😱 **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!** 🧬💔

Clara staggered to her feet as locks snapped open up and down the chamber.

The youngest girl stayed asleep. An older one slid forward into the arms of a mechanical cradle, coughing fluid and gasping. She looked seventeen, maybe eighteen. Her hands flew to her throat.

“Easy,” Clara said, catching her before she fell. “Breathe. Look at me.”

The girl blinked at Clara's face and started crying.

“You're Seven.”

“I'm Clara.”

“That's what they called you outside.” The girl wiped her mouth with a shaking sleeve. “They called me June.”

A monitor brightened above them. Evelyn appeared, framed by the wrecked garden. Her voice was calm again, which frightened Clara more than the knife.

“You need to stay in that room. The serum connected you to the estate's control network.”

“You told me I had a family.”

“You do.”

“You told me my mother died when I was born.”

Evelyn said nothing.

June grabbed Clara's arm. “Don't listen. She tells everyone that.”

A heavy door rattled. Marcus's voice came through a speaker, distorted by static. “Clara, I'm in the maintenance tunnel. Tell me where you are.”

“Under the oak. There's a laboratory. There are people down here.”

“Stay away from the silver doors,” June warned. “That's where they take us when we stop asking questions.”

Clara looked at the other cylinders. A boy would have been easier to dismiss as a coincidence. Twelve versions of her own face were impossible.

“Are we sisters?” she asked.

June considered that. “Nobody ever let us decide.”

A countdown appeared across the wall: SITE PURGE IN 00:29:59.

Victoria's face replaced Evelyn's on the monitor. She had a split lip and fear in her eyes.

“Clara, listen carefully. The purge will seal the sleeping girls inside. I can open a service passage, but you have to leave the main chamber now.”

“What happens to them?”

Victoria swallowed. “They won't wake up again.”

June pulled back the sleeve of her hospital gown. A red cloth bracelet circled her wrist. Clara recognized the stitching: a crooked yellow star, the same one sewn into the blanket she'd slept under as a child.

“Evelyn gave me that blanket,” Clara whispered.