looked toward the woman.
“She needs to tell you.”
The woman approached the central console.
She placed her silver watch against a recessed circle.
The system activated.
A recording appeared on the wall.
Edward.
Older than in the other recordings.
Exhausted.
He sat at the same desk we had seen before.
“If you're watching this,” he said, “then Evelyn's fourth sequence has activated.”
My throat tightened.
Edward continued.
“The researchers will tell you that Subject 12 was designed. That Subject 13 was an attempt to stabilize her. That Subject 14 represents completion.”
He shook his head.
“They are lying.”
Jason stepped closer to the projection.
Edward looked directly into the camera.
“Subject 12 was not designed. She was born.”
The room seemed to shrink.
Edward continued.
“Her genetic architecture carried a sequence that appeared impossible to inherit. Evelyn carried it. I carried part of the same structure. We believed it was dormant.”
The recording changed.
A photograph appeared.
My mother was holding a newborn.
Me.
But beside her stood another infant.
Jason.
Only he looked younger than I remembered him being in our earliest family photographs.
Edward's voice continued.
“The first child was mine. Michael was born eleven months before the child we later registered as Jason.”
Jason whispered, “I knew it.”
Michael looked away.
Edward continued.
“Michael was exposed to the transfer protocol. He survived. He developed normally. But the program considered him a failure because the sequence did not behave as expected.”
The image changed.
Michael as a little boy.
Then another image.
A hospital corridor.
A blank space where a face should have been.
Edward's voice became quieter.
“They took him.”
Michael closed his eyes.
“I escaped,” he said.
The recording continued.
“When Evelyn discovered what they intended to do with the next child, she tried to stop them.”
A second infant appeared.
Jason.
“He was created using preserved material from Michael. The program called him Subject 13. I called him my son.”
Jason's eyes filled.
Edward's voice broke.
“He was never a replacement in our hearts.”
Michael looked at him.
For a moment, the older man looked less like a mysterious stranger and more like Jason's lost brother.
Edward continued.
“But the researchers wanted something else. They wanted Subject 12 and Subject 13 brought together after adulthood.”
The screen displayed two genetic patterns.
Then a third.
“Their compatibility produced a fourth response.”
I looked down at my daughter.
The baby was awake.
Her eyes were open.
Edward said, “If the fourth sequence appears, it will not belong to either child. It will belong to the system that remembers them.”
The recording ended.
No one spoke.
Then Emily said, “What does that mean for her?”
The woman answered.
“It means the child is carrying a biological record of your family.”
I stared at her.
“You said Subject 14 is not the child.”
“Yes.”
“Then what is Subject 14?”
The woman looked at Michael.
Michael answered.
“Me.”
Jason stared at him.
“You're Subject 14?”
Michael nodded.
“But you said you were Subject 13.”
“I was.”
The woman interrupted.
“The numbers changed.”
She looked toward the baby.
“Because the program kept renumbering survivors whenever it lost control of the original sequence.”
Jason whispered, “So what number am I?”
The woman looked at him.
“None.”
Jason's face tightened.
“You're saying I don't exist?”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“You are the first person Eden created who was allowed to become himself.”
Then the chamber lights turned red.
A warning appeared across the wall.
EXTERNAL CONNECTION ESTABLISHED.
The woman looked toward the ceiling.
“They found us.”
The stranger reached for his phone.
“It wasn't supposed to transmit.”
The woman looked at him.
“You opened the system.”
His face drained of color.
“I only used the key.”
“That was enough.”
Outside the chamber, footsteps echoed above them.
More than one person.
Michael looked at me.
“Take the baby.”
I tightened my arms around her.
“Where?”
He pointed to a narrow passage behind the circular platform.
“Anywhere they can't follow.”
The woman shook her head.
“No.”
Everyone looked at her.
“They're already inside.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 15: The People Who Were Waiting
My Twin Brother Had Waited Years for This Child, Yet the First Thing He Saw After Her Birth Made Him Step Away
Part 14 of 20
