The rain turned into a freezing drizzle, coating the windshield in a thin layer of ice. But the cold outside was nothing compared to the frost growing in my soul. I stared at the little girl standing in the middle of the road. She couldn't have been more than ten years old. She looked like a memory of a childhood I never actually had.
But her eyes—those glowing, purple voids—belonged to a monster.
"Mommy is waiting," the girl repeated. Her voice didn't come from her mouth. It vibrated inside my skull, sharp and cold.
Behind her, more figures emerged from the tree line. They were all girls. Some were toddlers, barely able to walk. Others were teenagers, looking exactly like I did when I first met David. They all wore the same blue dress. They all had the same empty, glowing stare.
"David..." I whispered, my voice failing me. "What are they?"
David's face was ashen. He looked like he wanted to scream but had forgotten how. "They are the prototypes, Zoya. The ones who came before you. My mother didn't just stop at one experiment. She was building a legacy."
The scarred man behind the wheel didn't hesitate. He slammed the car into reverse. The tires screeched against the wet asphalt, but as we swung around, we saw more of them. The "Sisters" had blocked the road behind us too. We were trapped in a circle of glowing purple eyes.
"Step out of the car, Zoya," the voices echoed in unison. The sound was deafening, like a thousand glass bells shattering at once.
"Don't listen to them!" David shouted, grabbing my hand. His touch was the only thing keeping me grounded. "If you go with them, she will erase you. She will use your stabilized DNA to fix all of them, and the real Zoya will be gone forever."
The little girl with the teddy bear stepped closer to the car. She raised her small hand, and a wave of purple energy slammed into the vehicle. The metal groaned. The windows spider-webbed, ready to shatter.
"I have to do something," I said, feeling the dark power inside me wake up again. It felt angry. It wanted to fight.
"No! Your body can't handle another blast so soon!" David pleaded.
I didn't listen. I couldn't let these children—these twisted versions of myself—hurt the only people I cared about. I kicked the car door open and stepped out into the rain. The wind whipped my hair across my face.
The circle of girls stopped. They watched me with a strange, collective curiosity.
"You are the perfect one," the little girl said, her voice softer now. "The one who lived. Why do you stay with the humans? They only want to own you."
"I am not a project!" I screamed. I raised my arms, and the dark purple smoke began to leak from my fingertips. "And I am not your sister!"
I pushed my hands forward, releasing a shockwave of energy. It wasn't a focused beam this time; it was a wall of force. The prototypes were thrown backward like autumn leaves. Some of the smaller ones vanished into smoke instantly, proving they weren't even fully physical yet.
But the older ones—the teenagers—held their ground. They raised their hands together, creating a combined shield that absorbed my attack.
"She is fighting us," the teenagers whispered. "Mommy says she needs to be disciplined."
Suddenly, four of them lunged at me with inhuman speed. I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder as one of them grazed me. Their touch felt like liquid nitrogen, freezing my blood. I fought back, using the dark energy to blast them away, but for every one I knocked down, two more took her place.
"Zoya, get back in!" David yelled, leaning out of the car.
I felt a cold hand wrap around my ankle. I looked down and saw a five-year-old version of myself grinning up at me. Her grip was like a vice. Before I could react, she pulled me down into the mud.
The teenagers swarmed over me. I felt their cold fingers on my throat, my arms, my chest. They weren't trying to kill me; they were trying to drain me. I could feel the power inside me being pulled out, flowing into them like a river.
"Stop it!" I choked out.
Through the chaos, I saw David jump out of the car. He didn't have powers. He didn't have a weapon. He only had his love for a girl who wasn't even human. He tackled one of the prototypes, throwing her off me.
"Leave her alone!" he roared.
The little girl with the teddy bear turned her gaze toward David. A cruel smile touched her lips. "The architect is broken. He loves his own creation. How pathetic."
She raised her hand, and a bolt of purple lightning shot toward David's chest.
"NO!" I screamed.
Time seemed to slow down. I saw the lightning arching through the rain. I saw David's eyes widen as he realized he couldn't move out of the way.
In that split second, the revelation from the car came back to me. He wasn't my brother. He was my uncle—the man who loved my mother and spent twenty years trying to bring her back through me. The ethics didn't matter anymore. The bloodlines didn't matter. He was the only person who had ever looked at me and seen a soul instead of a masterpiece.
I didn't think. I acted.
I threw myself in front of David. The lightning hit me square in the chest.
Pain unlike anything I had ever felt exploded through my body. It wasn't just physical; it felt like my very atoms were being torn apart and reassembled. I felt the screams of the prototypes, the memories of the fire, and the cold calculations of David's mother all crashing together in my brain.
But instead of dying, I absorbed it.
The "Sisters" began to scream. The energy they had drained from me started flowing back, but it was different now. It was darker. More violent.
I stood up, my body wreathed in black and purple flames. I looked at the little girl.
"Tell your mother," I said, my voice echoing like thunder. "That the masterpiece is done taking orders."
I let out a pulse of energy so powerful it cleared the clouds in the sky for a brief moment. The prototypes didn't just fall; they evaporated into thin air. The road was suddenly empty. The only sound was the rain hitting the asphalt and David's ragged breathing.
I turned to look at him. He was staring at me in awe and terror.
"Zoya?" he whispered.
I tried to answer, but my legs gave out. I collapsed into the mud. David caught me before I hit the ground. He held me close, his tears hot against my cold skin.
"You're okay," he kept saying. "You're okay. We're going to get you out of here."
"The Red Room..." I managed to mutter. "We have to go back to the city. The files... the real Eleanor... she's still there."
"I know," David said, his voice firm. "We're going to finish this."
The driver helped us back into the car. The vehicle was a wreck, but the engine was still running. We sped away from the site of the ambush, heading toward the heart of London.
As I lay my head on David's lap, I looked at his hands. They were covered in cuts and bruises from fighting the prototypes for me. I realized then that the bond between us was something no laboratory could ever create. It was messy, it was forbidden, and it was the only thing worth dying for.
But as I closed my eyes, a final image appeared in my mind. It was a vision of the Red Room. I saw a large glass tank, much bigger than the ones in the manor. And inside it wasn't a girl.
It was a woman. She looked exactly like I did, but she was breathing. Her eyes were closed, but her hand was pressed against the glass.
And on her wrist, there was a bracelet. A bracelet I recognized from my own childhood memories.
My mother wasn't dead. The prototypes weren't clones of Eleanor. They were clones of me. And I wasn't the first Zoya. I was the last one.
I felt a cold shiver run down my spine. If my mother was still alive, then who was the woman in the cottage? And why was Arthur so desperate to hide her?
The car entered the city limits. The neon lights of London blurred together like a watercolor painting. We were heading into the mouth of the beast, and I knew that not all of us would make it out alive.
"David," I whispered, clutching his hand.
"I'm here," he said.
"If we don't survive tonight... I want you to know one thing."
"What is it?"
I looked into his eyes, the man who was my creator, my uncle, and my captor.
"I hope you were the one who killed me the first time," Isaid.
David's face went pale. He didn't answer. He just looked away as the car stopped in front of a hidden industrial elevator.
We had arrived. The Red Room was waiting. And so was the truth that would finally break me.
[To be continued in Chapter 13...]