The Woman Who Wore My Face

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Woman Who Wore My Face

ELENA

The woman behind the shattered mirror looked exactly like me.

Not similar. Not a resemblance that could be explained by blood, coincidence, or the sickening tricks of a tired mind. She had my face, my eyes, the same faint scar beneath her left eyebrow, and the same small crease between her brows that appeared whenever she was angry.

But she stood differently.

Her shoulders were straight. Her chin was raised. She carried herself with the quiet confidence of someone who had never once questioned her right to exist.

The white coat hanging from her frame was spotless. A silver badge gleamed against her chest.

DR. ELEANOR WHITMORE.

I looked down at myself, then back at her.

“What the hell is this?”

Nathaniel had gone pale. For the first time since I had met him, the man seemed genuinely afraid.

“Get away from the mirror,” he whispered.

The woman smiled.

“She always says that when she’s frightened.”

Her voice was mine, too. Every syllable. Every inflection. Even the slight rasp at the end of a sentence when I was irritated.

I stepped back.

“Who are you?”

She tilted her head, studying me with an expression that made my stomach twist. It was the way a scientist examined something unexpected beneath a microscope.

“You really don’t remember?”

“I’ve had enough people asking me that question to last a lifetime.”

“Then perhaps you should stop asking the wrong questions.”

Adrian moved in front of me, his gun raised. “Stay where you are.”

The woman glanced at him.

For one brief second, something almost tender passed across her face.

Then she laughed.

“Oh, Adrian. You still carry that thing as if it ever made you powerful.”

His grip tightened.

“You’re supposed to be dead.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“You died in the fire.”

“No.” Her smile faded. “You watched someone die in the fire. You simply decided it was me.”

The silence that followed was so complete that I could hear the faint electrical hum coming from the room behind the mirror.

I looked at Adrian.

He didn’t look at me.

That frightened me more than the woman did.

“Tell me what she means.”

“Elena—”

“Don’t.” I moved away from him. “You have lied to me about my name, my death, my father, and whatever the hell happened in this house. If you say my name one more time as if you have any right to it, I swear I’ll put a bullet through your hand myself.”

His eyes met mine.

For a moment, I saw the man I had once believed I could trust. The man who had held me while I woke screaming from dreams I couldn’t remember. The man who had promised that whatever had happened to me, I wouldn’t have to face it alone.

Then I remembered the photograph.

ELENA DIED BEFORE ADRIAN EVER MET HER.

“What did you do to me?” I asked.

He lowered the gun slightly.

“I’m trying to protect you.”

“From whom?”

His gaze shifted to the woman behind me.

She answered for him.

“From yourself.”

I turned.

She had stepped through the broken mirror.

There was no blood on her feet. No cuts on her hands. The shards seemed to part around her as if the glass recognised her and had no desire to hurt her.

She stopped a few feet away.

Up close, the differences between us became impossible to ignore.

I had a small mole near my mouth. She didn’t. Her hair was longer, falling in smooth waves over her shoulders. Mine was tangled and uneven. There was a thin white scar around her wrist, as if something had once been fastened there and removed violently.

And her eyes.

My eyes were dark, often described as unreadable.

Hers were colder.

Not empty. Never empty.

They held the terrible certainty of someone who remembered every mistake she had ever made.

“Your name is Eleanor Whitmore,” she said. “You were the lead researcher on Project Mirror. You designed the procedure that allowed memories to survive the destruction of the brain. You created the first stable transfer.”

“I don’t remember any of that.”

“Of course you don’t. You asked them to take it away.”

“Why?”

“Because you discovered what your father intended to do with your work.”

Arthur Whitmore’s voice came from the doorway.

“Enough.”

We all turned.

My father stood there, one hand pressed against his side. Blood had soaked through the fabric of his shirt, but he remained upright, his expression composed in a way that seemed almost unnatural.

The woman looked at him with open disgust.

“Still pretending you’re the victim, Father?”

Arthur’s face hardened.

“You should have remained asleep.”

“And you should have died twenty years ago.”

Nathaniel stepped between them. “Neither of you should be here. The restoration wasn’t complete. We don’t know what the two of you being conscious at the same time will do.”

“The two of us?” I repeated.

Nobody answered.

I felt the room shift around me. Not physically, but in the way a conversation changes when everyone knows a secret except the person standing at its centre.

I looked from Arthur to Nathaniel, then to the woman wearing my face.

“How many of me are there?”

The woman looked almost sorry for me.

“Two that survived.”

“And the others?”

“Not all of them were people.”

A cold sensation crawled up my spine.

“What does that mean?”

She glanced towards the shattered mirror.

“Project Mirror was never designed to create another body. It was designed to preserve a person. Memories, instincts, emotional responses, the things that make someone themselves even when everything else has been taken away.”

“I know what the project was supposed to do,” Nathaniel interrupted.

“No, Nathaniel. You know what the reports said it was supposed to do. You know what we told the investors. You know what we allowed the board to believe.”

She stepped closer to me.

“But you were never there when we began putting people back together.”

The lights flickered.

A low alarm sounded somewhere beneath the floor.

Nathaniel swore under his breath and hurried towards a control panel mounted beside the doorway. Lines of red text flashed across its screen.

DUAL CONSCIOUSNESS EVENT DETECTED.

MEMORY SEPARATION FAILURE.

SUBJECT ZERO AND SUBJECT ONE MUST NOT REMAIN IN PROXIMITY.

Nathaniel stared at the display.

“No. No, this shouldn’t be happening.”

“What shouldn’t?” I demanded.

He didn’t answer.

The woman did.

“Your memories are trying to return to the same place.”

My throat tightened. “They’re my memories.”

“Some of them.”

“Stop saying that.”

“Then stop pretending you know which parts of yourself belong to you.”

I lunged towards her before I could think better of it.

Adrian caught my arm.

I twisted, drove my elbow into his ribs, and broke free. He stumbled back with a curse, but I was already standing in front of her.

“Listen to me,” I said. “I don’t care if you’re a clone, a ghost, or some experiment my father dragged out of a laboratory. You don’t get to stand in front of me and tell me who I am.”

For the first time, her composure cracked.

A strange sadness entered her eyes.

“I used to say exactly that.”

My anger faltered.

“What?”

“Before the first procedure. Before I learned that identity is not a thing you can lock in a room and leave untouched. Before I discovered that memories can be removed without removing the pain attached to them.”

She reached for my hand.

I should have pulled away.

Instead, I stood frozen as her fingertips touched mine.

The room disappeared.

I was standing in a white corridor.

My hands were covered in blood.

A little girl was crying behind a glass wall, her small palms pressed against it. She had dark curls, a pink ribbon, and a familiar little mole beneath her left eye.

Mara.

I knew her name without anyone telling me.

A man in a white coat stood beside me. Nathaniel, younger by years, his face drawn with exhaustion.

“We have to stop,” he said. “Eleanor, she’s a child.”

“She volunteered.”

“She doesn’t understand what she’s volunteered for.”

“She understands more than you think.”

The little girl behind the glass began to scream.

I looked down at the clipboard in my hands. A line of typed text blurred, then sharpened.

SUBJECT ZERO: ELEANOR WHITMORE.

TRANSFER SOURCE: DR. ELEANOR WHITMORE.

My own signature sat at the bottom of the page.

I dropped the clipboard.

“No,” I whispered.

The memory changed.

I was strapped to a chair, my wrists secured by leather restraints. Arthur stood in front of me, speaking to someone I couldn’t see.

“She remembers everything,” he said. “If she leaves this room, the entire project is finished.”

Nathaniel stood beside him, looking as though he might be sick.

“What do you want me to do?”

Arthur glanced at me.

“Separate her from the truth.”

A needle entered my arm.

I screamed.

And then I saw her.

The woman in the white coat stood on the other side of the glass, watching me with tears in her eyes.

She was not watching a stranger.

She was watching herself.

The memory shattered.

I staggered backwards, gasping, and crashed into Adrian. He caught me before I hit the floor.

The woman had tears on her cheeks now.

“I told them not to do it,” she whispered.

I shoved Adrian away.

“You were there.”

“Yes.”

“You watched them erase me.”

“I watched them destroy what was left of you.”

“Then why are you standing here alive?”

Her expression hardened again, but the pain remained beneath it.

“Because someone had to remember.”

A sharp metallic sound rang through the room.

The alarm stopped.

Every screen went black.

Then a new message appeared on the control panel.

MEMORY RESTORATION COMPLETE.

SUBJECT ZERO: STABLE.

SUBJECT ONE: STABLE.

A third line appeared beneath the others.

SUBJECT TWO: AWAKE.

Nathaniel went completely still.

Arthur’s face lost its colour.

Even the woman looked frightened.

I stared at the screen.

“Who is Subject Two?”

Nobody answered.

From somewhere beneath the floor came the sound of a heavy door opening.

Then footsteps.

Slow. Unhurried. Coming up the stairs.

Adrian raised his gun towards the doorway.

Nathaniel backed away from the control panel.

Arthur whispered something I couldn’t understand.

The woman grabbed my wrist.

“Whatever happens,” she said, “do not let him touch you.”

“Who?”

Her eyes fixed on the open doorway.

“The one who remembers being born.”

A shadow fell across the threshold.

A man stepped into the room.

He was dressed in a dark suit, his hair silver at the temples, his face hidden for a moment by the light behind him. He looked neither surprised nor confused to find us waiting.

He looked disappointed.

As if we had all arrived late to an appointment he had made years ago.

Then he lifted his eyes to mine.

I knew that face.

Not from a photograph. Not from a dream.

From the deepest, darkest place inside my mind, where something had been locked away so carefully that even death had not managed to release it.

He smiled.

“Hello, Eleanor.”

The woman beside me began to tremble.

Adrian’s gun slipped a fraction.

And my father, who had faced death without blinking, took one step backwards.

The man in the doorway looked at all of us before settling his gaze on me.

“You’ve been asking the wrong question,” he said gently. “You keep asking who you are.”

He reached into his jacket and removed a photograph.

He held it out.

It showed five children standing in front of a white building. Mara was there, along with the others. Beside them stood a young girl with my face.

But it was the person standing behind the children who made my blood run cold.

A boy.

Perhaps twelve years old.

His features were unmistakable.

He had the silver eyes of the woman beside me, the scar beneath my eyebrow, and the same expression I had seen in the mirror every morning of my life.

He was me.

Only he was a boy.

On the back of the photograph, someone had written a single sentence in black ink.

SUBJECT TWO WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO HAVE A BODY.

I looked up.

The man was still smiling.

“You should be asking,” he whispered, “which one of us was born first.”

Then he turned towards the woman wearing my face.

“Doctor Whitmore,” he said. “Tell her what you did to your brother.”

The woman made a strangled sound.

And for the first time since I had met her, she looked at me not like a scientist examining an experiment, not like a stranger watching her reflection.

She looked at me like a murderer standing before the only witness who had survived.