Chapter 12 - The Other Girl
Sophie Lane had entered Lily's school two years earlier.
Quiet.
Dark-blonde hair.
Blue eyes.
Frequent absences.
Lily adored her.
Claire had met Sophie's mother, Rachel Lane, several times.
Single parent.
Friendly.
Forgettable in the way carefully constructed identities often were.
Police arrived at Rachel's apartment.
Empty.
No photographs.
No personal history.
Sophie's school records were forged.
Lily cried when told.
“Is Sophie bad?”
“No,” Ethan said.
“She didn't do anything.”
That mattered.
Children were not conspirators because adults used them.
The search found Sophie at an abandoned clinic with Rachel.
Rachel surrendered immediately.
She was not Sophie's biological mother.
She was a nurse recruited by Malcolm.
At first paid.
Later trapped.
Sophie had received Nocturne microdoses from infancy.
Not dramatic enough to deform her.
Enough to produce measurable traits.
Night vision.
Rapid wound healing.
Heightened auditory processing.
Exactly what Malcolm wanted Lily to develop naturally.
Comparison between the girls proved something scientifically significant:
the compound—not merely inherited genetics—caused most enhancements.
Lily was ordinary.
Sophie was altered.
Malcolm's decades-long hypothesis that Nocturne traits could be cleanly inherited was largely false.
Why continue?
Because admitting failure would make generations of abuse meaningless in his mind.
So he escalated.
Again and again.
Sophie became proof he could still achieve the traits through controlled dosing.
Rachel eventually wanted out.
Malcolm threatened Lily.
If Rachel disappeared, he would shift experimentation to the control child.
So Rachel stayed.
Lily sat beside Sophie at the hospital.
Neither understood the full history.
Sophie asked:
“Are we sisters?”
Lily shrugged.
“Sort of.”
“That's weird.”
“My family is super weird.”
Sophie laughed.
For the first time, the mystery contained something gentle.
DNA confirmed they were full biological sisters.
Claire and Eli.
Claire cried privately.
Two daughters created without her consent.
One raised by her.
One stolen into an experiment.
The legal and emotional implications were enormous.
Claire did not declare herself Sophie's mother.
She asked Sophie what she wanted.
Sophie wanted Rachel.
The woman who raised her.
Claire respected it.
“We can figure out everything else slowly.”
That single choice broke a pattern.
Then Sophie revealed something.
Malcolm visited her two weeks earlier.
He was angry.
“He said Lily ruined the test.”
“How?”
“Because she made the wall person trust her.”
Jonah.
Malcolm had expected Jonah to frighten Lily.
Stress her.
Instead Lily befriended him.
Fed him.
Giggled when the hand stole food.
Turned a controlled fear stimulus into attachment.
The experiment failed because Lily responded to the unknown with curiosity rather than terror.
Malcolm hated that.
Then Sophie remembered:
“He said he needed Daddy Ethan to open the last door.”
Ethan frowned.
“What door?”
Rachel knew.
Beneath the original mansion was a sealed laboratory.
Malcolm could not access it.
Biometric lock.
It had been built by Charles Hart.
Required a descendant from Malcolm's paternal line.
Ethan qualified biologically.
Claire did too.
Why Ethan specifically?
Because the lock also required Nocturne-linked markers present in Ethan's blood from his own prenatal exposure.
Ethan had never known he was treated.
He wasn't merely Malcolm's biological son.
He was another experimental child.
Subtle.
Successful.
That explained why Malcolm tracked him.
Why he married Claire was coincidence—or perhaps not.
Had someone nudged them together?
Voss admitted.
“Yes.”
He arranged their first meeting.
Years earlier.
A charity gala.
Ethan and Claire thought it was chance.
Voss placed them at the same table.
He wanted to see whether two Nocturne-linked adults recognized one another subconsciously.
They fell in love.
Voss watched.
He never expected marriage.
Never expected Lily already existed through Eli's intervention.
But once it happened, Malcolm exploited the family.
Ethan felt nauseated.
Even his love story had been observed like data.
Claire looked at him.
“Was any of it ours?”
Ethan answered:
“What we felt was.”
That was enough.
Then Malcolm sent coordinates.
The last laboratory.
And a message:
May you like
BRING ETHAN.
OR JONAH DIES BEFORE SUNRISE.
