Chapter 45: Stranger at the Gate

The snow was thick underfoot as we trudged toward the east side of the estate. The wind had picked up again, whistling through the trees like it carried secrets. The woman from the monitor was about twenty yards from the outer perimeter, still standing, though barely. Her coat was torn, one sleeve soaked with blood, and she was leaning heavily on a stick she’d probably yanked from a dead tree.

Aidan was beside me, tense but silent. Elena followed, crossbow at the ready. Ethan trailed behind with a thermal scanner that he was way too excited about using. Rhea came too, not because we asked her, but because she insisted.

“She’s connected to me,” Rhea had said before we left. “I don’t know how I know that, but I do.”

That was enough for me.

As we approached the gate, the woman lifted her head. Her eyes locked onto us—not scanning, not wary. Just tired. The kind of tired you carry in your bones, not your muscles.

I stopped a few feet from the gate. “Who are you?”

The woman swayed a little but didn’t fall. “Roxanne Devlin?”

My heart stuttered. “Yes.”

She exhaled a breath she’d probably been holding since she crossed into the forest. “Good. Then I made it.”

“Made it from where?” Aidan asked sharply. “And who are you?”

She looked past all of us. Her eyes landed on Rhea.

And that’s when her expression finally changed.

She smiled.

Or tried to. Her lips trembled more than curled. “I was afraid I’d missed you,” she whispered.

Rhea stepped forward slowly, hands unclenched at her sides. “Who are you?” she asked.

The woman blinked hard, trying to stay upright. “My name is Mara.”

“Mara,” Rhea repeated under her breath, like the name stirred something familiar, something painful.

“I knew your mother,” Mara said quietly.

Echo’s sharp intake of breath made everyone freeze.

Even Rhea swayed a little.

“My… mother?” Rhea echoed.

“Yes.” Mara nodded, but the movement made her stagger. She reached out and caught the edge of a tree to keep from falling. “Your mother was one of the first. Gregory didn’t just create you from scratch. He built you using pieces… pieces of people. Your mother was one of them. She didn’t want this. She tried to stop it.”

Aidan looked to me, his voice low. “Is she telling the truth?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, watching Rhea’s face closely. “But we’re about to find out.”

I gestured to Elena to lower the gate.

She hesitated, but after a long glance from me, she did it.

\---

We carried Mara inside—she could barely walk by then—and brought her to the infirmary. Ethan and Echo checked her wounds while Elena monitored the hallway like she expected a sudden ambush. Aidan stood nearby, arms folded, jaw tight.

I sat beside Rhea while she watched Mara’s breathing settle.

“She knew my mother,” Rhea whispered.

“Seems like it.”

“I didn’t think I had a mother,” she said, voice smaller than I’d ever heard it.

“You did,” I said softly. “We all did. Whether we remember them or not.”

She turned to me. “What was yours like?”

I smiled a little, my chest aching. “Fierce. She had this laugh that could fill a room. And she always knew when I was lying—even before I did.”

Rhea went quiet again. “I hope mine was like that.”

I reached for her hand and squeezed it gently. “If she fought against Gregory, I bet she was.”

\---

Mara woke up after an hour, her head bandaged and her color looking slightly better thanks to whatever cocktail Ethan had injected into her IV.

She blinked at the ceiling, then turned her head. “Did I make it back to hell?”

“You made it to New Orleans,” I said from the chair beside her. “Close, but not quite hell.”

She let out a rasp of a laugh. “Well. That’s a relief.”

I leaned forward. “Tell me about Rhea’s mother.”

Mara licked her dry lips. “Her name was Anika. She wasn’t a scientist. She was a nurse. She worked in the early days of the program—before Gregory took full control. She didn’t know what they were really doing until it was too late. But when she found out…”

“She fought back,” Echo whispered from across the room.

“Yes.” Mara nodded. “But she paid the price. They used her DNA without permission. She was forced to watch the experiments. The hybrids. The failed ones. And then… they used her body, her mind, everything she had.”

Rhea stood frozen near the doorway. She didn’t speak, didn’t move, but I could see it in her eyes—how hard she was fighting to stay composed.

“She tried to protect you,” Mara said, looking directly at her. “But Gregory… he took you away before she had the chance.”

“Is she alive?” Rhea asked, voice trembling.

Mara’s silence was the answer.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “She died trying to stop him. But she never stopped loving you. Not even at the end.”

Rhea turned and left the room without a word.

I stood up to go after her, but Aidan caught my arm. “Give her a minute.”

“I don’t know if I can afford to,” I said, staring at the empty doorway.

“She needs to feel this. Let her. Then go.”

\---

I found her later, out by the greenhouse.

She was sitting in the snow, legs stretched out, staring at the sky like she expected it to answer her.

“Can I sit?” I asked gently.

She nodded.

The snow crunched beneath me as I sat beside her. We didn’t talk for a while.

Then she said, “I don’t know how to grieve someone I never met.”

I nodded slowly. “That doesn’t make the pain less real.”

“I keep thinking about her. What she was like. What she sounded like. What she would’ve told me if she’d had the chance.”

“She would’ve told you she loved you,” I said. “That’s the one thing I’m sure of.”

Rhea sniffed and wiped at her eyes, her voice hoarse. “I didn’t think I could feel this much.”

“Feeling is what makes you human.”

She turned to me. “Then maybe I want to be human.”

I smiled. “Then we’ll teach you how.”

\---

Later that night, back in the common room, the fire crackled as Ethan passed out mugs of something hot and possibly questionably spiced.

Elena raised her drink. “To new truths. And old memories.”

Ethan raised his. “To knives finally being sorted correctly.”

“Don’t push it,” Elena muttered.

Rhea lifted her mug too. “To Anika.”

We all echoed her quietly. “To Anika.”

And in the softest corner of the room, where shadows met firelight, something shifted in her expression. Not grief. Not pain.

Peace.

For the first time, she looked like she belonged.