For several seconds, nobody moved.
The woman in the white coat stood at the bottom of the stairwell with one hand resting lightly against the rail. The silver watch on her wrist caught the laboratory light whenever she shifted her arm. I had seen that watch before—not in photographs, not in my mother’s files, but in the fragments of memory Jason had described. A white sleeve. A narrow wrist. Silver flashing beneath fluorescent lights.
Jason stared at her as if his body recognized her before his mind did.
“Who are you?” I asked.
She did not answer me immediately. Her attention went to the baby in Emily’s arms. The child had stopped crying. Her tiny fingers were curled against Emily’s shirt, and the strange reddish mark on her back had faded from bright red to a dull pink.
The woman smiled faintly.
“That is exactly what your father wanted you to ask first.”
Jason stepped forward.
“You know my father?”
“I knew Edward Prescott when he was still trying to convince himself that he could control what he had helped create.”
The older man—Michael—moved between her and Jason.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
The woman looked at him.
“You always did prefer doors you could lock.”
Michael’s face changed.
It was the first time I had seen genuine fear cross his features.
The stranger beside me tightened his grip around the old metal key. “You said you were coming alone.”
“I never said that,” the woman replied.
“You knew we would find this place.”
“I knew you would eventually bring them here.”
Her eyes settled on me.
“Twenty-eight years is a long time to wait for a family to find the room where it began.”
I felt the words physically.
Twenty-eight years.
The age I had always believed I was.
The age Jason had always believed he was.
The age our parents had written into our lives with forged records and carefully rehearsed stories.
“You said I was Evelyn’s daughter,” I said. “You called Jason Michael. Then you called him Subject 14. Explain that.”
The woman tilted her head.
“You are still thinking in numbers as though they were names.”
“Then use names.”
A quiet smile touched her mouth.
“Your mother taught you that, didn’t she?”
I froze.
Emily shifted the baby higher against her shoulder.
Jason whispered, “How do you know what she taught her?”
The woman finally looked directly at him.
“Because I was there.”
Jason took another step.
Something in his expression made Michael reach for him.
Jason pulled away.
“No.”
The word came out quietly.
Then louder.
“No. I remember you.”
The woman said nothing.
“I remember a room,” Jason continued. “I was small. There was a table. You stood beside it. My father was there.”
“Which father?”
Jason stopped.
The question seemed to strike somewhere deeper than memory.
Michael closed his eyes.
The woman watched him carefully.
“That is the problem with what Edward did,” she said. “He gave you a family before he gave you an explanation.”
“You experimented on children,” I said.
“We studied what happened to them.”
“That isn't an answer.”
“No,” she said. “It isn't.”
She removed the silver watch from her wrist.
My breath caught.
There was a tiny symbol engraved on the underside of the watch.
A circle crossed by three lines.
The same shape as the mark on my daughter's back.
Emily saw it too.
“What is that?” she whispered.
The woman turned the watch over in her palm.
“A key.”
The stranger immediately raised the old metal key.
“You told me that was the key.”
“It opens the door.”
“And the watch?”
“The watch tells us when the door is ready.”
Nobody spoke.
Then the laboratory monitor behind us flickered.
The screen changed from the previous sequence display to a single line.
READY STATE: FOURTH SEQUENCE DETECTED.
The baby began to cry.
Not loudly.
It was a thin, frightened sound.
Emily looked down at her.
The woman took one step forward.
“Don't,” I said.
She stopped.
For the first time, her expression hardened.
“You misunderstand what is happening.”
“My daughter is crying.”
“Because she recognizes the signal.”
“She's a newborn.”
“So was Subject 12.”
My stomach tightened.
The woman looked at me.
“You were never supposed to remember this place.”
“I don't.”
“You remember pieces.”
I thought of the bathroom.
The blue blanket.
The garden.
The red bicycle.
The scar behind my ear.
The photograph dated before I was officially born.
The woman nodded as though she could see the memories moving behind my eyes.
“Your mind protected itself.”
“From what?”
“From being asked to hold more than one childhood.”
Jason looked at me.
“What does that mean?”
The woman glanced toward Michael.
“He should tell you.”
Michael shook his head.
“No.”
“You've hidden long enough.”
“I hid because she was supposed to have a life.”
The woman's expression softened.
“And she did.”
“Until you came back.”
“No,” the woman said. “Until the child activated the fourth sequence.”
The stranger stepped forward.
“You knew this would happen.”
She looked at him.
“You brought them here.”
“I brought them to the truth.”
“You brought them to the mechanism.”
He looked suddenly uncertain.
“What mechanism?”
The woman's eyes moved toward the sealed door behind the laboratory equipment.
“The one Edward spent twelve years trying to bury.”
A low mechanical sound came from the wall.
Something had unlocked.
The baby stopped crying.
Then the hidden door opened by itself.
Click here to continue reading: PART 14: What Edward Buried
My Twin Brother Had Waited Years for This Child, Yet the First Thing He Saw After Her Birth Made Him Step Away
Part 13 of 20
