😱 **THE GROUND SPLIT OPEN BENEATH A MASSIVE OAK TREE—AND I FELL INTO A SECRET UNDERGROUND LAB FILLED WITH FROZEN GIRLS WHO LOOKED EXACTLY LIKE ME! THEN A MYSTERIOUS WOMAN WHISPERED, “YOU'VE ALWAYS BEEN OUR MOST RESILIENT COPY.” BUT WHEN I DISCOVERED WHY THEY'D BEEN MONITORING MY BLOOD FOR 22 YEARS, THE TRUTH WAS MORE TERRIFYING THAN I COULD EVER IMAGINE!** 🧬💔

The first thing Clara saw when the ground split open was her own face floating in a glass coffin.

Then the oak tree came down.

“MOVE!” Marcus Reed grabbed her jacket and hauled her away as a root as thick as a telephone pole tore through the dirt. Red emergency lights flashed across Blackthorn Estate. Somewhere below their feet, machinery started screaming.

Clara hit the ground hard. Her pistol slid from her hand. Above the collapsing hole, Evelyn Harrow stood with a combat knife in one fist and blood on her collar. She had raised Clara since childhood. Tonight she had drawn a blade on her.

“Who am I?” Clara shouted. “Tell me what you did to me!”

Evelyn's expression cracked. “Clara, don't take the blue vial.”

Too late. The small cylinder was already against Clara's throat. Victoria Shaw, the scientist who had shoved it into her hand, had sworn it would stop the poison spreading through her veins. Clara pressed the trigger.

Something sweet and metallic filled her mouth. Blue light raced under her skin.

Victoria screamed from beside the ruined staircase. “That wasn't the antidote! Evelyn, what did you give her?”

A voice rose from somewhere beneath the oak.

“REMOTE OVERRIDE ACCEPTED.”

The earth vanished.

Clara fell through broken roots and landed on a grated platform twenty feet below. The impact drove the breath out of her. Overhead, blast doors slammed together, cutting off Marcus's shout and the cold night sky.

Rows of glass cylinders flickered awake. Women floated inside them. One was a child. Another was a teenager. A third looked exactly the way Clara looked in the mirror that morning.

Each had her dark hair, her sharp cheekbones, and a pale crescent scar beneath the left eye.

A speaker clicked.

“PRIMARY DONOR VERIFIED. SUBJECT CLARA-SEVEN HAS RETURNED.”

Clara crawled toward the nearest cylinder. The girl inside opened her eyes.

She pressed one small palm to the glass and mouthed four words.