CHAPTER 9 — THE TEST OF THREE CHILDREN
Clara woke to the sound of someone crying.
Not loudly.
Not desperately.
Quietly.
As though the person had already learned that screaming changed nothing.
Her head throbbed.
Her throat burned.
Every breath tasted like metal.
She opened her eyes.
The laboratory was gone.
She lay on a narrow bed inside a glass-walled room.
White ceiling.
White floor.
No windows.
A thin black camera watched from the corner.
Clara tried to move.
Leather restraints held both wrists against the bed.
Her ankles were secured.
A clear tube ran into her left arm.
Beyond the glass wall, another room stood directly opposite hers.
Olivia lay on a similar bed.
Still unconscious.
To Clara’s right, Gabriel sat upright in a metal chair.
His hands were unbound.
His eyes were open.
He was the one crying.
Clara turned her head as far as the restraints allowed.
“Gabriel.”
He didn’t respond.
“Where are we?”
His gaze remained fixed on something Clara couldn’t see.
Then he whispered, “Back where it started.”
A door opened outside the three glass rooms.
William Voss entered.
No gray overcoat now.
No gloves.
He wore a white shirt with the sleeves folded to his elbows, exposing pale scars along both arms.
Behind him walked Dr. Mercer.
He was older than Clara expected.
Nearly seventy.
Thin.
Silver-haired.
His posture slightly bent.
But his eyes were alert.
Cold.
Curious.
He looked at Clara as if she were not a person.
As if she were an old experiment recently rediscovered.
William stopped between the rooms.
“Good morning.”
Clara pulled against the restraints.
“Where is my mother?”
“Safe.”
“Where is Ryan?”
“Alive.”
“Ethan?”
“Still deciding whether he wants to be brave.”
Clara looked at Gabriel.
“What did you do to him?”
William followed her gaze.
“Nothing he hasn’t survived before.”
Gabriel finally raised his head.
“Don’t speak to her.”
William smiled.
“You still think of yourself as the protector.”
“I am not yours anymore.”
“You were never mine.”
Something dark moved through Gabriel’s face.
William continued.
“You belonged to the program.”
Dr. Mercer stepped closer to Clara’s room and examined the monitor beside her bed.
“Heart rate elevated. Cortisol response normal.”
Clara stared at him.
“You buried my sister alive.”
Mercer didn’t look up.
“The objective was controlled incapacitation.”
“She woke inside a coffin.”
“That was an unfortunate dosing error.”
“You call that unfortunate?”
Mercer adjusted the flow of the tube in Clara’s arm.
“Emotion will make this harder for you.”
Clara laughed once.
It sounded cracked.
“You’re worried about making this hard?”
William pressed a button on the wall.
The glass between the rooms became transparent from both directions.
Olivia stirred.
Her eyelids opened.
She looked confused.
Then she saw Clara.
“Clara?”
“I’m here.”
Olivia tried to move and realized she was restrained.
Panic surged across her face.
“No.”
“Liv, look at me.”
Olivia’s breathing accelerated.
“Not the white room.”
“Stay with me.”
“No, no, no—”
“Olivia!”
Gabriel stood.
The sound of his voice stopped her.
She looked toward him.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Olivia whispered, “You’re real.”
Gabriel’s expression tightened.
“So are your memories.”
Mercer entered a code on the central control panel.
Three screens lit up above the rooms.
Each displayed a name.
B-17A — CLARA
B-17B — OLIVIA
B-17C — GABRIEL
William looked up at them.
“Three children created from the same genetic line.”
Clara stared at the designation above her.
“I’m not a code.”
“No,” William said. “You are the failed control.”
Gabriel slammed one hand against the glass.
“Leave her out of this.”
William barely reacted.
“Clara’s body rejected the modified blood before it could bind to the nervous system. That made her valuable in a different way.”
Clara’s throat tightened.
“What way?”
“As a baseline.”
Olivia turned her head toward Mercer.
“What did you put inside us?”
Mercer finally looked at her.
“Nothing so simple.”
“Answer me.”
“We altered expression, not identity.”
“That means nothing.”
“It means your genes were instructed to do something they had never done before.”
Gabriel’s voice turned hard.
“He means they taught our bodies to obey.”
Mercer smiled faintly.
“Crude, but not entirely wrong.”
Clara pulled again against the restraints.
“What did you make Gabriel into?”
William answered.
“A survivor.”
Gabriel closed his eyes.
William paced slowly between the rooms.
“Your mother was one of seventeen women enrolled in an early regenerative medicine trial. Most miscarried. Some carried to term, but the children died within days.”
His gaze moved toward Gabriel.
“Then Margaret produced him.”
Clara felt sick.
“Produced?”
“Gabriel survived organ failure, systemic infection, extreme blood loss.”
William’s tone held something almost like pride.
“He healed faster than any human subject we had ever observed.”
Olivia looked at Gabriel.
“You don’t feel pain.”
“I feel it.”
Gabriel’s voice was flat.
“I just don’t stop because of it.”
Mercer glanced at William.
“The pain-response suppression was incomplete.”
Gabriel laughed bitterly.
“You say that as though pain was the problem.”
William ignored him.
“Margaret was terrified of what we had created. Thomas was terrified of what we might do next.”
Clara’s anger sharpened.
“He tried to save Gabriel.”
“At first, Thomas cooperated.”
William looked at Clara.
“He believed the research could save your mother. She had already developed early symptoms of a degenerative condition.”
Clara remembered Margaret forgetting names.
Hallucinating.
Begging them not to let the men downstairs take her.
“You made her sick.”
“No,” Mercer said. “The disease was real.”
“And you used it.”
“We offered her time.”
“You took her child.”
Mercer’s expression did not change.
“Science often demands sacrifice.”
Gabriel struck the glass so hard a crack spread across its surface.
An alarm beeped.
Mercer immediately entered a command.
A metal collar around Gabriel’s neck released an electrical pulse.
His body seized.
He dropped to one knee.
“Stop!” Olivia screamed.
Clara fought the restraints.
William watched until Gabriel’s muscles stopped convulsing.
Then he said calmly, “That temper is why you never became the final version.”
Gabriel lifted his head slowly.
Blood ran from his mouth where he had bitten his tongue.
“You needed me angry.”
William’s smile faded.
“What?”
“You trained me with fear. Pain. Isolation.”
Gabriel stood again.
“You needed me angry because anger made the results stronger.”
Mercer looked toward William.
For the first time, tension passed between them.
Gabriel saw it.
“So I was right.”
William pressed another control.
This time the collar did not activate.
Clara noticed.
He had chosen not to use it again.
Or he couldn’t.
Gabriel continued.
“You never understood why my blood changed under stress.”
“We understood enough,” Mercer said.
“No. You only measured it.”
Gabriel’s eyes locked on Olivia.
“She was the answer.”
Olivia shook her head.
“I don’t understand.”
“You heard me when we were children.”
“I remember singing.”
“I wasn’t singing out loud.”
The room fell silent.
Clara looked between them.
“What do you mean?”
Gabriel’s voice softened.
“Olivia could hear me through the walls.”
“That’s impossible,” Clara said.
William looked pleased.
“Not impossible.”
Mercer’s eyes narrowed.
“Unproven.”
William ignored him.
“Olivia demonstrated unusual neural synchronization after receiving Gabriel’s blood.”
Olivia stared at Gabriel.
“The voice in my head…”
“Was me.”
Gabriel’s expression broke.
“I thought you were the only person who knew I was still alive.”
Olivia’s eyes filled.
“Why didn’t I remember?”
“Because they erased it.”
Mercer corrected him.
“Suppressed.”
Gabriel turned toward him.
“You drilled into her skull.”
Clara felt the scar behind her ear burn as if the old wound had just reopened.
“What did you do to me?”
Mercer looked at her.
“You were part of the same attempt.”
“But my body rejected it.”
“Yes.”
“Then why do I have the scar?”
“Because rejection occurred after implantation.”
Clara’s stomach twisted.
“There’s something inside my head?”
“Not anymore.”
William smiled.
“That is what Mercer believes.”
Mercer’s expression hardened.
“You reviewed the scans.”
“I reviewed what you gave me.”
Clara looked at Gabriel.
“What does he mean?”
Gabriel didn’t answer immediately.
Then he said, “You heard Olivia in the coffin.”
Clara froze.
“You were standing over her.”
“No.”
Gabriel’s voice remained quiet.
“You heard her before the lid broke.”
Clara remembered the chapel.
The silence.
The flowers.
The axe in her hands.
She had told everyone she heard something.
A faint sound.
A scrape.
But the truth was stranger.
She had not heard Olivia with her ears.
She had felt her.
A pressure in her skull.
A word without sound.
Clara.
She had dismissed it as grief.
“I knew she was alive,” Clara whispered.
William stepped closer to her glass room.
“Yes.”
Clara stared at him.
William’s eyes shone.
“The failed control was never a failure.”
Mercer turned sharply.
“You said her last imaging was negative.”
“It was.”
“Then this is trauma projection.”
“Or delayed activation.”
William looked at all three siblings.
“That is why we are here.”
Clara’s blood ran cold.
“This is a test.”
“The final one.”
Olivia pulled against her restraints.
“What kind of test?”
William glanced toward the monitors.
“We determine which of you carries the stable expression.”
Gabriel’s jaw tightened.
“You already know.”
“I knew what you were as a child.”
William looked at him.
“I need to know what all three of you became.”
A fourth screen turned on.
A live video feed appeared.
Ryan sat tied to a chair in another room.
Blood covered one side of his face.
Beside him stood Ethan.
Still bruised.
Still bound.
A gun rested on a table between them.
Clara shouted Ryan’s name.
Ryan lifted his head.
He could not hear her.
William pressed another control.
The video sound activated.
Ethan was speaking.
“I won’t do it.”
A voice from outside the camera answered.
“Then Detective Cole dies.”
Clara recognized Mercer’s assistant from Noah’s description.
Young.
White coat.
Daniel.
Ethan looked toward the gun.
Ryan spoke through swollen lips.
“Don’t touch it.”
“They have Noah.”
“They will use him whether you cooperate or not.”
Ethan’s face twisted.
“I already lost him once.”
Ryan leaned forward as far as the restraints allowed.
“You’ll lose him forever if you become what they need.”
William muted the feed.
Clara glared at him.
“What do you want Ethan to do?”
“Choose.”
“Between what?”
“His wife and his son.”
Olivia’s face went white.
“No.”
William looked toward her.
“Ethan was recruited because he was weak enough to control and clever enough to be useful. He has spent twelve years trying to serve two sides.”
“You threatened his child,” Olivia said.
“We gave him purpose.”
“You made him betray me.”
William shrugged.
“He chose betrayal every time fear became inconvenient.”
Olivia closed her eyes.
Clara watched her sister absorb the words.
The coffin.
The lies.
The marriage.
The secret phones.
The hidden eggs.
The years of surveillance.
Love tangled with manipulation until neither could be separated cleanly.
William pressed a button.
A countdown appeared above Ryan and Ethan.
30:00
“Thirty minutes,” he said.
“For what?” Clara demanded.
“For Ethan to kill Detective Cole.”
Olivia screamed, “No!”
“If he does, Noah lives.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
William looked at Olivia.
“Noah becomes the next subject.”
Gabriel struck the glass again.
“Where is the boy?”
William smiled.
“Closer than you think.”
Clara’s heart pounded.
Noah had been under armed guard at another facility.
Unless the transfer had been compromised.
Unless Blackridge had planned every move.
William turned toward Mercer.
“Begin phase one.”
Mercer entered a command.
The clear tubes running into Clara and Olivia began filling with dark red fluid.
Gabriel stared at the bags above them.
His face changed.
“No.”
Clara looked upward.
The labels read:
B-17C PLASMA
Gabriel’s blood.
Olivia began struggling violently.
“Stop it!”
Mercer watched the monitors.
“Flow rate stable.”
Gabriel slammed both hands against the cracked glass.
“Her heart can’t take it.”
“Which one?” William asked.
“Both!”
“That is precisely what we are measuring.”
Clara felt cold liquid enter her vein.
A burning sensation spread up her arm.
Then her vision sharpened.
Every sound became painfully clear.
The hum of the lights.
The pulse inside Olivia’s throat.
The movement of Gabriel’s fingers against the glass.
And beneath everything—
A voice.
Not through the speakers.
Inside her mind.
Olivia’s voice.
Clara, I’m scared.
Clara stopped breathing.
Olivia stared back at her.
Her lips had not moved.
Clara answered without speaking.
I hear you.
Olivia’s eyes widened.
Then another voice entered both their minds.
Gabriel.
Don’t let them know.
Clara looked at him.
He stood motionless.
His mouth closed.
William watched the monitors, unaware.
Gabriel continued.
The glass is weaker near the floor.
Clara’s pulse quickened.
How do we get out of the restraints?
You don’t.
Gabriel looked toward the tube in Clara’s arm.
You make them think the blood is killing you.
Clara understood.
The final test had begun.
But William did not realize the three subjects were no longer isolated.
For the first time in their lives—
They could hear one another.
And they were planning together.
Clara waited forty seconds.
Then she stopped breathing.
Her heart continued pounding, but she forced her chest to remain still.
Olivia understood immediately.
Her body went limp.
The monitor above Clara’s bed began alarming.
Mercer stepped closer.
“Oxygen saturation falling.”
William frowned.
“That quickly?”
“Possible acute rejection.”
Clara allowed her eyes to roll back.
Olivia’s heart monitor suddenly accelerated.
Not from the blood.
From panic she deliberately amplified.
Gabriel sent one command into both their minds.
Now.
Olivia screamed.
The sound was raw enough to make Mercer turn toward her.
Clara jerked once against the bed and let her head fall sideways.
The monitor emitted a continuous tone.
Mercer cursed and opened Clara’s glass door.
He rushed inside with a medical kit.
William stepped closer to the threshold.
“Stabilize her.”
Mercer unlocked one restraint to access Clara’s arm.
That was all she needed.
Clara opened her eyes.
She grabbed the tubing and wrapped it around Mercer’s throat.
He stumbled backward.
She pulled hard.
The unsecured hand reached the buckle at her waist.
Mercer clawed at the tube.
“You’ll kill yourself!”
Clara ripped the needle free.
Blood ran down her arm.
“Then your test fails.”
William reached for the alarm.
Gabriel struck the bottom corner of his glass wall.
Once.
Twice.
The weakened panel shattered outward.
He launched himself through the opening.
William turned.
Gabriel hit him with enough force to throw both men across the central floor.
Mercer escaped Clara’s grip and reached for a syringe.
Clara caught his wrist.
He was stronger than he looked.
The needle hovered inches above her neck.
Then Olivia’s voice filled Clara’s mind.
Left.
Clara shifted.
Mercer’s balance broke.
She drove his hand into the metal rail.
The syringe fell.
Clara kicked it away.
Olivia’s restraints released with a mechanical click.
She stared down.
Gabriel had reached the control panel while fighting William.
Clara freed herself.
Olivia rushed out of her room.
William pulled a compact pistol from behind his back.
He aimed at Gabriel.
Olivia saw it first.
“Gabriel!”
She moved without thinking.
The gun fired.
Gabriel turned.
The bullet struck Olivia beneath the shoulder.
She fell.
Clara screamed.
Something changed inside her.
Not emotionally.
Physically.
The room sharpened beyond normal perception.
She felt William’s next movement before he made it.
She crossed the distance between them and struck his wrist.
The gun flew away.
William looked at her in astonishment.
“You sensed that.”
Clara hit him again.
This time in the throat.
He collapsed against the control panel.
Gabriel reached Olivia.
Blood spread across her hospital gown.
“No, no…”
He pressed both hands against the wound.
Olivia gasped.
“I’m okay.”
“You’re not.”
Gabriel tore open the tube carrying his plasma.
He pulled the line free.
Mercer saw what he intended.
“Don’t!”
Gabriel drove the needle into Olivia’s IV port.
Mercer lunged forward.
Clara blocked him.
“What is he doing?”
“Too much will kill her!”
Gabriel looked up.
“Or save her.”
The plasma flowed into Olivia.
Her eyes fluttered.
The wound continued bleeding.
Then slowed.
Not stopped.
But slowed unnaturally fast.
William coughed from the floor.
“You see?”
His voice was hoarse.
“This is what we built.”
Gabriel looked at him with hatred.
“No.”
He held Olivia tighter.
“This is what survived you.”
An alarm echoed through the facility.
Not medical.
Security.
A voice sounded over the speakers.
“Containment breach in western corridor.”
Ryan.
Clara turned toward the video screen.
The chair where Ryan had been tied now lay empty.
Ethan was gone too.
The countdown continued.
17:42
William dragged himself upright.
“You think this changes anything?”
Clara picked up the gun.
She aimed it at him.
“It changes who is holding the weapon.”
William smiled through the pain.
“You won’t shoot me.”
“Why?”
“Because you need me to find Noah.”
Clara’s finger tightened against the trigger.
William’s smile widened.
“And your mother.”
Clara glanced toward the laboratory feed.
Margaret’s bed was empty.
The ventilator remained.
The sheet lay on the floor.
Someone had moved her while they were unconscious.
William leaned closer.
“You found a body beneath the chapel.”
May you like
His eyes darkened.
“But you still don’t know whether she is your mother.”
