😱 **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 old reservoir sat two miles from town, fenced off behind a sign claiming the annex had closed in 2009.

Clara noticed fresh tire marks in the mud. Marcus noticed the new cameras. Ortiz noticed the unmarked trucks hidden behind the pumping station.

“Nothing about this place is closed,” she said.

They went in through a drainage passage June remembered from a facility map. Rainwater ran around their ankles. Above them, men argued about a security sweep. A name floated through the concrete: Jonah Voss.

Clara knew him. Voss sponsored the estate's charity galas and called her Evelyn's miracle girl. When she was sixteen, he'd given her a watch engraved with the words THE FUTURE IS OURS.

She had worn it for years.

At the end of the passage they found a small room with a hospital bed, a cup of cold tea, and a window painted black. A woman lay under a blanket, awake but barely moving. Her hair was silver at the temples. Her face was older than Clara's, yet the resemblance was unmistakable.

Marcus stopped breathing.

“Elena?”

The woman's eyes filled instantly. “Marc?”

He crossed the room and knelt beside her. For twenty-two years he'd carried a photograph in his wallet. Now he touched his sister's hand as if she might disappear.

Clara stayed near the doorway. She didn't know whether to call this stranger family or evidence.

Elena noticed her. Her smile broke into something too complicated for one expression.

“They let you grow up,” she whispered.

Clara's throat tightened. “What am I?”

“A person. That's the first thing you need to know.”

Footsteps thundered overhead. Ortiz took position at the hall.

Elena grasped Clara's wrist, her fingers surprisingly strong. “The blue medicine isn't medicine. It makes your body answer the machine. If Voss brings you near the core, he'll turn you into his signature.”

“His signature on what?”

“Forty thousand lives.”