“The other me.”
Nobody knew what to say.
The little girl sitting on the hospital bed had Lily’s hair, Lily’s teeth, Lily’s birthmark, even Lily’s nervous habit of hiding her fingers inside her sleeves.
Yet she was telling us she was not Lily.
I asked again what name belonged to her.
She said she had never been allowed to decide.
Lily.
June.
L-Two.
Numbers.
Labels.
Whatever Creston needed.
I asked where she had lived.
“The downstairs place.”
“Under the facility?”
She nodded.
“Were you allowed outside?”
“Sometimes they showed me outside.”
Not took her outside.
Showed her.
The distinction made me feel ill.
The implant beneath her shoulder flashed again.
She panicked.
“They’re coming.”
Hospital technicians tried isolating the signal while police guarded every entrance.
I stayed beside her.
“Tell me about Lily.”
“She visited.”
“How often?”
“Lots.”
“Why?”
“She talked to me.”
The girls had become friends inside Creston.
Lily had told her about ordinary life because ordinary life was the one thing the unknown child had never possessed.
School lunches.
Swimming lessons.
Christmas mornings.
Emma’s nonstop talking.
My disastrous pancakes.
The girl had built a picture of our family from Lily’s stories.
Then she said something I would remember long afterward.
“Lily said you would help me.”
“When?”
“Thursday.”
The day of the operation.
“What happened Thursday?”
She looked toward the door.
Morales promised no one from Creston would enter.
The child did not seem convinced.
Still, she spoke.
Sarah had arrived with Lily.
Mark came later.
Sarah wanted to take both girls away.
Mark told her Ethan was dying.
They argued.
Lily overheard Mark and Dr. Vale discussing a final procedure.
She became convinced the unknown girl would not survive it.
Sarah finally understood that the “testing” had become something else.
She removed the child’s numbered bracelet.
Put Lily’s clothes on her.
Covered the fresh incision.
And sent her home with me.
“Where did Lily go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was she left there?”
The girl nodded.
I turned away.
My sister had made an impossible choice badly and then tried desperately to undo it.
She had sent one child toward safety while leaving her own daughter behind.
Maybe because she thought Lily had more protection as Mark’s daughter.
Maybe because the nameless child had none.
Maybe because there had been no good option.
But the girl Sarah had now found at Creston was not Lily either.
“How do you know?”
The child looked at me as if the answer should be obvious.
“Because there are more.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“More who look like you?”
“Yes.”
My skin prickled.
“And other children?”
She nodded.
Creston had rooms containing children resembling children from outside.
Not perfectly.
But deliberately.
The implications were impossible, yet every fact in front of us supported them.
Morales received another call.
Creston had multiple locations.
The facility Sarah entered had been emptied in a hurry.
Records destroyed.
Equipment removed.
Someone knew police were coming.
The hospital suddenly felt less like protection and more like another compromised building.
I demanded to know where Sarah was.
En route.
The second girl was coming with her.
The child beside me began crying again.
“She’s not Lily.”
“Then we find Lily.”
She looked at me with the exhausted disbelief of someone who had heard promises from adults before.
I sat beside her.
“I don’t know what Creston taught you about adults keeping promises. I can’t fix that tonight. But I can tell you what I’m doing next. I’m staying until we know where Lily is.”
Emma climbed onto the bed beside her.
“And you need a name.”
The girl blinked.
Emma shrugged. “Everyone needs one.”
For the first time, the child seemed to consider that she might be allowed to choose something for herself.
Before she could answer, security rushed us toward another room.
Sarah had arrived.
When I saw my sister, anger and relief collided so hard I could barely separate them.
Her face was bruised.
Her blouse was torn at one shoulder.
Beside her stood another six-year-old girl who looked almost exactly like the child we had been protecting.
Sarah saw me.
Then she saw the girl beside Emma.
Her knees buckled.
“Oh God.”
I crossed the room.
“Where is Lily?”
Sarah shook her head.
“I thought I found her.”
“You didn’t.”
“I know.”
The second girl wore a yellow identification band.
She would not speak.
The first girl watched her.
“Three,” she whispered.
The second child looked up.
Recognition.
That was all the confirmation we needed.
Not Lily.
Another Creston child.
Sarah covered her face.
“I left my daughter there.”
“You were trying to get this child out.”
“I left Lily.”
“We are going to find her.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No. I don’t.”
I took Sarah’s wrists and pulled her hands away from her face.
“But falling apart in front of these girls does nothing for Lily.”
She stared at me.
Then nodded.
Barely.
The first child finally chose a name.
Maya.
She had heard it on television once.
I said it aloud.
“Maya.”
Her expression changed.
A name should not have been a gift.
For her, it was.
Maya told us the girls were moved among several facilities. Their implanted devices tracked them and opened restricted doors.
Then she revealed something worse.
The implants could also hurt them.
Possibly stop their hearts.
Creston called it a reset.
The children had been taught that escape could mean death.
One of the girls had already been taken during the hospital confusion.
Maya believed Creston had mistaken that child for someone called E-Seven.
I asked who E-Seven was.
Maya looked at Emma.
My stomach dropped.
Before I could understand why my daughter mattered, my phone rang.
Daniel.
My husband.
I answered.
“Where are you?”
A man spoke.
Not Daniel.
Mark.
Sarah stood instantly.
“Where is Ethan?”
Mark said their son was alive.
Sarah demanded to hear him.
Mark refused.
Then he accused her of destroying everything.
“You used our children,” Sarah said.
“I saved them.”
“From what?”
Mark’s answer changed the direction of the entire night.
“You still think Creston is the disease.”
“What does that mean?”
“Creston is the treatment.”
“For what?”
A pause.
Then he said, “For Claire.”
I stared at the phone.
Sarah stared at me.
Mark began listing things from my life he should not have known.
A car crash when I was nineteen.
Internal bleeding I somehow survived.
A dangerous complication when Emma was born.
Illnesses I rarely suffered.
Recovery doctors had called unusually fast.
“None of that proves anything.”
“You were the reason the program continued,” Mark said.
“What program?”
“The attempt to repeat you.”
I looked at Maya.
Then at Three.
Their similarities to Lily suddenly looked different.
Not copies of Lily.
Branches.
Experiments built around a family line.
“Why Lily?”
“Because Sarah shares your genetics.”
“And Emma?”
Mark became almost pleased.
“Emma carries more.”
I felt physically sick.
“She is the closest result Creston has ever seen.”
“No.”
“Daniel knew.”
I gripped the phone.
“Where is my husband?”
“With Ethan.”
Mark sent an address.
Then ordered me to come alone.
I refused.
He threatened Ethan.
Sarah grabbed my arm.
Then Mark mentioned the missing child.
Her implant had activated.
She had less than two hours.
I looked at the clock.
10:17 p.m.
“What happens when it activates?”
Mark told me to ask Maya what happened at midnight.
The call ended.
Maya had gone pale.
“What happens?”
She touched the implant in her shoulder.
“They turn it off.”
“What?”
“Everything.”
She placed a small hand over her heart.
Dr. Patel moved immediately.
The device was not merely identification.
Not merely access.
Creston had built control into the children’s bodies.
The address Mark sent led to an abandoned medical complex.
Police teams moved toward it while Sarah and I argued with Morales about going.
Then tactical officers reported vehicles leaving the location.
Four vehicles.
They looked like police units.
They carried no unit numbers.
Creston had infiltrated or imitated law enforcement.
One vehicle remained.
Thermal imaging detected five people inside.
Three adults.
Two children.
Sarah whispered Ethan’s name.
Police prepared to enter.
Maya insisted there was a concealed lower level that ordinary searches would miss.
A false wall.
A hidden floor panel.
An access system activated only when an implanted child was nearby.
She had been there before.
She knew the building.
She knew the doors.
Morales relayed everything to the tactical team.
Then the radio crackled.
“One child is moving.”
“And the other?”
Silence.
Sarah squeezed my hand until her nails cut into my skin.
The answer finally came.
“The second child is nonresponsive.”
Sarah made a sound I never want to hear again.
We still did not know whether the motionless child was Ethan.
Or the missing Creston girl.
Or someone else entirely.
But there was one thing I understood.
Whatever Sarah and Mark had begun six months earlier in the name of saving their son had uncovered something that reached backward into my own life.
Creston knew me.
Daniel knew something.
Mark knew more.
And somewhere inside an abandoned building, two children were running out of time.
I looked at Detective Morales.
“We’re going.”
She started to object.
I shook my head.
“Mark wants me there. Maya knows the hidden entrance. Sarah’s son may be inside. You can arrest me if you want, but you’re going to have to do it while we’re moving.”
Morales stared at me for a long second.
Then she reached for her radio.
“Get the car.”
Sarah wiped her face.
Maya took my hand.
And as we hurried toward the elevator, the implant beneath her shoulder flashed once more.
This time the light was red.
Maya stopped walking.
“What does red mean?” I asked.
She stared at the light.
Her fingers tightened around mine.
“It means they know we’re coming.”
The End
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Part 4 of 4
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