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CHAPTER TWENTY: MY STEPMOTHER'S PRICE
تاريخ النشر:
2026-10-29 01:44:43
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You Chose Her I Chose Revenge CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: THE WOMAN WITH MY FACE
I couldn't move.The woman standing outside the shelter glass carried my face. My eyes. My nose. Even the faint, jagged scar beneath my lower lip—a mark I had earned falling off a wooden fence when I was seven years old.It was as if someone had reached into a mirror, ripped my reflection out, and given it a breathing, walking body of its own.Only she looked older. Not by decades, perhaps five or six years, but enough to stretch the familiar lines of my own visage into something hardened by years of surviving in the dark."Mommy?"Lily's small, trembling voice pulled me back from the edge of panic.I turned, dropping to my knees and gripping her shoulders. "Listen to me, sweetheart. I want you to stay behind this desk. Do not open the door for anyone unless you hear my voice. Do you understand?"She nodded frantically, fear wide in her dark eyes. "Are you going to fight her?"I swallowed hard. "I don't know yet."I kissed her forehead, stood up, and ripped my radio off my belt. "Mill
You Chose Her I Chose Revenge CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: THE CHILD IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
"Because that person is not Anna."My mother's warning lingered in the cold room like smoke, slowly settling over the hum of the dying fluorescent lights.I stared at the black display screen, waiting for her voice to cut through the static again. Nothing. Only the low, mechanical whine of an overheating server rack.Miller stepped up beside me, thumbing off the safety of his shotgun. "Clara, the secondary blast doors are starting to cycle. We have to move out now."I barely heard him.My gaze remained locked on the worn photograph in my hand. Two little girls standing in the sunlight. One carried my dark hair and my posture. The other carried Anna's soft, guarded smile.Subject Two.If the second silver tracking bracelet belonged to me, then why had Daniel handed it over as if it were a dead girl's heirloom? And who was the woman currently walking through my settlement wearing the matching set?"Jonah," I said, my voice dead calm."Yeah?""Pull the raw audio logs off that
You Chose Her I Chose Revenge CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
I stared at the security photograph on the tablet screen.The woman was wearing a standard medical scrub uniform, her face obscured behind a sterile white mask. Her body was turned slightly toward the lens, but the tarnished silver chain resting against her left wrist was unmistakable—the exact heirloom Daniel claimed had been buried inside Anna's primary vault twenty years ago.I turned slowly to face Daniel. "Who is she?"Daniel shook his head frantically, his face pale under the fluorescent lights. "I don't know.""You expect me to believe that?""I'm telling you the truth, Clara!" he rasped, his voice cracking with desperation. "That bracelet was an internal tracking serial—an Asterion identification key! They used it to distinguish the original baseline subjects from their reconstructed digital profiles!"Jonah stepped into the light of the medical bay doorway, his scanner clutched tightly in his hand. "That doesn't add up. The original hardware keys were destroyed when th
You Chose Her I Chose Revenge CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: THE TRUTH HE CARRIED
The silver bracelet sat on my bedside table like an accusation.I had stared at its tiny engraved initials—A.W.—for nearly an hour while the settlement slept. Seven words on a scrap of paper had upended everything I thought I knew about my childhood.Your mother did not give birth to one girl.I remembered my mother's hands brushing my hair when I was little. I remembered her voice humming lullabies when nightmares woke me. I had grown up believing I was her only child, wondering why I never had a sister to share the weight of our quiet, sterile home.Had she lied to me every single day?A sharp knock broke the silence."Come in," I said, not turning from the table.Miller stepped into the room, his jaw set tight. "Daniel is conscious."I picked up the bracelet and slipped it into my tactical pocket. "Did he ask for me?""Repeatedly.""Good. Bring him to the subterranean holding cell."Miller studied my face in the dim light. "Clara, you need to sleep. You're running on fu
You Chose Her I Chose Revenge CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: MY SISTER'S WARNING
For several seconds, nobody spoke.The security monitor went dead, casting a dull gray reflection across our faces.I stared at the black screen, waiting for Anna’s face to reappear, waiting for her to tell me that what I had just seen was some sick, high-tech illusion engineered by Gabriel.Nothing happened. Only the low, rhythmic hum of the command center’s ventilation system."Did everyone see that?" I asked, my voice barely carrying over the quiet room.Miller nodded, his shotgun still held at a low-ready, his eyes fixed on the empty screen. Beside him, Jonah looked as though he had just seen his own grave dug."That was Anna Whitmore," Jonah whispered, his voice trembling.I spun on him. "You recognize her?""Not personally. But I’ve pulled her files from the Asterion legacy vaults," Jonah said, wiping a thin sheen of sweat from his forehead. "She was listed as a deceased subject. Died during the initial neural sync trials twenty years ago.""Then explain to me how a gi
You Chose Her I Chose Revenge CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: THE DOOR BENEATH MY FEET
The three knocks came again.Slow.Deliberate.Almost patient.I stood completely still, my sidearm trained on the floorboards beneath my desk.Jonah had stopped breathing beside me, his knuckles white around his frequency scanner. "Clara," he whispered, his voice barely audible over the hum of the emergency lanterns. "We need to clear the room."I snatched the radio off my belt without taking my eyes off the metal hatch. "Miller, seal every entrance to the command building. Nobody comes in or goes out without my personal sign-off.""Already done," Miller’s voice crackled back instantly. "Security teams are setting a perimeter around the block. What's happening in there?""Keep everyone away from the western shelter," I commanded, my jaw tight. "Lily stays under heavy guard. Do not move her.""Understood."I dropped the radio back into its holster. Another knock echoed from below—metal scraping against metal.Jonah stepped carefully toward the corner of my office, hauling
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