Chapter 9 - What the Machines Were For
"You said they were for treatment," Clara told Jonas.
"That was the idea."
"Stop telling me about ideas. Tell me what happened."
Jonas pulled a stool beside Mara's bed. "Elena's cells repaired themselves in a way we couldn't explain. We wanted to build a treatment for a rare degenerative condition, not make copies of people. Victoria saw a product no one else could manufacture."
"So she made these women," Mara said.
"She forced the research forward. Artificial growth, long-term suspension, neural monitoring. Things Elena refused to approve."
Clara glanced through the glass at the rows of silent faces. "Are they alive?"
"Some. Others never developed beyond the stage their bodies reached. We don't have the right to call any of them inventory."
"You already did," Mara said.
Jonas accepted that without arguing.
Evelyn spread the old maintenance plan across a table. The medical room's air would last until Victoria's purge valve opened. But a separate donor ward had independent backup power.
"This corridor leads behind the cold-storage wall," she said. "The estate records call it an equipment space. I watched guards carry meals through it for years."
"Meals?" Clara said. "For someone inside?"
Evelyn nodded.
"A patient who sometimes woke up. A woman."
Mara's voice shook. "Victoria said our mother died after giving birth."
"She said your father died too," Clara reminded her.
They followed the wall to an old intercom panel beneath cylinder E-13. The young-looking woman pressed her palm against the glass when Clara approached.
"Can you understand me?" Clara asked.
A light blinked: YES.
"Is my mother alive?"
A second blink.
Then letters appeared across the tiny panel, typed from inside the cylinder one painful key at a time.
May you like
SHE IS BEHIND THE WALL.
SHE HAS BEEN WAITING FOR YOU.
