Chapter 1 - The Ground Opened
The man who had arranged Clara's father's funeral twenty-two years ago was now pointing a gun at her heart.
"Who are you?" Marcus shouted.
Red emergency lights swept through the pines. Dirt slid from beneath the giant oak, exposing a shaft lined with steel. From somewhere below came a steady mechanical hum, like an enormous machine taking its time to breathe.
Clara was twenty-two, barefoot, and holding a birth record that said she shouldn't exist.
"You know my name," she said.
"I know the name on your blood samples. I don't know whose blood we've actually been collecting."
Behind him, Evelyn drove her elbow into the guard restraining her. She broke free, grabbed the knife he dropped, and cut across Marcus's forearm as he turned. His gun struck the rim of the shaft and vanished into the black.
"Move!" Evelyn screamed.
Quiet shots snapped branches overhead. Clara crawled toward the oak, felt the dirt give way, and looked down at the paper clutched in her fist.
SUBJECT 0B: DUPLICATE STRAIN.
PRIMARY HOST RETAINED.
A flare tore through the dark. Victoria stood beyond the trees, immaculate in a gray coat. Beside her was a young woman with Clara's face, Clara's height, even the little crooked tilt of Clara's mouth.
The stranger pressed a cylinder of glowing blue liquid into her neck. Light crawled beneath her skin.
"Don't let her near the shaft!" Victoria screamed. "She's the key!"
The oak's roots split. Clara plunged through the opening and hit a metal slide hard enough to knock the air from her lungs. She fell into a bright underground chamber as blast doors slammed overhead.
Rows of glass cylinders came alive under the backup lights. Inside floated women who all looked like Elena, the mother Clara had known only from photographs. Some looked younger. Some looked older.
A recorded voice announced, "Primary donor DNA verified."
On the catwalk above, a door opened.
A man stepped out wearing the same brown jacket he wore in the photograph on Clara's nightstand.
He had not aged a day.
"Dad?" Clara whispered.
May you like
He stared at her, horrified.
"Clara," he said. "There were supposed to be two of you."
