Chapter 60

The forgotten sister.

The rain poured mercilessly, drenching the manor’s rooftop as I stood near the edge, arms crossed, eyes locked on the city below. The moon was cloaked in clouds, just like my heart. Heavy, veiled, and waiting to burst.

Damian approached silently from behind. He didn’t speak, didn’t ask questions, just stood beside me. Matching my gaze over Edenfall’s shadowed skyline.

“She’s not just my shadow,” I whispered quietly. “She’s my sister.”

Damian didn’t flinch. Maybe he’d suspected it for weeks. Maybe longer. The way Eva moved, mimicked, and anticipated me. It wasn’t just programming. It was something deeper.

“Project Eve didn’t just clone you,” he said. “They replicated a shared origin. The files were incomplete, but your DNA strands are siblings. Same maternal origin, slightly diverged paternal coding.

“So…half-sisters.”

He nodded.

I gave a hollow laugh. “And still, she hates me more than anyone else.”

“Because you got everything she was denied. A name. A choice. A life.”

I turned to him, my voice went low and bitter. “Do you know what haunts me more than she’s trying to kill me?”

He looked at me.

“That if I had been born second…I might be like her.”

The basement manor was converted into a war room. Old Edenfall blueprints littered the long mahogany table. Surveillance footage played silently on the wall.

Rourke leaned against the far pillar, chewing a toothpick with tension radiating off him like heat. “We can’t let her destabilize the South district again. That chemical leak wasn’t just an accident.”

“It wasn’t just chaos,” Damian said, reviewing the digital data pad. “She wanted our attention diverted while she accessed the black archives under the East wall.”

“She’s haunting for her origin,” I said quietly. “And mine.”

Rourke frowned. “What’s even in the black archives?”

“Experiments that never made it past the prototype phase,” Damian answered. “Things the syndicate buried.”

“And you know this how?” Rourke challenged.

Damian met his eyes. “Because I helped bury them.”

I slammed my palm against the table. “Then dig them up. If we want to stop her, I need to know what she knows. I need to know what she thinks she is.”

Silence fell.

Then Rourke muttered, “This is a devil’s war, alright.”

That night, I descended into the catacombs of Edenfall. Damian walked beside me, armed but tensed.

The black archives were hidden behind biometric scans and two dead access codes. Codes Damian had once sworn never to use again.

We passed the rusted gates and blood-stained corridors where failed subjects once screamed.

My breath caught as we reached the core.

Inside, sealed in stasis glass, was a room filled with shattered lives.

Damian led me to the far wall. There, beneath dust and decay, was a small case. Inside it, two vials. Labeled.

EVE_001-A. EVE_001-B.

I stared at them.

“You were A,” Damian said softly. “The first successful embryo. Eva was B, resurrected after her embryo failed. They tried again with adjusted sequencing, enhanced aggression traits. Less mercy. Less obedience.”

My fingers brushed the glass.

“She didn’t just grow in my shadows,” I whispered. “She was made to replace me if I failed.”

“She was made as a backup,” Damian said. “But you were never the failure.”

A chime echoed through the chamber. An alert.

Someone had triggered the manor’s outer defense net.

I snapped. “She’s here.”

Gunfire broke the night.

Eva had come in through the storm drenched in red, leading a faction of rogue syndicate defectors. She didn’t sneak in. She marched, like it was already her house.

I raced upstairs as Damian barked orders into his comm.

Rourke met her halfway. “She breached the east wing, took down two guards already.”

My heart thundered.

Not out of fear. Out of knowing. This wasn’t a war. This was reckoning.

We found Eva in the glass greenhouse on the manor’s eastern side where my mother used to grow black lilies.

She stood barefoot among shattered pots and fallen vines, moonlight slicing through the broken glass around her.

Her dress was white. Blood spotted the hem.

In her hand, a photo of our mother. I stepped inside.

Eva didn’t look up.

“I used to dream of her face,” She whispered. “But I only ever saw shadows. Not until I broke into the lab. Not until I saw the files. Not until I knew she loved you.”

I took a step forward.

“She didn’t choose who they stole.”

She looked up, and for the first time, I saw the girl inside the killer.

“She would’ve chosen you,” she said quietly. “You’re softer. Quieter. You had her eyes.”

“And you have her fire,” I whispered.

A long pause.

Then her face twisted, a snarl replacing sorrow.

“But I’m the one who survived in the dark!”

She launched forward with a blade. And I drew mine in a blink.

Steel met steel.

The sound of sisters clashing, not childhood rivalry but in a war of nature vs nature.

She screamed. “You were loved. I was trained.”

Our knives spun, sliced, and parried.

“You were built to replace me,” I growled. “But I became something even the syndicate feared. Not because of their design, but because of my will.”

Eva landed a kick to my ribs.

I retaliated with a punch across the jaw. Blood painted the floor like a family crest.

Damian and Rourke arrived just as Eva dropped to one knee, panting, and her blade shaking.

I stepped forward, my own blade raised. But my hand faltered.

“Do it,” Eva hissed. “Finish what you started.”

I lowered the weapon, “No.”

Eva’s lips curled. “Coward.”

“No,” I repeated. “I’m not what they made me. I choose who I am. And I won’t kill my sister.”

Her eyes stared at me, breathing raggedly. Then something flickered in her eyes, and she laughed.

A horrible broken sound.

“You’re not sparing me out of love,” she whispered. “You’re sparing me because if you kill me…you become me.”

Damian approached, his gun raised.

Eva turned to him. “What about you, devil? Are you willing to kill your own creation?”

His hand trembled.

And then, he said something no one expected.

He lowered the gun.

“No more devils,” he said softly. “Not tonight.”

Eva was locked in the underground containment cell, alive, but silent.

I sat outside the glass wall, watching her.

Neither of us spoke for a long time. Then, Eva whispered.

“Did she name you?”

I blinked. “Who?”

“Our mother.”

I hesitated. “Gabriel named me Claire. I never knew what she would’ve named me.”

Her eyes welled up.

“She would’ve named me hope.” Tears slid down our faces.

For everything that was lost. For everything we would never be.

That night, I lay beside Damian, my head on his chest.

“You didn’t kill her,” he whispered.

“I almost did.” “But you didn’t.”

I looked up at him. “Do you still love me?” I asked.

Damian met my gaze with the solemn intensity of a man who had burned whole cities for less.

“I love you more now than ever.”

“Even after everything?”

“Especially after everything.” I smiled, weary and raw.

“Then I’m ready,” I said softly.

“For what?”

“To end this war.”