Chapter 3 - Subject 01 Was Not Dead
Police did not arrive.
Anna tried the landline.
Dead.
Eleanor tried the mansion security system.
Offline.
Someone had isolated the service wing.
Dr. Vale, Eleanor insisted.
But Anna no longer accepted any explanation simply because Eleanor supplied it.
She locked the service-room door.
Then pushed the heavy tea cart against it.
Lily remained in her arms.
The creature had retreated into darkness again.
Anna held the brass tag.
SUBJECT 01.
Mara Bell.
Eight years ago.
“What was she a subject of?”
Eleanor sat against the counter.
For the first time, she looked tired rather than glamorous.
“My husband funded medical research.”
Anna stared.
“Your husband is dead.”
“Daniel died three years ago.”
“What research?”
“Regenerative medicine.”
Eleanor spoke slowly.
Daniel Harrow had inherited the mansion from his father.
The Harrow family owned pharmaceutical laboratories.
Most were legitimate.
Public.
Audited.
One was not.
Dr. Adrian Vale approached Daniel eleven years earlier with research involving accelerated tissue repair.
The idea sounded miraculous.
A compound that could stimulate damaged nerves, muscle and skin to regenerate after catastrophic injury.
Vale called it Erebos.
Early animal results were promising.
Then unstable.
Cells repaired too aggressively.
Nerve growth became disorganized.
Bones changed.
Immune systems attacked and rebuilt tissue repeatedly.
Daniel ordered the project stopped.
Vale disagreed.
“What does Mara have to do with it?”
Eleanor looked at Anna.
“I don’t know how she became involved.”
Anna stepped closer.
“Wrong answer.”
“I’m telling you—”
“My sister’s name is stamped on a containment tag inside your house.”
Eleanor looked away.
“That room existed before I knew what Daniel was doing.”
“What room?”
“The laboratory.”
Anna stared toward the tunnel.
The narrow passage did not lead outside.
It led beneath the mansion.
The old oven was a disguised emergency access point.
During Prohibition, the house had hidden service corridors.
Vale converted part of them into laboratory access routes.
“Why disguise it as an oven?”
“Daniel didn’t want staff finding the entrance.”
“And you stayed here after learning that?”
“I had nowhere else to take Lily.”
Anna looked at the child.
“Lily is Daniel’s daughter?”
Eleanor hesitated.
“Yes.”
Again—
too slow.
Anna stored the hesitation.
Not every lie needed to be confronted immediately.
“What happened to the laboratory?”
“Sealed after Daniel died.”
“And the creature?”
“I thought it was gone.”
“You mean Mara.”
“I don’t know that it’s Mara.”
Anna held up the tag.
“You knew my pendant.”
“I saw photographs.”
“What photographs?”
Eleanor said nothing.
Anna stepped closer.
“Photographs of my sister?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“In Daniel’s files.”
The answer hurt differently than Anna expected.
Mara had existed here.
Not as a rumor.
Not as a monster.
As photographs.
“What did she look like?”
Eleanor swallowed.
“Human.”
The word landed like a stone.
Anna sat.
Lily climbed into her lap.
Eight years of grief began rearranging themselves.
The river.
The police search.
The recovered jacket.
The official assumption.
Had all of it been manufactured?
Eleanor claimed she found the files after Daniel died.
Photographs showed a young brunette woman in hospital clothing.
Mara.
First photograph:
normal.
Second:
pale.
Third:
lesions along one arm.
Fourth:
eyes altered by extreme dilation.
Then the images stopped.
“What did Vale do to her?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know more.”
“I know Daniel wrote one thing beside her file.”
“What?”
Eleanor looked toward the tunnel.
“Successful survival.”
Anna almost became sick.
Successful.
The creature inside the wall had survived eight years.
If it was Mara.
A faint sound came from the tunnel.
Not scraping.
Crying.
Anna knew human crying.
This was damaged.
Rasping.
But grief did not need a normal throat to be recognizable.
Anna moved toward the oven.
“Mara.”
The creature shifted.
“I’m not coming inside.”
No response.
“I just want you to know I’m here.”
Something appeared in the darkness.
A hand.
Then another.
The second hand looked different.
Shorter fingers.
Less deformed.
On one wrist was a thin white scar.
Anna remembered that scar.
Mara got it at fourteen when she broke a bathroom window trying to rescue a moth trapped between the panes.
Anna covered her mouth.
“Mara…”
The creature trembled.
Its head lifted slightly.
For one instant the wet hair separated.
Anna saw part of the face.
Gray skin.
Distorted cheekbone.
One enormous black eye.
But beneath it—
a tiny brown birthmark near the jaw.
Mara had the same mark.
Anna’s knees weakened.
Then the creature whispered:
“Annie.”
Not Anna.
Annie.
Only one person had called her that.
Anna began crying.
She took one step forward.
Mara violently shook her head.
“No.”
It was the clearest word yet.
Then:
“Vale… coming.”
A loud metallic CLANG sounded somewhere deep beneath the mansion.
Eleanor stood.
Mara crawled backward into darkness.
Emergency lights switched from red to white.
May you like
A mechanical lock disengaged somewhere underground.
And through the wall came the unmistakable sound of a heavy door opening.
