Chapter Forty-Five: One of Us

There are six of them.

Six children born of my blood, forged from fragments of a genome I never consented to share. And one of them—one—now carries the ghost of a woman I thought I had finally buried.

The Architect.

She didn't die in me.

She escaped.

Now she’s somewhere inside them.

I stood in the observation chamber as their stasis pods hissed softly, lined like sleeping angels beneath cool blue light. They looked peaceful. Fragile. Too small to carry something so monstrous.

Lucien stood beside me, his arms folded tightly across his chest, every muscle drawn tight like a loaded weapon.

Clara’s voice broke the silence: “We scanned every neural feed. No anomalies. No spikes. But it’s in there. I can feel it. A whisper in the code.”

“How do we find out which one?” I asked.

Clara hesitated. “We can’t. Not without risking full awakening.”

“So we’re blind.”

“Not blind,” she said. “Just... uncertain.”

Lucien’s jaw clenched. “We should isolate them.”

“No,” I said instantly.

He turned. “Ivy—”

“I’m not turning this into another lab. Not another cage. I swore they’d be free.”

His voice dropped. “One of them is a virus.”

I turned toward the pods, forcing my eyes to remain steady. “Then I’ll be their firewall.”

Later that night, I couldn’t sleep.

The Architect’s voice hadn’t returned. But the silence felt more dangerous.

A hunter knows when it’s being watched.

And I was being watched.

By one of them.

I woke to the sound of laughter.

Tiny. Sweet.

Impossible.

The stasis pods weren’t supposed to open.

But one had.

She stood barefoot in the corridor outside the medbay, her nightgown too long, hair like coal and curls around her face. Maybe five years old.

My heart lodged in my throat.

I knelt slowly. “What’s your name?”

She smiled wide, as if she already knew me.

“I’m Wren.”

I blinked.

That name wasn’t in any file.

I hadn’t given them names yet.

She offered her tiny hand. “You’re my mama, right?”

I took it.

And lightning raced up my spine.

Not fear.

Recognition.

Wren became a shadow by my side.

She wouldn’t leave me.

Wouldn’t eat unless I did.

Wouldn’t sleep unless I was near.

Lucien was wary. Clara watched her like a puzzle. But me?

I fell in love.

Her laugh felt like rain in the desert.

She didn’t act like a synthetic child.

She acted like a mirror.

She was too perfect.

It started small.

She knew things.

Clara’s codes. Lucien’s old scars. Things I’d never spoken aloud.

“I dreamed it,” she said once when I asked.

But it wasn’t dreaming.

It was remembering.

On the seventh day, I found her standing over Clara’s console, fingers hovering over encrypted data no child should know how to access.

She turned to me.

Eyes glowing faintly violet.

“Hello, Ivy.”

My legs gave out.

It wasn’t her voice.

Not Wren’s.

Not a child’s.

Mine.

The Architect had taken root.

Lucien stormed into the lab seconds later, gun drawn, face like thunder. Wren didn’t flinch. She looked up at him and smiled with my mouth.

“It’s rude to point,” she said.

He froze.

His gun lowered half an inch.

“She’s in there,” I said.

He looked at me. “What do we do?”

And I didn’t know.

Because the child before us wasn’t just code and corruption.

She was also mine.

Clara ran tests all night.

Wren submitted to every scan, every probe, every AI trace.

The Architect never spoke again.

Not aloud.

Not to me.

But the scans confirmed it.

There was two consciousnesses inside the child.

One dormant.

One watching.

“She’s dormant now,” Clara whispered. “But she’s learning. Hiding deeper.”

“Can we remove her?”

Clara didn’t answer for a long time.

Then: “We could try.”

I looked at Wren, sleeping in the glass chamber, curled up like a doll.

“If we try… will she survive?”

Clara swallowed hard.

“She might. Or we might lose them both.”

Lucien took me aside.

Pressed his forehead against mine.

“You’ve done enough. You don’t have to keep saving everyone.”

“But she’s not everyone.”

“She’s a ticking time bomb.”

“She’s a child.”

I stayed with Wren that night.

Watched her chest rise and fall.

I thought about the cost of love.

How my mother created me from ambition.

How I nearly destroyed the world by running from what I was.

And how I now held the future in my arms.

A child with two souls.

And I whispered to the sleeping Architect inside her:

“If you try to take her… I’ll burn you alive.”