Chapter 6 - The Sister Behind the Glass
Dr. Natalie Rowe was detained at a private airfield outside Denver before she could board a charter flight.
She carried two passports.
One in her own name.
One in the name Lily Hayes.
DNA testing from a discarded medical mask gave us the answer within hours.
Dr. Rowe was my twin sister.
My mother had delivered two daughters.
I was removed under one identity.
Lily remained inside Winterglass under another.
Mercer separated us because twins created competing claims to the settlement trust. One child was hidden outside the network. The other was raised inside it, trained to manage medical records and reproductive control.
Lily became Dr. Natalie Rowe.
The obstetrician Michael chose for me.
The woman who monitored my pregnancy.
The sister I never knew had been standing beside my examination table for months.
When I confronted her through secured video, she looked at me with no visible surprise.
“I wondered when William would find you.”
“You knew who I was.”
“From the first appointment.”
“You altered my fertility treatment.”
Her gaze shifted briefly toward my son.
“I followed the protocol.”
“Whose child is he?”
She remained silent.
William stepped closer to the monitor.
“Answer her.”
Lily smiled faintly.
“You still think giving orders makes you her father?”
The cruelty in her voice sounded practiced.
Mercer had raised her to resent William.
To resent me.
She believed I had been the fortunate twin—the one sent away, allowed a normal life, protected from the network.
She did not know my life had been built on lies too.
“The embryo was created using Emma’s genetic material,” Lily said. “The donor was selected from the Hayes line.”
William went still.
“Whose?”
“Your son’s.”
I stared at him.
William had another child.
A son named Daniel Hayes, born years after my disappearance. An Army helicopter pilot who died three years earlier during a training accident.
His genetic samples had been stored through a military family medical program.
Mercer accessed them.
My baby was biologically mine and genetically connected to William’s family, but not through William directly.
Michael had no biological connection.
He was only the legal husband positioned to inherit.
The violation was overwhelming, but one truth remained simple:
My son was innocent.
No conspiracy could make him less mine.
“Why did you help them?” I asked Lily.
She looked away for the first time.
“Because Mercer said if I obeyed, he would tell me where our mother was buried.”
“She died six years ago.”
“No,” Lily replied. “That is what he told you.”
Another lie.
According to Lily, Laura Bennett had survived the illness that supposedly killed her. Mercer moved her into a private long-term-care facility under an alias after she attempted to release Winterglass records.
“She’s alive?” William whispered.
Lily gave an address.
A medical residence in Wyoming.
Then every light in the federal operations room turned red.
A system breach.
Someone had used Colonel Mercer’s credentials to access the rescue-hospital registry where my infant son’s temporary record was stored.
Mercer had located us.
William ordered an immediate lockdown.
Too late.
A nurse entered the room carrying an empty bassinet.
My son had been moved minutes earlier under a valid colonel’s order.
Not William’s.
Mercer’s.
My arms felt suddenly weightless.
“Where is he?”
The nurse was crying.
“A military ambulance took him.”
William’s entire posture changed.
No longer a father asking permission.
A colonel facing an active abduction.
But I grabbed his sleeve before he could issue the first order.
“Not without me.”
“Emma—”
“He is my child.”
“You’re injured.”
“I survived a cliff.”
The room went silent.
Lily watched through the screen.
Then she said something none of us expected.
“I know where Mercer is taking him.”
“Where?”
“To Laura.”
My mother was alive.
My son had been taken to her.
And Mercer intended to use three generations of the same family to unlock Winterglass permanently.
Before the feed ended, Lily leaned toward the camera.
“Emma, there is one more thing you need to know.”
“What?”
“Michael didn’t choose the mountain.”
May you like
“Who did?”
“Our mother.”
