Chapter 8 - THE DAUGHTER I COULD NOT REMEMBER
The rescue commander redirected the nearest team toward the girl.
Thermal drones followed her through the forest.
She ran barefoot across the snow.
Her hospital gown tore against branches.
The guards behind her carried tranquilizer rifles.
One raised his weapon.
An agent fired first.
The guard fell.
The second surrendered.
The girl reached the river and stepped onto the ice.
“Stop her,” Margaret whispered from the lodge.
“She does not know the ice is thin.”
Agents shouted through loudspeakers.
The girl kept running.
Perhaps she believed every adult voice meant danger.
The ice cracked beneath her.
She stopped.
A dark line spread around her bare feet.
An agent crawled toward her on his stomach.
She backed away.
“Don’t touch me!”
“My name is Leah,” the agent said. “I’m here to help.”
“They all say that.”
“I will not come closer.”
The girl looked toward the forest.
More agents approached.
She panicked.
The ice broke.
She fell into the black water.
I screamed at the screen.
The agent reached the opening and grabbed her wrist.
Another officer secured a rope.
They pulled her onto the ice.
She coughed but remained conscious.
A medical team wrapped her in thermal blankets.
When the camera moved closer, I saw her face.
Dark hair.
Gray eyes.
A small birthmark near her right temple.
The same mark visible in photographs of me at fourteen.
My daughter.
A child my body remembered only through a blank space.
They called her Celeste.
Northstar raised her inside various facilities.
Her file described unusual resistance to sedation and memory conditioning.
She had escaped five times.
Each time, she was returned.
Vivian visited her secretly until Charles moved her to the river laboratory.
“Does she know who I am?” I asked.
Eleanor answered through the facility speaker.
“She knows what Vivian told her.”
“What did Vivian tell her?”
“That you abandoned her.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course.
Another child taught that I chose someone else.
Another wound constructed deliberately.
Agents entered the laboratory and arrested Eleanor.
She carried the silver locket, passports, and access keys.
The infants were rescued.
Gabriel was stable.
The other babies were identified through records connected to missing-child cases.
No one died during the operation.
But Northstar’s greatest weapon had never been death.
It was the survival of people inside false stories.
Celeste was transported to a hospital.
I was advised not to visit immediately.
She had endured years of coercion and might perceive me as part of the organization.
I respected the advice for four hours.
Then the therapist allowed me to stand outside her room.
She sat on the bed wrapped in blankets.
Her feet were bandaged.
A guard stood near the window.
Celeste saw me through the door.
Her expression changed from curiosity to rage.
“You.”
I did not enter.
“My name is Claire.”
“I know.”
“I was told you may be my daughter.”
“You know I am.”
“I believe the records.”
“You don’t remember me.”
“No.”
She laughed bitterly.
“Vivian said the drugs damaged your memory.”
“I didn’t know there were drugs.”
“You never looked for me.”
“I didn’t know I had lost you.”
“That is convenient.”
The same accusation Rose had carried.
Noah.
Every stolen child was taught that ignorance meant abandonment.
“May I come inside?”
“No.”
“All right.”
I remained outside.
She turned away.
I waited.
After several minutes, she asked, “Why are you still there?”
“Because you told me not to enter. You did not tell me to leave.”
“I’m telling you now.”
I nodded.
“I will return tomorrow.”
“Don’t.”
“I will ask first.”
She threw a paper cup at the door.
I left.
The rejection hurt.
But she was allowed to reject me.
Northstar had denied her every choice.
I would not make reunion another command.
Vivian was brought from the Connecticut hospital under federal protection.
When she saw Margaret, neither woman spoke for a long time.
Margaret sat upright in bed.
Vivian entered using a walker.
“You erased me,” Margaret said.
“I tried.”
Nathan stood behind the observation window.
His face twisted with pain.
Vivian nodded.
“My father told me the medication would spare you grief.”
“You believed him?”
“I wanted to.”
“You held my baby while I screamed.”
“I remember.”
“You told me he was dead.”
Vivian began crying.
“Yes.”
Margaret’s voice sharpened.
“Then you spent forty years trying to feel like a good person because you eventually regretted it.”
“I have never felt good.”
“That is not justice.”
“No.”
“Why did you help Claire’s daughter escape?”
“Because I could not save Nathan when he was yours.”
Margaret looked toward the glass.
Nathan lowered his head.
“You could have told him,” she said.
“Charles threatened Celeste.”
“There was always another threat.”
“Yes.”
Vivian did not defend herself.
Margaret asked for time alone.
Later, Nathan visited her.
I did not hear their conversation.
When he emerged, he looked decades older.
“She does not forgive me for helping Northstar.”
“She doesn’t know you.”
“She knows enough.”
He sat beside me in the hospital corridor.
“I thought my parents were harsh because responsibility required it.”
“They were cruel because cruelty benefited them.”
“I became like them.”
“Yes.”
He looked at me.
“You don’t soften anything.”
“I spent ten years softening reality for you.”
“What happens to us?”
“There is no us.”
His face tightened.
“Claire.”
“You excluded Lily from Christmas to protect a ceremony that would transfer our property to a child you helped hide.”
“I was trying to prevent my father from taking Lily’s marrow.”
“By keeping her away.”
“You could have told me.”
“He said he would kill Noah.”
“You could have come to me.”
“I didn’t know whether you would believe me.”
“You never gave me the chance.”
He stared at his hands.
“Brooke was not at the party as my partner.”
“You held her for a photograph.”
“My father ordered it.”
“And you obeyed.”
“She knew the ceremony.”
“You still chose to humiliate Lily.”
“I thought if you were angry, you would stay home.”
The explanation almost sounded protective.
Then I remembered Lily asking what she had done wrong.
“You used our daughter’s pain as a security strategy.”
His eyes filled with tears.
“I didn’t know how else to keep her away.”
“You could have told the truth.”
“I was afraid.”
“So was everyone you betrayed.”
A federal prosecutor approached.
She carried evidence recovered from the river laboratory.
One file contained Celeste’s complete medical history.
Another contained the Eve Protocol records.
A third proved Vivian’s confession.
But the prosecutor’s expression suggested something else.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Mrs. Reed, Celeste’s birth record lists a biological father.”
I had no memory of a pregnancy, much less a relationship.
“Who?”
She handed me the report.
The name was Nathan Reed.
I stared at her.
“That is impossible. I met Nathan ten years ago. Celeste is fourteen.”
“The sample used to create the embryo was collected from Nathan when he was twenty.”
Northstar had genetically paired us years before our first meeting.
Our marriage had not created the program.
It was the program’s second attempt to reunite two people whose first child already existed.
Nathan read the report beside me.
His face went white.
“Celeste is mine?”
“Yes.”
Before either of us could process it, the prosecutor turned the final page.
Northstar’s records included a psychological recommendation written by Charles.
SUBJECTS C. VALE AND N. REED SHOULD BE INTRODUCED NATURALLY AFTER MEMORY SUPPRESSION.
MARRIAGE PROBABILITY HIGH.
May you like
Our love story had been designed in a laboratory.
And the daughter who hated me was the first result of an experiment that eventually produced Lily.
