Chapter 6 - The Other Elise
For a second, my brain refused to process the screen.
The woman beside Noah was not similar to me.
She was me.
Same dark hair.
Same narrow chin.
Same small scar near the left eyebrow from a bicycle accident when I was nine.
She poured milk into Noah’s bowl.
He looked up at her and smiled.
“Mommy?” he said.
My body went cold from the center outward.
I moved toward the television until Mara caught my arm.
“Noah!”
The woman on-screen turned toward the camera.
She smiled directly at me.
“Hello, Elise.”
Caleb sat down hard on the edge of the bed.
He looked worse than I felt.
“You knew,” I said.
“No.”
“You knew this could happen.”
“I knew the program. I did not know they had a live duplicate.”
Mara kept her weapon pointed toward the hall.
“Deepfake?” she asked.
Caleb shook his head.
“No. Too many angles. Too much latency consistency.”
The silver-haired woman’s voice returned through the speakers.
“Very good, Caleb.”
Mara shouted, “Identify yourself.”
“You know me as Dr. Helen Voss.”
Mara’s face tightened.
I remembered the name from the news years ago—a biometric researcher who vanished after a congressional inquiry into illegal government surveillance contracts.
“She’s supposed to be dead,” Mara said.
Voss laughed softly.
“That has been useful.”
The screen split.
On one side, Noah ate cereal.
On the other, a close-up showed the duplicate woman.
She touched the scar near her eyebrow.
“My favorite detail,” she said. “Your father insisted on it.”
I stopped breathing.
“My father is dead.”
“Yes.”
The response was too simple.
Caleb looked at me.
Mara whispered, “Elise, don’t engage.”
I ignored her.
“What did my father have to do with this?”
Voss answered through the speakers.
“Ask your sister why his Air Force pension records show two different service numbers.”
I turned to Mara.
She did not look at me.
“Mara.”
“This is manipulation.”
“Look at me.”
She finally did.
I knew immediately.
“You knew.”
“I knew there were irregularities.”
“How long?”
“Since Dad died.”
My hand began to shake.
“Ten years?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
Caleb muttered, “That phrase always works.”
Mara swung toward him.
“Shut up.”
The television changed again.
Now it showed a scanned photograph of our father at a workbench.
The brass clock sat beside him.
Behind him, taped to a cabinet, was a printed sheet marked PROJECT 12-08.
I remembered taking that photograph.
I had been sixteen.
I had never noticed the paper.
The ticking in my head stopped.
Complete silence.
Then I understood.
The rhythm was not random.
One tick, then two.
One-two.
Zero-eight.
12:08.
A code disguised as an irritating mechanical flaw.
The clock had been signaling the project name for years.
“Dad built the transmitter,” I said.
Voss replied, “Part of it.”
“What am I?”
No one answered.
I screamed, “What am I?”
The duplicate Elise on-screen flinched.
Noah looked at her.
“Mommy, why is the TV lady yelling?”
My knees weakened.
The duplicate reached over and muted something offscreen.
Then she leaned closer to the camera.
“You are the original,” she said.
Relief hit me so sharply it almost hurt.
Then she added, “I think.”
The screen went black.
A loud metallic bang came from downstairs.
Mara checked the hallway.
“They’re opening the lower door.”
Caleb stood.
“There’s a service tunnel.”
“You told me this was a lake house,” I said.
“It was a Meridian transfer site before I bought it.”
“You bought it?”
His expression tightened.
“I was ordered to reactivate it.”
“And you brought me here for anniversaries.”
“I was trying to make it something else.”
The words were almost pathetic.
Mara said, “Tunnel. Now.”
Caleb led us to the linen closet.
Behind the shelves was a keypad.
He entered 1208.
Nothing happened.
He tried again.
Red light.
Voss’s voice whispered from a speaker above us.
“Passwords change.”
Then the guest-room door slammed shut behind us.
Gas hissed from the ceiling vent.
Mara coughed.
Caleb tore a towel from the closet and shoved it over my mouth.
My vision blurred.
The last thing I saw before collapsing was Mara taking the memory card from my pajama pocket.
May you like
Not to save it.
To hide it from me.
