Chapter 8 - Malcolm Hart's Funeral Was a Lie
Claire had attended her father's funeral.
Closed casket.
Cancer.
Private burial.
She had never questioned it.
Now she hated closed caskets.
Subject Zero—whose chosen name was Eli—explained.
Malcolm developed aggressive lymphoma eleven years earlier.
Instead of accepting death, he used Nocturne on himself.
The treatment entered remission.
It also changed his body.
Not like Jonah.
Malcolm had decades of data.
He refined dosing.
He survived.
Then staged his death to continue research without legal scrutiny.
Voss stared.
“You told me he died.”
“He wanted you to believe it.”
“So who have I been sending stabilizer reports to?”
A shell address.
Daniel traced it.
Malcolm.
Eli continued.
Malcolm had been inside the mansion several times.
The wall network was his original laboratory.
Lily's discovery of Jonah threatened him.
Why had he not simply removed Jonah?
Because Jonah had one thing Malcolm needed.
Evidence.
A hidden archive.
Every Nocturne trial.
Every subject.
Every child created.
Jonah memorized where Malcolm stored it, then moved it before being sealed inside.
Malcolm believed Jonah would eventually break.
He didn't.
Lily changed the stalemate.
Jonah began communicating again.
Malcolm feared he would tell her where the archive was.
So Claire's rage toward Lily suddenly carried another shadow.
Had someone been manipulating Claire too?
Claire remembered anonymous messages over the previous month.
Lily is becoming dangerous.
Search her room.
Keep her away from the wardrobe.
She assumed they came from a neighborhood stalker and deleted them.
Eli looked at her.
“Malcolm.”
Claire sat down.
Even after death, her father had been steering her fear.
But Claire's violence remained hers.
Manipulation explained.
It did not absolve.
She looked at Lily.
“I hurt you.”
Lily said nothing.
Claire knelt.
“I don't get to blame Grandpa Malcolm for that.”
Lily's face softened slightly.
“You pulled my hair.”
“I did.”
“It hurt.”
“I know.”
“Don't do it again.”
“I won't.”
Not forgiveness.
A boundary.
Better.
Then Eli looked at Jonah.
“Where's the archive?”
Jonah tapped his chest.
Three times.
Then pointed toward Lily.
Everyone looked at her.
Lily blinked.
“What?”
Ethan crouched.
“Did Jonah give you something?”
She thought.
“The shiny thing.”
“What shiny thing?”
She ran upstairs before anyone could stop her.
Ethan followed.
Under her mattress:
a small metal key.
Jonah had pushed it through the hole during their first week communicating.
Lily thought it belonged to a toy box.
Eli recognized it.
Safe-deposit key.
Number 317.
Bank downtown.
They went with police.
Box 317 belonged to:
LILLIAN HART.
Opened eight years ago.
Two days after Lily's birth.
Inside:
hard drives.
Research files.
A sealed letter.
FOR LILY WHEN SHE IS OLD ENOUGH TO CHOOSE.
Eli stared.
“That isn't Malcolm's handwriting.”
Claire recognized it.
“Jonah.”
Jonah had created the box.
How?
He had escaped briefly after Lily's birth.
Nobody knew.
For one day, he left the mansion tunnels.
Opened the account using documents Malcolm had prepared for Lily.
Returned.
Why return voluntarily?
The archive explained.
There were others still inside.
Not in this mansion.
Across three facilities.
Children.
Adults.
Nocturne subjects dependent on stabilizers.
Jonah stayed because he believed escaping publicly would cause Malcolm to abandon or kill them.
He spent eight years sabotaging from inside.
The “monster” was not merely victim.
He had been quietly protecting people.
Claire cried when she learned.
The brother she abandoned had spent his life refusing to abandon strangers.
Then the final file opened.
CURRENT PHASE: L-8.
Lily.
Objective:
Activate inherited response through controlled stress exposure.
Ethan felt sick.
“Stress?”
The last six weeks were documented.
Claire yelling.
Wardrobe encounters.
Food.
Knocks.
Even tonight.
Someone had cameras.
Malcolm was not merely watching Lily.
He had engineered emotional stress around her to see whether inherited Nocturne traits activated.
And Claire—
May you like
without knowing—
had become part of the experiment.
