Chapter 10 - What Mara Had Been Protecting
Mara could no longer explain complex memories aloud.
So Anna gave her another way.
A whiteboard.
Marker.
Mara struggled to hold it.
Her fingers bent awkwardly.
Anna wrapped cloth around the marker to make it thicker.
Mara tried again.
The first line took nearly a minute.
LILY.
Then:
BABY.
Then:
DANIEL.
Then:
NO.
Anna waited.
Mara became frustrated.
She struck the board.
Anna touched her wrist.
“Slowly.”
Mara looked at her.
Anna smiled through tears.
“You used to yell at me when I rushed homework.”
A sound came from Mara.
Strange.
Breathy.
Anna realized it was almost a laugh.
Then Mara wrote:
CELESTE TOOK BLOOD.
“From you?”
YES.
WHEN?
Mara wrote:
YEARS.
Celeste harvested Mara’s altered blood and tissue repeatedly.
Even after Vale stopped.
Even after Daniel died.
Why?
To refine Erebos.
Mara then wrote:
ELEANOR BABY.
Anna understood.
Celeste used data from Mara’s cells while working on Eleanor’s IVF.
But Mara had known.
How?
Mara drew the lower laboratory.
A storage refrigerator.
A box.
She had been moving through the tunnels for years.
Not always confined to one room.
After Daniel died, security systems deteriorated.
Mara learned hidden routes.
Celeste believed she remained contained.
She did not.
Mara watched.
Listened.
Collected discarded papers.
She knew Lily existed before Eleanor ever brought the baby home.
Anna looked at Eleanor.
“Did Mara ever come near Lily?”
Eleanor slowly nodded.
“When Lily was eight months old.”
She had never told anyone.
Eleanor woke one night to find Lily’s nursery window open.
A gray figure stood beside the crib.
Eleanor screamed.
Mara fled.
Nothing happened to Lily.
No injury.
No missing object.
At the time Eleanor thought she had dreamed it.
Now Anna understood.
Mara was checking on her.
Why?
Mara wrote another word:
SAME.
Vale looked at the genetic results.
“Not same.”
Mara struck the board.
Then wrote:
SMELL.
Vale became interested despite himself.
Erebos had altered Mara’s sensory system.
Her pupils.
Hearing.
Possibly olfaction.
Mara may have detected something in Lily that ordinary humans could not.
A biochemical marker.
Lily carried traces of the same engineered pathway.
That was why Mara protected her.
Not because Lily was becoming like Mara.
Because Mara knew Celeste would eventually come back for her.
The horrifying creature inside the wall had spent years watching over a child who did not even know she existed.
Anna asked:
“Why didn’t you leave?”
Mara stopped writing.
The question hurt.
Anna regretted it immediately.
Mara slowly lifted the marker.
CAN’T.
“Because of the light?”
Mara shook her head.
Then:
ANNA.
Anna stared.
“You stayed because of me?”
Mara shook her head again.
She pointed beneath the floor.
Then wrote:
OTHERS.
The room became silent.
“What others?”
Mara drew four vertical marks.
Then two.
Six.
Vale’s face changed.
“There were never six subjects.”
Mara looked at him.
Then wrote:
YOU LEFT.
Vale went pale.
After Daniel died, Vale sealed what he believed was the last laboratory and walked away.
Celeste continued.
Six people had been brought through the lower level afterward.
Some adults.
Some children.
Mara had seen them.
“What happened?”
Mara wrote:
3 GONE.
Then:
2 DEAD.
Then:
1 BELOW.
Anna looked at Ben.
“No. Besides Ben?”
Mara nodded.
Someone else remained downstairs.
Alive.
That explained why Celeste had returned.
Not only Lily.
Not only Ben.
A long-running subject.
Anna asked:
“Who?”
Mara stared at Eleanor.
Eleanor stepped backward.
“No.”
Mara wrote a name.
MICHAEL.
Eleanor began shaking violently.
Anna looked at her.
“Who is Michael?”
Eleanor could barely speak.
“My son.”
Lily looked toward her mother.
Anna felt the mystery widen again.
Eleanor had told everyone she had only one child.
But sixteen years earlier, before Lily—
Eleanor had given birth to a boy.
A baby officially recorded as dying forty minutes after birth.
His name had been Michael.
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And according to Mara—
Michael was alive beneath the mansion.
