Chapter 19 - The Price of Immortality
Finch’s chest rose and fell in rapid, terrified gasps as he stared at the scarred flesh of my right forearm.
"You're dead," he stammered, his eyes darting toward the silent alarm beneath the rim of his desk.
"You were supposed to be locked away in Maine State Hospital."
"Don't look at the alarm button, Finch," Elena said, stepping into the room and severing the wiring harness under the desk with a pair of heavy trauma shears.
"She won't shoot you in the leg."
"She's a trauma surgeon."
"She knows exactly which artery to sever so you bleed out in ninety seconds while remaining fully conscious."
Finch swallowed hard, the sweat beading across his forehead and running down his temples.
"You don't understand what we've done here, Sarah," Finch pleaded, his voice taking on the manic cadence of a zealot.
"We didn't hurt him!"
"We saved him!"
"The head trauma from that car crash would have killed him within twelve hours at St. Jude's!"
"Ethan's reckless driving crushed his skull!"
"We brought him here to save the family line!"
"You saved him so you could use him as a parasite’s host!" I hissed, shoving the barrel deeper into the soft flesh beneath his ear.
"You harvested his bone marrow to keep an old witch alive!"
"Look at the telemetry, Sarah!" Finch shouted, pointing a shaking finger at the bank of glowing monitors.
"His telomeres aren't degrading!"
"The Rh-null blood combined with the induced stem-cell regeneration created an immune profile never seen in modern medicine!"
"He doesn't age like normal humans!"
"He hasn't had an infection, a fever, or a cellular defect in a decade!"
"His biology has kept Evelyn alive through four terminal cancers!"
"Where is he?" I demanded, my patience completely exhausted.
"Room 4-B," Finch whispered, closing his eyes in defeat.
"Through the double airlock at the end of the clean corridor."
"Does he know who he is?" Elena asked, her voice trembling with emotion.
Finch looked down at his hands, unable to meet our eyes.
"He has never seen the sun, Elena."
"He thinks this facility is an orbital research station."
"Evelyn told him the earth was destroyed by an atmospheric pathogen, and that his blood is the only thing keeping the last survivors alive."
"He thinks his pain is saving humanity."
A sound broke from my throat—a quiet, fractured sob of pure maternal agony.
They hadn't just stolen his body; they had stolen his reality.
They had turned his innocent, beautiful soul into a willing sacrifice for a monster's vanity.
I turned the pistol in my hand and struck Finch across the temple with the heavy steel frame.
The doctor crumpled to the floor, unconscious before his head hit the tiles.
Elena dragged his limp body into the supply closet, sealing the heavy latch from the outside.
I stood before the reinforced glass doors of Room 4-B.
Through the observation window, the room was vast, white, and silent.
In the center sat a young man, tall and slender, wearing a plain white linen shirt and trousers.
His dark, wavy hair reached his shoulders, framing a face that was an exact, breathtaking mirror of my own.
He was sitting on a padded bench, staring at a massive, artificial projection of a blue sky projected onto the ceiling.
In his lap lay a small, battered silver music box.
The music box I had given him for his sixth birthday, two weeks before the crash.
May you like
My hand trembled as I pressed my palm against the biometric access panel beside the door.
The door unlocked with a soft, mechanical hiss.
