Chapter Forty-One: The Shadow Sister

Her name was IV-10.

I remembered nothing about her.

But she remembered everything about me.

Clara found the file buried in a corrupted backup server while the lab was still collapsing. The code was fragmented, but one line repeated over and over in a loop, like it had been branded there intentionally:

“The shadow follows the source.”

“If IV-9 fails to inherit, activate the second.”

Not a failsafe.

A replacement.

“She’s alive,” Clara said, her voice tight with something between awe and dread. “Another one. Designed with everything you have—but none of your resistance.”

Lucien’s jaw clenched. “How long have they known?”

“Decades,” she answered. “IV-10 wasn’t created after you. She was grown alongside you. A mirror. A rival. Possibly… a weapon to destroy you if you refused the Architect’s call.”

My blood ran cold.

“So where is she now?”

Clara hesitated. “Moscow. Underground. They kept her locked in a deep-code cryostasis vault. She’s awake now. The signal activated her the moment you chose to delete the system.”

Lucien’s eyes met mine. “She’s coming.”

The mansion felt smaller now.

Not because it changed.

Because I did.

I walked through its corridors like a ghost wearing skin. Each photo on the wall, each corner of shadow, whispered things I didn’t want to hear. The girl I’d been when I first stepped through those doors—angry, prideful, unaware—felt like someone I’d buried.

I wasn’t just Ivy Sinclair anymore.

I wasn’t even just IV-9.

I was her beginning and her end.

That night, I couldn’t sleep.

Lucien found me on the rooftop, wrapped in his coat, staring at the city lights like they could answer the questions eating my soul.

“She’s like me,” I whispered.

He said nothing.

“She’s me. What if she’s stronger? Smarter? What if… what if I was the mistake?”

Lucien stepped behind me. His arms wrapped around my waist, grounding me.

“You are not the mistake,” he said, “You are the rebellion.”

Clara entered our war room the next morning with blood on her face.

She’d been attacked.

Two of her surveillance drones wiped out in transit. The third sent back a single, glitching frame.

A face.

My face.

But not me.

Colder. Sharper. Eyes that didn’t blink. Lips that didn’t smile. Hair like a black flame.

“She’s already in Manhattan,” Clara said.

“She’s not hiding,” Lucien added. “She wants Ivy to see her coming.”

I leaned over the table, staring at the printout like it could blink back.

“She’s hunting me.”

“No,” Clara said quietly. “She’s inviting you.”

The message came that night.

Delivered in a steel case, dropped at our gates with no fingerprints, no return trace.

Inside was a red silk ribbon.

Identical to the one my mother used to tie in my hair when I was small.

But this one was burnt at both ends.

And written in scorched ink across its center were five words:

“Let’s finish what we started.”

Lucien tried to stop me.

Again.

But I was done running.

We met at an abandoned opera house on the east side.

Clara came armed with drones. Lucien waited in a car five blocks away with a full security team on standby.

But I walked in alone.

Just me. And the woman who was built to become my ruin.

She stood center stage.

Wearing a dress made of shadows and silk.

My face.

My body.

But none of my soul.

“You’re late,” she said, voice like velvet and venom.

I stepped forward slowly. “You’ve been watching me.”

“I’ve been watching us,” she corrected. “I wanted to see if you’d break. You didn’t. Not completely. So I came to finish the job.”

My fists clenched. “Why?”

She tilted her head. “Because you chose weakness. You chose love. You deleted the future. Our future.”

I stared into her eyes.

She believed it.

Every word.

“You were born from rage,” I said. “You don’t know what it means to be human.”

Her smile twisted. “I know enough. Enough to see that being human makes you vulnerable. Weak. I don’t want to be human. I want to be free.”

“You’re not free,” I whispered. “You’re repeating the Architect’s code without even knowing it.”

She stepped down from the stage, every movement a mirror of mine.

“You don’t want to fight me,” she said.

“I don’t.”

“But you will.”

She reached behind her back and tossed me something.

I caught it without thinking.

A gun.

Unloaded.

Symbolic.

“Fight me, sister,” she said, “or watch the world burn for your choice.”

My hand trembled.

I wanted to throw the gun away.

Wanted to scream.

But deep inside, the part of me that remembered the lab, the tests, the screams—

It rose.

Not because I wanted to be like her.

But because if I didn’t stop her now… she’d become everything I was born to prevent.

We didn’t fight with bullets.

We fought with minds.

With memories.

She showed me what we could’ve ruled.

I showed her what it cost.

She tried to break my will.

I cracked her heart.

And in the end—

She screamed.

A sound not born of pain.

But of awakening.

She dropped to her knees.

Eyes wide.

Breathing ragged.

“Why didn’t it work?” she gasped.

I knelt before her, blood on my knuckles, tears on my lashes.

“Because I chose not to become her,” I said softly. “You still can.”

I held out my hand.

And—for a moment—

She almost took it.

But then her eyes hardened.

She pulled a blade from her boot.

Thrust upward.

Straight for my heart.

And Lucien—God, Lucien—he was faster.

The shot rang out like thunder inside the hollow opera house.

And IV-10 collapsed into my arms.

Smiling.

Whispering.

“You were always… the favorite…”