Chapter 8 - The Boy Who Had Not Changed Yet
Ben was six.
Fully human.
For now.
He had hidden beneath the wheelchair after waking in the lower laboratory.
Anna crawled into the elevator and pulled him out.
His arms were covered with small adhesive patches.
One IV mark.
No obvious mutation.
Vale examined him only after Anna made the boy agree.
“What did they give you?”
Ben shook his head.
“The lady said medicine.”
“What lady?”
“Yellow hair.”
Celeste.
Ben had been missing for nine hours.
His parents worked for Harrow Foundation.
Someone collected him from an after-school program using an authorized family pickup code.
Who had the code?
His mother.
His father.
And the Harrow Foundation emergency-care database.
Celeste still had access.
Anna looked at Lily.
“Why Lily?”
That question had bothered her from the beginning.
Lily lived in the mansion.
No need for forged pickup.
No need for kidnapping.
Why put her in the tunnel?
Eleanor held Lily tightly.
“Maybe she saw too much.”
Vale disagreed.
“No.”
Everyone looked at him.
“Celeste does not improvise subjects.”
The word made Anna furious.
“Stop calling children subjects.”
Vale accepted the correction.
“She chooses according to biological criteria.”
“What criteria?”
He looked at Eleanor.
“Family.”
Eleanor went white.
Anna noticed.
Again.
“What aren’t you telling us?”
Eleanor shook her head.
“Nothing.”
Vale stepped closer.
“Who is Lily’s father?”
“Daniel.”
“Is he?”
Silence.
Lily looked between adults without understanding.
Anna’s anger sharpened.
“Not in front of her.”
She took Lily and Ben into the adjoining office, found blankets and snacks, and left the door open while remaining within sight.
Then she returned.
Eleanor confessed.
Daniel was not Lily’s biological father.
Lily was conceived after Daniel’s death.
Anna stared.
“You told me she was his daughter.”
“I told everyone.”
“Who is her father?”
Eleanor’s eyes moved to Vale.
Anna followed them.
Vale looked genuinely stunned.
“No.”
Eleanor whispered:
“Not you.”
Vale’s expression hardened.
“Then who?”
Eleanor began crying.
Daniel had frozen biological material years earlier.
Not sperm.
Mara’s altered cell cultures.
Celeste believed Erebos changes might be inheritable if integrated into reproductive cells.
Daniel refused human reproductive testing publicly.
Privately?
Eleanor found records after his death.
Someone had been creating modified embryonic cell lines.
Anna felt sick.
“Lily?”
“No!” Eleanor said immediately. “I conceived through IVF using Daniel’s stored sperm. At least that’s what I was told.”
“At least?”
“I never checked.”
Vale understood before Anna.
“Celeste handled the storage program.”
Eleanor covered her face.
Lily might biologically be Daniel’s child.
Or someone had altered something before implantation.
That explained Celeste’s interest.
Not proof.
A question.
Anna refused to let them speculate further around Lily.
“We test properly.”
Vale nodded.
“No assumptions.”
Good.
For once.
Then Ben began screaming.
Anna ran.
Mara was inside the office.
Not attacking him.
Crouched in the corner.
Lily stood between Mara and Ben.
“Don’t be scared,” Lily said.
Mara’s enormous eye remained fixed on Ben’s arm.
Then she crawled closer.
Ben recoiled.
Anna raised one hand.
“Mara.”
Mara stopped.
She pointed at the IV mark.
Then at Vale.
Then violently shook her head.
Vale approached slowly.
Mara snarled.
Not human language.
Pure warning.
Vale stopped.
Mara touched Ben’s arm with one long finger.
Then scratched a symbol into the dusty floor.
A circle.
Inside it:
three lines.
Vale stared.
“What?”
Anna asked.
Vale whispered:
“That was Celeste’s marker for active Erebos.”
Ben had been injected.
Anna looked at the perfectly normal little boy.
“What happens now?”
Vale did not answer.
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
“You did this before.”
“Only once.”
Anna looked toward Mara.
Vale’s face carried eight years of failure.
“Mara began changing after seventy-two hours.”
Ben had been injected less than ten hours ago.
There might be time.
“To do what?”
Vale looked toward the hidden elevator.
“If Celeste has been working for eight years, she may have developed a reversal agent.”
“And if she hasn’t?”
Vale looked at Ben.
Then away.
Mara suddenly seized Anna’s wrist.
Anna flinched but did not pull away.
The strange fingers were cold.
Mara pressed Anna’s hand against her own chest.
Beneath gray skin—
a heartbeat.
Fast.
Human rhythm.
Then Mara guided Anna’s hand toward a raised scar below her collarbone.
Something hard beneath it.
An implant.
Vale recognized it.
“Tracking chip.”
Anna looked at him.
“You said Daniel tracked her.”
“Yes.”
Mara dug one sharp nail into the scar.
Anna grabbed her hand.
“No.”
Mara persisted.
She wanted it out.
Why now?
Vale examined the implant frequency using an old scanner.
His expression changed.
“It’s transmitting.”
Anna looked toward the elevator.
“To who?”
Before Vale could answer, every monitor in the abandoned laboratory turned on simultaneously.
Static.
Then a woman appeared on-screen.
Older than the photograph.
Pale blond hair.
Clear-framed glasses.
Dr. Celeste Rowan smiled.
“Hello, Mara.”
Mara recoiled.
Celeste’s eyes moved toward Anna.
“And finally…”
May you like
Her smile widened.
“Hello, little sister.”
