Chapter 3 - The Woman in the Trees
"Don't shoot," I said.
"Then don't move," my double answered. Her voice was mine with a rougher edge, as if she'd spent years shouting into the wind.
She tossed Marcus's pistol across the floor, well out of anyone's reach.
"He's alive. I took the gun because he kept pointing it at people."
"Who are you?"
"Iris. Your sister."
I laughed once. It came out ugly. "I had a sister. They told me she died in the fire."
"They told me the same thing about you. Four months ago I found out they lied."
She wore a black jacket patched at the elbow. A thin white scar crossed her chin. Our faces matched, but the life behind them didn't.
After the fire, Iris had been raised outside Salem by a woman who called herself her aunt. At twenty-eight, she'd found a letter admitting she'd been placed there after the White Pine fire. Her trail led to Marcus, who had worked security for the facility before becoming the town's undertaker.
"He's the one who sent you that birth record," she said. "He wanted you scared enough to come looking."
"Why would he pull a gun?"
"Because somebody used my face to enter his cabin yesterday. He didn't know which of us was standing in the rain."
My father moved closer. "Iris?"
She stepped away from him.
"Don't. I know about the coffin. I know you helped build this place. Start with the truth."
He stared at us, trying to fit grown women around the memory of two little girls.
"I raised two daughters," he said. "You and Clara. Helena told me neither girl survived the evacuation."
"I didn't," she replied. "Your partner made sure you never knew."
A steel shutter dropped over the entrance. Iris ran to the keypad, punched in a code, and swore when it turned red.
Across the lab, the monitor labeled THIRD PULSE began climbing. A tiny locator dot moved beneath us, deeper underground.
Iris pressed her ear to the maintenance hatch.
Three deliberate knocks came back.
May you like
Then a woman's voice whispered through the vent.
"Please tell Clara I haven't forgotten what they made me do."
