The Origin chamber was nothing like the laboratory.
There were no machines.
No steel tables.
No rows of samples.
Only a single chair in the center of the room and an old reel-to-reel recorder sitting on a wooden table.
Above it hung a photograph.
A woman I had never seen before stood beside a young Evelyn.
The woman had one hand resting on Evelyn's shoulder.
On the back of the photograph was a date.
Thirty-nine years earlier.
I stared at it.
“Who is she?”
Evelyn didn't answer.
Dr. Vale did.
“Her name was Clara.”
“Who was Clara?”
“The first person to notice that Evelyn remembered things she had never experienced.”
I looked at my mother.
“You knew her.”
“She raised me for a time.”
My mother sat in the chair.
“Before Eden.”
The door behind us shut.
A lock engaged.
Jason looked back.
“Are we trapped?”
“No,” Evelyn said.
“Then why lock it?”
“Because they can open ordinary doors.”
She pointed to the chair.
“They cannot open this one.”
The reel-to-reel machine clicked.
It started playing without anyone touching it.
A woman's voice filled the chamber.
Evelyn.
But younger.
Much younger.
“I dreamed about the room again.”
Another voice answered.
Clara.
“What room?”
“The one under the house.”
“What house?”
“I don't know.”
“Who was there?”
“Children.”
The recording stopped.
Then another began.
Evelyn's younger voice said, “I know the names now.”
Clara sounded frightened.
“Whose names?”
“Michael. Anna. Thomas. Sarah.”
A pause.
“And mine.”
The recording ended.
I looked at my mother.
“You remembered them before they existed?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I don't know.”
Dr. Vale spoke softly.
“That's why the researchers became obsessed.”
Evelyn continued.
“They believed the memories came from the future.”
Jason frowned.
“The future?”
“They couldn't prove it.”
Michael walked toward the photograph.
“Who is Clara?”
“My mother.”
He turned.
“Your mother?”
Evelyn nodded.
“Not your grandmother by blood.”
Michael looked confused.
“She adopted me.”
I stared at the photograph.
“So the sequence started with her?”
“No.”
“Then where?”
Evelyn looked toward the ceiling.
“That is what we never discovered.”
A heavy impact shook the chamber.
Someone had reached the lower staircase.
Dr. Vale checked the door.
“We don't have much time.”
Evelyn nodded.
She turned the reel over.
A final recording began.
Clara's voice.
“If this recording is ever heard by Evelyn's children, understand this: the sequence isn't a disease. It isn't an inheritance. It is a storage system.”
My skin prickled.
“Storage for what?”
Clara continued.
“Human experience.”
The tape crackled.
“Every generation leaves traces. Most disappear. Occasionally, the body preserves them.”
Jason looked at me.
“That's what I have.”
“Some of it,” Evelyn said.
Michael whispered, “And I have the rest.”
Evelyn nodded.
“But the fourth sequence was different.”
Clara's voice returned.
“The fourth sequence does not preserve memory. It chooses which memories survive.”
I felt my stomach tighten.
The baby began crying.
Her mark brightened.
The recorder suddenly stopped.
Then another voice came from the speaker.
Not Clara.
Not Evelyn.
A child's voice.
“Mom?”
Evelyn went rigid.
Michael stared at the recorder.
“That was me.”
“No,” Evelyn whispered.
“It was.”
“No.”
The voice came again.
“Mom?”
Michael's eyes filled.
“That was before they took me.”
Evelyn walked to the recorder.
Her hands were shaking.
“I never recorded that.”
Dr. Vale looked at the machine.
“Then where did it come from?”
The answer appeared on the small display.
ARCHIVE MEMORY: LIVE RECONSTRUCTION.
Jason stepped backward.
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” Dr. Vale said, “the chamber is no longer playing stored recordings.”
The baby cried again.
The room changed.
For a second, I smelled rain.
Then antiseptic.
Then roses.
The floor seemed to disappear beneath me.
I saw my mother.
Young.
Pregnant.
Standing in a white hallway.
Beside her was Edward.
He looked terrified.
“You can't let them take her,” he said.
Evelyn answered, “They won't.”
“They already know.”
“I'll hide her.”
“How?”
“With the other child.”
I saw a baby.
Me.
Then another.
Michael.
The image shifted.
I saw my mother holding me.
Behind her stood Clara.
And Clara was crying.
“She's remembering too early,” Clara said.
Evelyn answered, “Then we have to separate the memories.”
The vision vanished.
I collapsed against the wall.
My mother caught me.
“What did you see?”
I looked at her.
“You separated my memories.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because the program was trying to make you carry everyone else's.”
I remembered another image.
A room.
A child.
A woman with a silver watch.
A needle.
Then Edward screaming.
The vision ended.
Jason grabbed his head.
“I saw it too.”
Michael stared at him.
“What?”
“Dad was trying to stop them.”
Michael shook his head.
“He couldn't.”
“He did.”
“No.”
“He did.”
Jason looked at me.
“He destroyed the original transfer chamber.”
Michael stared at him.
“How do you know?”
Jason's voice trembled.
“Because I was there.”
Michael went silent.
Evelyn looked between them.
“That is the danger.”
“What danger?” I asked.
“The memories are no longer staying separate.”
The baby suddenly stopped crying.
A soft glow appeared beneath her blanket.
The mark on her back had changed.
The three lines were still there.
But a fourth line now crossed the circle.
Evelyn whispered, “Oh.”
Dr. Vale looked frightened.
“What?”
Evelyn stared at the child.
“She completed the pattern.”
“What does that mean?”
Evelyn looked at me.
“It means she isn't carrying our memories.”
“Then what is she carrying?”
Evelyn's eyes filled with tears.
“She's carrying the choice of which memories survive.”
The door shook again.
A voice shouted from outside.
“Open the chamber!”
Evelyn looked at me.
“Now you know why they came.”
I held my daughter tighter.
“They want the choice.”
“Yes.”
“And if they get it?”
“They can decide what people remember.”
Jason stared at the door.
“And what they forget.”
Evelyn nodded.
Michael looked toward the old recorder.
“Then we destroy it.”
“No,” Evelyn said.
“Why?”
“Because destroying the archive won't destroy the knowledge.”
She looked at the baby.
“The only way to end Eden is to make sure no one can ever use the fourth sequence again.”
“How?”
Evelyn reached into her pocket.
She pulled out a small metal device.
A black button sat in its center.
“My father called this the last lock.”
Dr. Vale stared.
“Edward gave you that?”
Evelyn shook her head.
“No.”
She looked toward the baby.
“She gave it to me.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 19: The Last Lock
My Twin Brother Had Waited Years for This Child, Yet the First Thing He Saw After Her Birth Made Him Step Away
Part 18 of 20
