Chapter 153 The Silver Shattering
The most dangerous lie is the one that looks exactly like the truth.
The faceless man stood still. His silver face reflected the cave, the snow, and my own terrified expression. I looked down at the weight in my arms. My heart stopped.
The warm, golden-furred baby was gone. In its place, I held a cold, heavy doll made of white porcelain. Its amber eyes were painted glass. Its tiny hands were frozen in a permanent reach.
"No," I whispered. I dropped the doll. It hit the stone floor with a sharp clack. Its head rolled away. "Where is he? Where is my son?"
"The data has been collected, Cassia," the Mirror-man said. His voice came from everywhere and nowhere. "The maternal instinct was the final variable. You played your part beautifully."
"Evan?" I thought, screaming it into the back of my mind. "Evan, help me!"
Silence. The warm hum of his presence was gone. The link was a dead wire.
I looked around the "Silent Valley." The white trees began to flicker. The shimmering blue grass turned into grey grid lines. The giant moon in the sky began to bleed static. The edges of the world were peeling away like old wallpaper.
"It's not real," I growled. I felt the wolf rising, but it felt thin. Fake. "None of it was real. The mountains, the sister, the ritual..."
"Oh, the sister was real enough," the man said. "A previous model. But the valley? This is the Observation Deck. We are currently three stories beneath the Great Oak."
I lunged at him. I didn't care if he was a ghost or a machine. I wanted to tear that silver face off.
My claws hit the mirror. But instead of breaking skin, my hands went right through him. He was a hologram. My body tumbled through the light and hit a cold, hard wall.
The wall wasn't stone. It was damp brick.
I smelled it then. The smell of 1924. Coal smoke. Wet earth. Rotting wood.
I sat up, gasping. I wasn't in a valley. I wasn't in a high-tech lab. I was in a cellar. A single lightbulb hung from a frayed wire, casting long, shaky shadows.
"Cassia?"
The voice was real. It wasn't in my head. It was across the room.
I turned. A man was strapped to a wooden chair. He was covered in bruises. His clothes were the same ones he wore when we were at the house, but they were torn and stained with real blood. He looked thin, exhausted, and very, very human.
"Evan?" I scrambled toward him.
"Don't touch the floor, Cass!" he yelled.
I stopped. I looked down. The floor was covered in a thin layer of salt and silver dust. It was a circle. A trap.
"They had us under, Cass," Evan said, his voice cracking. "They used the gas. The violet gas from the well. We’ve been in that cellar for three days."
"Three days?" I looked at my stomach. It was flat. There was no baby. There was no fever. "But the birth... the mountains... I felt him, Evan. I felt our son."
Evan looked at the floor, a tear tracking through the dirt on his face. "They were feeding us the same dream. To see if we would bond. To see if the 'Hybrid' would survive in our minds before they tried it in our blood."
"So he's not... he's not real?" I felt a hole opening in my chest.
"The Board is upstairs, Cassia," Evan whispered. "I can hear them. Your father is talking to the Council. They are ready to start the real procedure. They have the needles ready."
I looked at the silver dust on the floor. I looked at the man I loved, tied to a chair in a dark basement in 1924. The high-tech mirrors and digital ghosts were gone, replaced by the terrifying simplicity of a needle and a cold heart.
"They think they broke the link," I said. I stood up, ignoring the sting of the salt on my bare feet.
"Cassia, the silver! It’ll kill the change!"
"Let it," I said.
I closed my eyes. I didn't look for the digital signal. I didn't look for the Board's code. I looked for the music. The real music. The way Evan’s heart sounded when he was scared. The way his breath hitched when he kissed me.
Deep in the silence of my own blood, I heard a tiny, faint beat.
Thump-thump.
It wasn't a digital ghost. It wasn't a simulation.
"Evan," I whispered. "The dream wasn't just a dream. They used the gas to hide the truth, but they couldn't stop the biology."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm pregnant, Evan. For real. And they don't know."
The cellar door at the top of the stairs creaked open. A heavy pair of boots began to descend. Thump. Thump. Thump.
"Hide it, Cassia," Evan hissed. "If they find out the child is already there, they won't wait for the procedure. They'll take him now."
I moved back into the shadows, pulling an old burlap sack over my shoulders. I felt the silver dust burning my skin, trying to suppress the wolf.
My father stepped into the light. He wasn't wearing a lab coat. He was wearing a heavy wool coat and holding a silver violin case.
"The simulation was a success," Henry Marlowe said, looking at Evan. "The bond is locked. Now, we just need to harvest the marrow."
He looked into the shadows toward me. "Come out, Cassia. Don't make me use the whistle. It’s much louder in person."
I stepped into the light. I looked him in the eye. I didn't see a father. I saw a man who had been dead inside for a thousand years.
"Where is my sister?" I asked.
Henry paused. A flicker of something like surprise crossed his face. "So, you kept that bit of data? Interesting. She’s upstairs. She’s the one who’s going to hold the needle."
The "Neighbor" stepped into the cellar. She looked like Mrs. Higgins, but her eyes were cold and focused. She held a long, silver syringe.
"Hello, Cassia," she said. "Ready to become a masterpiece?"
I looked at the needle. I looked at Evan. I felt the tiny life inside me pulse with a sudden, sharp heat.
If I fight them now, the silver in the air will kill the baby. If I don't, they’ll turn us both into machines.
"Wait," I said, my voice steady. "I have a better idea."
I reached into my pocket. My fingers closed around the one thing I had managed to pull out of the "dream."
The silver locket.
How did a physical object from a simulation end up in the real world, and what will happen when I open it in front of the man who built the lie?