LOGINRebecca couldn't move.The child's hand remained pressed against the glass.Small.Pale.Almost transparent behind the white mist.Your brother.The words echoed inside her head.“No,” Rebecca whispered.The boy's face became clearer.Dark hair.Sharp eyebrows.A small scar above his left eye.Rebecca stared at him.Something inside her shifted.Not recognition.Something deeper.A memory trying to surface.A little boy running through a garden.A red ball.Someone laughing.Her own voice calling a name.“Eli…”Rebecca gasped.The memory vanished.Mercy closed her eyes.“It's starting.”Rebecca turned sharply.“You knew?”Mercy said nothing.“You knew there was a boy here!”“I knew there was a child.”“My brother!”“I didn't know if he was still alive.”Rebecca stepped toward her.“How could you not know?”“Because Raven took him from me.”The door suddenly slammed shut.Gabriel rushed toward the control panel.“Someone locked us in.”Sebastian aimed at the door.“Jonathan?”Gabriel s
The door slammed behind them.Rebecca spun around and grabbed the handle.“Claire!”Nothing.She pulled harder.The door didn't move.“Open it!”Mercy ignored her.Instead, she moved deeper into the narrow passage, her cane tapping against the concrete floor.“Rebecca, we have to keep moving.”“My mother is back there!”Mercy stopped.Rebecca stared at her.“You said Claire wasn't my biological mother. Fine. But she raised me. She protected me. She is my mother.”Mercy's face softened.“I know.”“Then don't ask me to leave her.”“I am asking you to survive.”A deep vibration passed through the walls.The same low electrical hum Rebecca had heard beneath the research station.The specimen.She could feel it now.Not hear it.Feel it.A strange pressure moved through her chest.Her locket became warm.Rebecca pulled it from beneath her clothes.The tiny black fragment inside had begun to glow faintly.Mercy saw it.Her expression changed.“You still have it.”“You know what it is?”“I k
The words remained suspended in the darkness.Mercy Bennett is still alive.Rebecca stared at the screen, unable to breathe.For years, Claire had been the woman she called Mother.The woman who had held her when she was sick.The woman who had taught her how to read, how to defend herself, how to survive.And now a medical record claimed something different.MATERNAL IDENTITY: MERCY BENNETT.Rebecca slowly turned toward Sebastian.“Who is Mercy Bennett?”Sebastian didn't answer immediately.His eyes remained fixed on the photograph they had found.Claire.Mercy.Margaret.Three women standing outside the research station in 1987.All smiling.All apparently working together.Until something had happened.Something terrible enough to split them apart.“I don't know,” Sebastian finally said.Rebecca swallowed.“You're lying.”“I wish I were.”A metallic sound came from somewhere beyond the room.Clang.Both of them froze.Another sound followed.Footsteps.Slow.Measured.Coming down t
The receiver slipped from Rebecca's hand.It swung slowly from its cord, knocking against the wooden box beneath it.“She isn't your mother.”The words remained in Rebecca's mind.Again.And again.Claire.Not her mother?It made no sense.Rebecca stared at the old telephone.“Dad?”Nothing.She grabbed the receiver again.“Dad!”Only static answered.Sebastian stepped closer.“Rebecca, we need to keep moving.”She barely heard him.“My father said Claire isn't my mother.”Sebastian looked at her.“You don't know if that was really Daniel.”“It was his voice.”“You said yourself someone may be manipulating the communications.”Rebecca shook her head.“No. I know my father's voice.”Sebastian lowered his voice.“Then we find out the truth. But not here.”A distant explosion shook the tunnel.Dust fell from the ceiling.Sebastian grabbed her hand.“Now.”They ran.Behind them, the research station trembled.Claire heard the explosion from inside the laboratory.She looked toward Daniel'
Evelyn Shaw stood at the bottom of the staircase with a gun pointed directly at Rebecca.Nobody moved.The red emergency lights painted half her face in crimson, making her almost unrecognizable.Rebecca stared at her.“Evelyn?”Evelyn's eyes remained fixed on her.“Don't move.”Harrison raised his weapon.“Evelyn, lower the gun.”“I can't.”“You're surrounded.”“I know.”“Then you know how this ends.”Evelyn's finger remained steady on the trigger.“No, Harrison. You don't know how this ends.”Daniel suddenly struck the glass of his container.“Evelyn!”She looked toward him.For the first time, her expression cracked.“Daniel.”Rebecca turned toward her father.“You know her?”Daniel nodded.“She was there.”“Where?”“Everywhere.”Rebecca looked back at Evelyn.“What does that mean?”Evelyn lowered the gun slightly.“It means your father and I have been trying to keep you alive for years.”Rebecca's eyes narrowed.“You just pointed a gun at me.”“To make you listen.”“Then talk.”Ev
“Dad?”Rebecca's voice trembled as she stared into the chamber beneath the laboratory.For a moment, nothing happened.Then the voice came again.“Rebecca.”Her knees almost gave way.She knew that voice.She had spent years trying to remember it clearly. The sound had faded with time, buried beneath old photographs, unanswered questions, and the official story of her father's death.But there was no mistaking it.Daniel Bennett was alive.Claire grabbed Rebecca's arm.“Don't go down there.”Rebecca pulled away.“You told me he was dead.”“I told you what I had to tell you.”“You lied!”Claire's eyes filled with tears.“I was trying to protect you.”“Everyone keeps saying that!”Rebecca's voice echoed through the laboratory.“You protected me by taking away my father? By making me believe he died?”Claire looked toward the chamber.“You don't know what Daniel became.”A deep mechanical sound interrupted them.Something moved below.Rebecca looked down.“Dad!”“Rebecca, listen to me.”
The boardroom smelled of tension and expensive ambition.Floor-to-ceiling windows framed the sleeping city below, but inside, no one was at rest. Conversations cut across each other in low, controlled voices—sharp, impatient, edged with calculation.Power lived here.And tonight—It shifted.The mo
The rain began just as Lena stepped onto the marble terrace.Soft at first—like a warning.Then heavier, steadier, drumming against the glass railings and spilling over the edges of the Cole estate like grief that had finally found its voice.From where she stood, the city lights of Tucson shimmere
The hallway was quiet.Too quiet.The kind of silence that pressed in on you, waiting for something to break it.Lena stood by the door, her hand still resting lightly against the handle.And on the other side of that threshold—Sebastian Crouch.No audience.No interruptions.No distractions.Just
The city looked different through tinted glass.Tucson stretched wide and restless beneath the night sky—its lights flickering like secrets waiting to be uncovered. Rain trailed across the car windows in slow, uneven lines, distorting the world outside into something softer… less real.Inside the c







