Chapter 19 - The Ghost of Eleanor Vance
The revelation hung in the damp air like a funeral shroud.
"How?" I whispered, pulling up a chair opposite Julian.
"I went to Eleanor’s funeral with Lily seven years ago."
"I saw the casket lowered into the ground."
"You saw an empty box, Adrian," Julian replied, leaning his head back against the aluminum wall.
"Eleanor faked her death to escape federal oversight when the illegal cloning trials were initiated."
"She orchestrated everything from behind the scenes while Lily ran public relations and corporate administration."
"Lily was supposed to inherit the entire empire."
"Until Lily developed a conscience."
Julian pulled a worn silver thumb drive from his tactical belt.
"This was embedded inside the flower back at the cemetery," he said, handing it to me.
"There was a second partition I didn't open in front of the house."
I took the thumb drive, walked over to the trailer’s ruggedized field terminal, and inserted it.
A new video file appeared on the monitor.
This time, it wasn't Lily.
It was an older woman with silver hair styled in an immaculate chignon, sitting in an opulent leather armchair.
Her piercing blue eyes stared directly into the lens.
She possessed the exact cheekbones and cold gaze that Lily had shown in the previous recording.
Eleanor Vance.
"Good evening, Adrian," the woman spoke, her voice smooth like aged whiskey and twice as deadly.
"If you are watching this, my retrieval team has unfortunately failed to secure Emma without incident."
"I apologize for the mess at your home."
"Sentimentality is such a messy byproduct of human nature."
"My daughter Lily died because she forgot that blood belongs to destiny, not emotion."
"She tried to raise a miracle as an ordinary suburban child."
"A tragic waste of proprietary science."
Eleanor leaned closer to the camera, her smile sending ice through my veins.
"Emma’s cellular degeneration will begin on her sixth birthday, Adrian."
"That is forty-eight hours from now."
"The telomere stabilizers she requires exist only in my laboratory in Boston."
May you like
"Bring her to me, or watch her dissolve into cellular failure before your very eyes."
"The choice, as always, is yours, Subject One."
