Chapter 7 - Subject Zero
The first Ethan Hart would be seventy-two.
Claire remembered one photograph from childhood.
Her father standing beside a blond teenage boy.
Same bright eyes Lily had.
The photo disappeared after Jonah vanished.
Subject Zero predated Project Nocturne by decades.
Malcolm had not invented the research.
Their father had.
Charles Hart.
He experimented on his eldest son after Ethan suffered a severe immune disorder.
An early regenerative compound saved him.
Then changed him.
Not grotesquely like Jonah.
Subtly.
Enhanced healing.
Unusual sensory changes.
Slow aging.
Charles hid him.
Malcolm grew up watching his brother become both miracle and prisoner.
Instead of rejecting the system, Malcolm inherited it.
Nocturne was his attempt to reproduce Subject Zero's traits without the instability.
Claire felt disgust.
“My family turned people into projects for three generations.”
Daniel nodded.
“And every generation told itself it was fixing the last one's mistakes.”
Subject Zero escaped sometime in the 1980s.
Preserved samples remained.
Malcolm later used one to fertilize Claire's egg.
Why?
The ideal combination.
Subject Zero's stabilized regenerative traits plus Subject Three's germline compatibility.
Lily.
A child engineered from two research lines.
Claire looked at her daughter.
Lily was sitting on the garage step, bored by the genetic language.
Claire knelt.
“You okay?”
“Everyone keeps calling me things.”
Claire's heart broke.
“You are Lily.”
“I know.”
“That's all you have to be.”
“Good.”
She thought.
“Can I still have pancakes?”
“Yes.”
“Then I'm okay.”
The adults almost laughed.
Then Daniel revealed something more.
Lily's tiny mischievous smile around the wall was not random.
Subject Zero used the same expression in archived footage.
A stress-regulation behavior.
Maybe genetic.
Maybe coincidence.
But Jonah recognized it.
That was why he became certain Lily belonged to Subject Zero's line.
And why he protected her.
Six weeks earlier, Lily first found the hole.
Jonah smelled the familiar lineage.
He reached toward her.
She offered food.
He never harmed her.
Instead, he began warning her through knocks.
Why?
Because someone had returned to the mansion.
Someone Jonah feared.
Claire.
No.
Voss.
No.
Daniel.
No.
A different person.
Lily described a man she sometimes saw reflected in mirrors.
Older.
Blond-white hair.
Blue eyes.
He never spoke to her directly.
Once he stood in the hallway at night.
When Lily blinked, he was gone.
Claire assumed imagination.
Daniel did not.
“Subject Zero.”
If alive, the man had entered the mansion.
Why?
Lily.
His genetic daughter.
But he had never consented to her creation.
Was he trying to rescue her?
Observe her?
Reclaim her?
Nobody knew.
Then Jonah emerged partially from the corridor.
For the first time, he allowed them to see more.
He was human.
Terribly altered.
Tall but hunched.
Skin gray from years without sunlight.
Long fingers from connective-tissue abnormalities.
Hair hanging around his face.
One blue eye hugely dilated.
His voice barely worked.
Lily walked toward him.
Ethan stopped her.
Jonah raised a hand.
Not threatening.
“No.”
Then pointed behind them.
A man stood at the far end of the garage.
Older.
Tall.
Silver-blond hair.
Blue eyes.
He looked perhaps fifty-five.
Not seventy-two.
Subject Zero.
The first Ethan Hart.
He stared at Lily.
She stared back.
Then smiled.
The same tiny smile.
The man's eyes filled with tears.
“Hello, sweetheart.”
Ethan stepped in front of her.
“You don't call her that.”
Subject Zero looked at him.
“You're Ethan Reese.”
“Yes.”
“You raised her.”
“Yes.”
“Then you're her father.”
Ethan had not expected that.
The old man continued.
“Biology is why I came. It isn't why I stayed away.”
Claire whispered:
“You knew?”
“I learned eight years ago.”
“Why didn't you take her?”
“Because she wasn't mine to take.”
That single sentence separated him from nearly everyone else involved in Nocturne.
Then Claire asked:
“Why are you here now?”
Subject Zero looked toward Jonah.
“Because Malcolm's program is starting again.”
Claire's blood chilled.
“Malcolm is dead.”
May you like
Subject Zero shook his head.
“No.”
