Chapter 13 - The Man I Remembered Killing
Richard Sterling reached inside his coat.
I raised my gun before he could pull his hand free.
“Don't.”
Everyone froze.
Richard looked at me.
Not at the weapon.
At my face.
And I knew.
He had seen recognition there.
“You remember,” he said.
Sienna stepped between us.
“Dad, take your hand out. Slowly.”
Richard obeyed.
Empty.
“I wasn't reaching for a weapon.”
“Then what?”
He removed his hand again, this time pinching something between two fingers.
A photograph.
Old.
Folded.
He placed it on the floor.
“Pick it up.”
“No.”
“Maeve—”
My finger tightened against the trigger.
“Don't call me that.”
Pain crossed Evelyn's face.
Sienna looked at me.
“You are Clara.”
Was I?
The restoration protocol was still running somewhere inside the system.
Memories collided in my head.
Grandma teaching me piano.
Margaret teaching me how to identify surveillance.
Sienna stealing my clothes.
Charles teaching me how to lie without changing my breathing.
Evelyn kissing my forehead after a nightmare.
A red house.
A laboratory.
A gunshot.
Richard standing over a body.
Some memories belonged to Clara.
Some to Maeve.
And I no longer knew where one woman ended and the other began.
“Pick up the photograph,” Richard repeated.
Gabriel did.
He opened it.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He handed it to me.
The photograph showed Richard and Charles inside the basement from my recovered memory.
Same concrete walls.
Same table.
Same gun.
But there was a third person.
Me.
Fourteen years old.
Holding the weapon.
On the back, someone had written:
JULY 16, 2007.
ONE DAY BEFORE THE SWITCH.
My hand began shaking.
“You said I would know you killed him.”
Richard nodded.
“Because that's what Charles wanted you to believe.”
“Why?”
“To protect you from remembering who actually pulled the trigger.”
I looked at the photograph again.
No.
“Who?”
Richard stared at me.
“You did.”
The room disappeared.
For one second, I was fourteen again.
Concrete.
A single hanging bulb.
Charles kneeling.
Blood already on his shirt.
Richard shouting.
My hands around a gun.
A shot.
I stumbled backward.
Sienna caught me.
“No.”
Richard stepped closer.
“Maeve.”
“Stay away.”
“You didn't murder him.”
“You just said—”
“You shot him.”
“What's the difference?”
“He asked you to.”
Silence.
Even Cross looked confused.
“Why would Charles ask a fourteen-year-old girl to shoot him?”
Richard looked toward the screens.
“Because Crown Mirror was coming.”
I remembered more.
An alarm.
Charles bleeding.
Someone had already stabbed him.
He pressed the gun into my hands.
“Listen to me, Maeve.”
“I can't.”
“You can.”
“I don't want to.”
“If they take me alive, they'll get the archive.”
“I don't know where it is.”
“Exactly.”
Then another voice.
Richard.
“Charles, there has to be another way.”
“There isn't.”
The memory sharpened.
Charles looked at me.
Not like a grandfather.
Not even like a father.
Like a man making an unforgivable decision because he believed every alternative was worse.
“Center mass,” he said.
I started crying.
“I can't.”
“You can.”
“No.”
“You promised me.”
The memory fractured.
Gunshot.
Blood.
Richard grabbing me.
Then darkness.
I returned to the present gasping.
Sienna held my face.
“Clara. Look at me.”
I did.
“You're here.”
“I shot him.”
“You were fourteen.”
“I shot Charles.”
Richard said quietly:
“And he survived.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
“The ammunition was modified.”
Cross understood.
“A staged death.”
Richard nodded.
“Charles needed Crown Mirror to believe he was dead.”
“You let a child believe she killed her own father?”
Eleanor's voice cut through the room.
Richard turned toward his mother.
“I followed Charles's instructions.”
“You could have told her later.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because she asked me not to.”
I stared at him.
“I asked?”
“Afterward.”
“Why?”
“You said guilt was easier to hide than information.”
That sounded like Charles.
It also sounded like me.
Or Maeve.
Perhaps there was less difference between us than I wanted to believe.
Naomi called from the console.
“The restoration is at sixty-three percent.”
“Can you stop it?”
“No.”
“What happens at one hundred?”
She looked toward Shaw.
The doctor didn't answer.
“Shaw.”
“You may recover the remaining suppressed memories.”
“May?”
“Memory isn't a hard drive.”
“Will I lose Clara?”
“I don't know.”
Sienna took my hand.
“Then we leave before it finishes.”
“You heard Naomi. She can't stop it.”
“Get away from the servers.”
“The protocol is neurological, not wireless,” Shaw said.
Sienna turned on her.
“What does that mean?”
“The trigger already happened.”
My stomach tightened.
“So this is happening regardless?”
“Yes.”
Sienna's eyes filled.
“No.”
I squeezed her hand.
“I’m still here.”
“For now.”
That hurt.
The real Paul Renner's voice came through the speakers.
“Touching.”
Gabriel aimed at the ceiling.
“Where are you?”
“Closer.”
“Show yourself.”
“Soon.”
I looked at Richard.
“Where is the real archive?”
His eyes changed.
“You remembered the address.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I was there when Charles encoded it.”
“Then you know it too.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I was drugged afterward.”
Convenient.
But perhaps true.
“Cross?”
He shook his head.
“I never knew.”
“Shaw?”
“No.”
“Eleanor?”
Grandma looked at me.
“Charles refused to tell me.”
One person knew.
Me.
The memory returned.
An address.
1487 Bellweather Road.
I recognized it.
Not because I had been there recently.
Because everyone in the state knew the building.
“The old courthouse.”
Cross stared at me.
“What?”
“Bellweather County Courthouse.”
Renner's voice disappeared from the speakers.
Interesting.
I had surprised him.
Good.
“The courthouse burned down twenty-six years ago,” Cross said.
“Exactly.”
Marcus understood.
“Whatever is underneath it didn't.”
I looked at him.
“There's a federal records bunker beneath the courthouse.”
Cross nodded slowly.
“Built during the Cold War.”
“Still accessible?”
“Officially sealed.”
I laughed.
“Nothing tonight is officially anything.”
Naomi suddenly raised her hand.
“Wait.”
The archive index had changed.
A new entry appeared.
BELLWEATHER NODE.
Cross stared.
“You triggered it.”
“How?”
“The memory restoration.”
A map opened.
Coordinates.
Then:
PRIMARY ARCHIVE STATUS: ACTIVE.
So the real archive existed.
And it was awake.
Mercer hit the reinforced glass.
“Do not go there.”
I looked at him.
“Why?”
“Because that's what Crown Mirror wants.”
“You said you were Crown Mirror.”
“I lied.”
At least he admitted it quickly.
“What are you?”
Mercer's expression changed.
“Containment division.”
“Whose?”
“Charles's.”
Cross laughed.
“You expect us to believe that?”
“No.”
Mercer looked at me.
“I expect Maeve to remember.”
Another memory struck.
Mercer.
Younger.
Standing outside a training room.
Not six months ago.
Years ago.
He handed me a red folder.
“If you ever see me wearing a black ring, don't trust anything I say.”
I looked at his hand.
A black ring.
My pulse accelerated.
Mercer saw me notice.
“Good.”
“You're compromised.”
“Yes.”
“By whom?”
“I don't know.”
“What?”
“I woke up three days ago with forty-eight hours missing.”
He touched the ring.
“I found this on my hand.”
Crown Mirror.
A marker.
Or warning.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“I couldn't be sure the warning was real.”
“And now?”
“Now I remember giving it to you.”
The restoration protocol.
It wasn't only recovering my memories.
My questions were unlocking other people's buried contingencies.
“Then who sent you to attack the house?”
“Cross.”
Cross nodded.
“That part is true.”
“And the second attacker?”
Mercer looked at the floor.
“I think he was Crown Mirror.”
“Name?”
“Agent Thomas Keene.”
I turned.
Keene had been among Cross's six agents.
He wasn't in the room anymore.
“When did he leave?”
Naomi looked around.
Nobody knew.
A screen flashed.
RESTORATION: 79%.
Then my phone rang.
Sienna looked at the display.
Unknown.
I answered.
“Maeve.”
A woman's voice.
Not Margaret.
Not Eleanor.
Not Evelyn.
But familiar.
Painfully familiar.
“Who is this?”
“You don't remember me yet.”
“Try me.”
A soft laugh.
“You always hated being told what to do.”
My head began aching.
A playground.
A girl beside me.
Older.
Maybe seventeen.
She gave me a knife.
Never let them make you someone else.
My knees weakened.
“Who are you?”
“My name now is Victoria Keene.”
Keene.
Thomas.
“Related to Agent Keene?”
“He's my husband.”
“Where is he?”
“Coming for you.”
“Why?”
“To stop you reaching Bellweather.”
“Why?”
“Because Charles lied about what is stored there.”
“What is it?”
“Not identities.”
“What, then?”
“Proof of the first replacement.”
I looked at Cross.
“Who was first?”
Victoria went silent.
Then:
“Nathaniel Cross.”
Everyone heard it.
Cross's face emptied.
“No.”
Victoria continued.
“The man standing with you isn't Anna's brother.”
Cross whispered, “That's impossible.”
“The original Nathaniel Cross died in 1989.”
Three years before Crown Mirror supposedly began.
Shaw backed away from him.
“Nathaniel?”
He looked genuinely horrified.
“I am Nathaniel Cross.”
Victoria laughed softly through the phone.
“That's exactly what they taught you to say.”
Cross grabbed the phone from my hand.
“Who are you?”
“You know me.”
“No.”
“You ordered my parents killed.”
“I did no such thing.”
“Because you don't remember.”
“Stop this.”
“You want proof?”
“Yes!”
A message arrived.
I opened it.
A photograph.
1989.
Nathaniel Cross beside Anna.
Young.
Smiling.
On the back:
NATHANIEL CROSS — DECEASED 11/04/1989.
Replacement authorized.
Subject:
NC-R1.
Cross stared.
“No.”
He looked at Shaw.
She had gone completely still.
“You knew.”
Shaw shook her head.
“You knew!”
“I suspected.”
“How long?”
“Since Anna died.”
Cross staggered backward.
All night he had been the man hunting stolen identities.
Now he was one.
I almost felt sympathy.
Then the facility alarm changed.
Naomi looked at the console.
“Someone accessed Bellweather.”
“Who?”
She opened the feed.
Security camera.
Underground corridor.
A man walking toward a vault.
Thomas Keene.
He carried a case.
Mercer whispered, “Explosives.”
“How long to Bellweather?”
Cross answered automatically.
“Thirty-five minutes by road.”
“Too long.”
Marcus looked at the island map.
“Helicopter.”
Shaw nodded.
“North pad.”
We moved.
Then the memory restoration reached eighty-seven percent.
Pain tore through my head.
I collapsed.
This memory was different.
Bellweather.
I had been there before.
Fourteen years old.
Charles beside me.
He opened the vault.
Inside wasn't paper.
Or servers.
There was a hospital bed.
A man lay unconscious.
Young.
Dark hair.
Machines breathing for him.
I asked Charles:
“Who is he?”
Charles answered:
“The man Crown Mirror couldn't replace.”
“Why?”
“Because he woke up.”
I stepped closer to the bed.
The man's eyes opened.
And I recognized him.
Not from childhood.
From tonight.
The man lying in the Bellweather vault was Daniel Mercer.
I returned to the present.
Mercer stood across the room.
Same face.
Almost unchanged.
I stared at him.
He understood.
“You remembered.”
“You were at Bellweather eighteen years ago.”
Everyone turned toward him.
Mercer said nothing.
“You haven't aged.”
His face hardened.
Sienna whispered, “Clara?”
“The man in my memory was him.”
Cross raised his gun.
“Who are you?”
Mercer slowly removed the black ring.
Then he smiled.
Not Daniel's smile.
Someone else's.
“That's the problem with replacement identities.”
His voice changed slightly.
A different cadence.
Older.
“You eventually forget which face was first.”
I raised my weapon.
“Who are you?”
He looked at me.
“You called me Dad once.”
My heart stopped.
“No.”
Mercer smiled.
“Hello, Maeve.”
And suddenly the most impossible answer of the night stood directly in front of me.
The man wearing Daniel Mercer's face claimed to be Charles Sterling.