Chapter 11 - Eleanor's First Child
Michael was born long before Eleanor married Daniel.
She was twenty-eight.
Unmarried.
Terrified.
The baby had a congenital heart defect.
Doctors said surgery might save him.
Eleanor’s father refused to accept the diagnosis and contacted a young experimental researcher.
Adrian Vale.
Anna looked at him.
“You knew Eleanor before Daniel.”
Vale nodded.
Another withheld truth.
Vale treated Michael through an early precursor to Erebos.
Not the final compound.
The treatment failed.
Michael’s heart stabilized briefly.
Then collapsed.
Vale said the baby died.
Eleanor believed him.
“What actually happened?”
Vale looked sick.
“I believed he died.”
Mara’s message contradicted him.
They descended to B2.
Anna refused to leave Lily and Ben alone, so Eleanor stayed with them under locked protection while Anna and Vale went with Mara.
Mara moved differently in the larger corridors.
Still unsettling.
Long arms touching walls.
Head tilted toward sounds Anna could not hear.
But Anna gradually stopped seeing a monster first.
She saw habits.
Mara still tapped her thumb twice when nervous.
Still pushed hair away with the back of her wrist.
Still stepped around insects instead of crushing them.
Humanity had survived in tiny movements.
The B2 laboratory was newer.
Clean.
Powered.
Celeste had been using it recently.
One room contained an incubator-like chamber.
Empty.
Another contained medical files.
Anna found:
M.H.
Michael Hartwell.
Age:
Not infant.
Sixteen.
He had lived.
Vale stared at the records.
“How?”
Celeste had taken Michael after his apparent death.
The early compound restarted cardiac activity minutes later.
Instead of telling Eleanor, Celeste’s mentor transferred him into covert observation.
Who was the mentor?
Vale read the signature.
His face emptied.
“Dr. Rowan.”
“Celeste?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
“Her father.”
Dr. Elias Rowan.
Vale’s own mentor.
The Erebos project had begun before Vale thought it began.
His “original” compound was built on older work.
Michael was Subject Zero.
Mara was Subject One.
Anna felt the structure of the nightmare finally becoming visible.
Vale had thought he invented Erebos.
He had actually inherited it.
Celeste had grown up around it.
To her, human experimentation was not a boundary crossed once.
It was family tradition disguised as discovery.
They found Michael’s room.
Empty.
Bed warm.
Restraints cut.
A handwritten page lay on the pillow.
NOT LIKE MARA.
Anna read.
“What does that mean?”
Vale examined Michael’s charts.
Michael had received a different version.
His appearance remained mostly human.
But his physiology had changed.
Extremely slow heart rate.
Rapid tissue repair.
Severe neurological episodes.
Celeste had kept him alive for sixteen years.
Eleanor had grieved a child growing up beneath the world.
Anna thought of her own eight years grieving Mara.
Two women.
Two missing people.
Two lies called death.
Then Mara began tapping urgently.
LISTEN.
Footsteps.
Someone was approaching.
A teenage boy appeared at the end of the corridor.
Barefoot.
Hospital trousers.
Thin.
Pale.
Human face.
He looked at Vale.
Then Anna.
Then Mara.
His eyes filled with fear.
“Mara?”
Mara immediately lowered herself.
Non-threatening.
Michael approached her.
He touched her altered cheek.
“You came back.”
Anna realized.
They knew each other.
Mara had been leaving containment to visit him.
That was why she never escaped permanently.
Others.
She had stayed for others.
Michael looked at Anna.
“You’re Annie.”
Anna froze.
Mara had told him about her.
For years.
“She said you’d come someday.”
Anna could not answer.
Then Michael looked behind them.
His face changed.
“Where’s Lily?”
“Upstairs.”
Michael whispered:
“No.”
Anna’s stomach dropped.
“What?”
“Celeste doesn’t want me anymore.”
May you like
He pointed toward the elevator.
“She wants Lily.”
