Chapter 33 #2
She looks at Hallow, who was still convulsing in my arms, and then she looks at me. She raises a hand, waving a slow, mocking goodbye.
“Mother didn’t just keep a prototype,” Hallow choked out, her voice returning as the seizure receded into a dull ache. “She… she made a replacement.”
The tether tightened, and the ledge we were standing on began to crumble into the sea.
The world doesn’t just tilt; it shatters.
I’m holding Hallow—the real Hallow, the one who bled on me, the one whose screams I can still feel vibrating in my own teeth—and I’m staring at her ghost. The girl on the boat is a mirror image polished to a lethal shine.
Her white lace dress isn’t stained with the soot of Oakhaven.
Her skin isn’t mapped in the bruises of a thousand auctions.
She looks like the version of my sister that never had to learn how to hold a knife.
“What is that?” I roar, my voice breaking over the sound of the churning water. “Ryker, what the fuck is that?!”
Ryker doesn’t answer. He’s frozen, his hand still hovering over the thermite charge. His eyes are fixed on the girl in white, and for the first time in my life, I see Ryker look small. He looks like a boy watching his childhood nightmare step out of the closet and smile at him.
The winch on the cutter groans, a deep, mechanical hunger. The magnetic tether is buried deep in the concrete beneath my boots, and the ledge is beginning to fracture. Fissures spider-web out from the pylon, spitting dust and gravel into the black harbour.
“It’s the Genetic Reset,” Hallow whispers against my chest. Her voice is tiny, a dying spark.
She isn’t looking at the boat anymore; she’s looking at me, her eyes filled with a devastating clarity.
“She told me… in the humming. She said the old models have too much ‘noise.’ Too much memory. She needed a clean slate.”
The girl on the boat tilts her head. It’s a bird-like, inquisitive gesture—one I’ve seen Hallow do a million times when she’s trying to understand a complex thought. But there’s no soul in it. It’s a simulation.
The replacement raises a hand, pointing a slender finger directly at me.
“Asset Jex,” a new voice broadcasts from the cutter.
It isn’t Mother. It’s the girl. Her voice is an exact replica of Hallow’s, but stripped of the trauma, stripped of the humanity.
It’s a bell ringing in a vacuum. “Release the prototype. Your service record is being reviewed. Mother is willing to negotiate for the brothers.”
“Negotiate this!” I scream, reaching for my sidearm.
Before I can clear the holster, the pylon gives way.
The sound is like a lightning strike—a deafening, wet crack as the concrete ledge sheers off the sea wall. One second I’m standing on solid ground, and the next, the world is falling.
I don’t let go of Hallow. I wrap my arms around her, tucking her head into the hollow of my neck, and we hit the water like a brick.
The cold is absolute. It’s a physical blow that knocks the air out of my lungs, a liquid darkness that tries to shove its way into my throat.
The harbour is a graveyard of oil, salt, and the burning debris of the city.
I kick upward, my lungs screaming, my eyes burning as I fight the weight of my tactical gear and Hallow’s sodden coat.
We break the surface, gasping, choking on the black spray.
The cutters are closing in. The spotlights sweep the water, turning the harbour into a strobe-lit slaughterhouse. Ten yards away, I see Ryker’s head bobbing in the swells. He’s still clutching the leather folder to his chest, his face a mask of primal, focused rage.
“Jex! Toward the pylon!” Ryker coughs, his voice nearly drowned out by the roar of the cutter’s engines.
But the lead boat—the one with the ghost—is moving faster. It’s cutting through the water with a predatory grace, the hull throwing up a wake that threatens to pull us under.
The girl in white is standing at the very edge of the prow now. She’s looking down at us, the fire from the docks reflecting in her eyes. She doesn’t look like she wants to save us. She looks like she’s watching a science experiment reach its inevitable, bloody conclusion.
“The signal,” Hallow gasps, her hands clawing at my shoulders as we drift in the freezing current. “Jex… it’s changing. It’s not tracking me anymore.”
“Then what is it doing?” I ask, trying to keep our heads above the chop.
“It’s… it’s a command,” she sobs, her body beginning to go rigid in my arms again. “She’s telling me to stop swimming. She’s telling me to let go.”
I tighten my grip, my fingers digging into her skin. “Don’t you dare. You hear me? Don’t you fucking dare let go.”
A shadow looms over us. The hull of the lead cutter is a black cliff, the steel rivets dripping with harbour filth. A rope ladder drops, hitting the water just feet away.
But it’s not for all of us.
A team of guards in white tactical suits appears at the rail, their rifles levelled at Ryker and me.
“The brothers are redundant,” the girl’s voice echoes over the water. “Retrieve the prototype. Sink the rest.”
The first shot hits the water inches from my head, a hiss of steam and lead. I look at Ryker, then at the ghost on the deck, and I realise the truth. We didn’t escape Oakhaven. We just moved from the nursery to the incinerator.