Chapter 27 - SOFIA WAS TOLD SHE HAD A TEENAGE DAUGHTER—BUT ONE DATE ON THE DNA REPORT PROVED SOMEONE HAD CREATED HER BEFORE SOFIA WAS EVEN AN ADULT
“No.”
Sofia said the word once.
Quietly.
Then again.
“No.”
Rachel remained beside the metal box with the DNA report trembling between her fingers.
Lily sat motionless in her wheelchair.
Daniel stared at Sofia.
Isabella covered her mouth.
Luis looked as though somebody had struck him.
Margaret whispered:
“Sofia…”
Sofia turned sharply.
“Don't.”
Margaret stopped.
Sofia took the report from Rachel.
Her eyes moved across the page.
MATERNAL GENETIC SOURCE: SOFIA ISABEL RAMIREZ.
PATERNAL GENETIC SOURCE: CLASSIFIED.
TRANSFER HOST: HELENA GRAY-HALE.
LIVE BIRTH: CONFIRMED.
Sofia looked at Lily.
The girl was crying silently.
Sofia forced herself to breathe.
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“When is your birthday?”
Lily answered.
Sofia calculated automatically.
Then stopped.
“That would mean the embryo was created when I was nine.”
Rachel nodded.
Daniel’s expression changed.
“So Sofia didn't conceive her.”
“No.”
Sofia looked at the report again.
“They used my genetic material.”
Rachel nodded.
“Yes.”
“What genetic material does a nine-year-old girl have that could create an embryo?”
Nobody answered.
Sofia looked toward the Eden records.
Then Adrian’s old research.
Meridian.
Gene repair.
Reproductive tissue.
Project Eden.
Generation Three.
Her stomach turned.
“No.”
Daniel understood.
“They harvested cells.”
Rachel whispered:
“Yes.”
Sofia stared.
“From where?”
“I don't know.”
Luis did.
She saw it immediately.
His face had changed.
Sofia turned.
“Dad.”
Luis closed his eyes.
“Don't make me ask.”
He looked at her.
“When you were nine, you had appendicitis.”
Sofia remembered.
A hospital.
White lights.
Isabella sleeping in a chair beside her bed.
Luis bringing her a stuffed yellow bear.
“What about it?”
“The surgeon took tissue samples.”
Sofia’s blood went cold.
“For my appendix?”
Luis shook his head.
“That's what we were told.”
Isabella stared at him.
“You knew?”
“No.”
“Luis.”
“I knew something was wrong afterward.”
Sofia stepped closer.
“What?”
“A doctor came to our house.”
“Who?”
Luis looked toward Rachel.
“Helena.”
Margaret gasped.
Sofia frowned.
“Your sister?”
Margaret whispered:
“I didn't know her then.”
Luis continued.
“She used the name Dr. Helen Gray.”
Rachel nodded.
“That was one of her identities.”
Sofia felt sick.
“She came to our house after my surgery?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She said the hospital had mislabeled one of your pathology samples.”
“And?”
“I believed her.”
Sofia laughed bitterly.
“Of course.”
Luis accepted it.
“She asked us to sign a release.”
Isabella’s face drained.
“I signed it.”
Sofia turned.
Isabella began crying.
“I thought it was routine.”
Sofia looked back at Lily.
The teenager had lowered her head.
This was not her fault.
That thought cut through everything.
Whatever had been done to Sofia, Lily had not chosen it.
Sofia crouched beside her.
“Look at me.”
Lily hesitated.
Then did.
“You didn't do this.”
Lily cried harder.
“I know.”
“No.”
Sofia gently touched the wheelchair armrest rather than the girl herself.
“I need you to hear me. You didn't do this.”
Lily nodded.
Sofia looked toward Rachel.
“Independent DNA test.”
“Absolutely.”
“Today.”
“Yes.”
“No Eden laboratory.”
“Agreed.”
“No Hawthorne laboratory.”
Daniel nodded.
“I'll arrange three independent facilities.”
Sofia looked at him.
“Three?”
“After this family?”
“Make it four.”
For the first time, Lily almost smiled.
That tiny reaction hurt Sofia more than the report.
Hours later, samples were collected.
Sofia.
Lily.
Rachel.
Margaret.
Isabella.
Daniel insisted on being tested too.
Sofia stared.
“Why?”
“Because apparently every time we don't test somebody, three chapters later they're related to us.”
Even Marcus laughed.
Barely.
The tension loosened for one second.
Then returned.
While waiting for expedited preliminary results, they listened to Helena’s tapes.
The first tape labeled SOL — AGE 4 contained nothing sinister.
A playground.
A child laughing.
Sofia’s own tiny voice arguing that the sun followed their car home.
Isabella began crying.
“I remember that.”
Sofia did too.
Helena had been nearby.
Watching.
Recording.
The next tape was age seven.
Then nine.
The hospital.
A male voice.
“We have enough tissue.”
Sofia froze.
Another voice answered.
“Arthur wants the ovarian precursor cells.”
Daniel looked at Marcus.
“Can you identify them?”
Marcus isolated the audio.
The second voice matched Arthur Bell.
The first did not.
Then Helena spoke.
“No.”
Arthur answered:
“You don't have authority.”
“She is a child.”
“She is M-19.”
“She has a name.”
“So did every subject.”
Helena’s voice became colder.
“If you touch her again, I expose everything.”
The recording ended.
Sofia stared.
Rachel whispered:
“Helena protected you.”
“After they already took something.”
“Yes.”
Sofia looked toward Lily.
“Then how did they create her?”
Rachel inserted another tape.
HELENA — PRIVATE — 17 YEARS AGO.
Helena’s older voice filled the blue room.
“If anyone hears this, I failed.”
Margaret closed her eyes.
Her sister.
Alive in sound.
Helena continued.
“Arthur preserved Sofia Ramirez’s cells after the appendectomy. He claims they can be reverted.”
Daniel frowned.
“Reverted?”
Marcus whispered:
“Induced pluripotent cells.”
Sofia looked at him.
“In English.”
“Adult cells reprogrammed into a stem-cell-like state.”
“And from there?”
Marcus hesitated.
“In experimental theory, potentially reproductive cells.”
Sofia felt nauseated.
Helena continued.
“Arthur believes Sofia represents the behavioral resistance Eden could never manufacture.”
Sofia stared.
Again.
Always the same obsession.
Not her blood.
Not her wealth.
Her refusal to obey.
Helena’s voice cracked.
“He wants to create a child carrying Sofia’s genetic profile but raised entirely inside Eden.”
Lily began shaking.
Rachel put a hand on her shoulder.
Sofia’s anger sharpened into something clean.
“They created Lily as an experiment.”
Rachel nodded.
“Yes.”
“Why did Helena carry her?”
The tape answered.
“I volunteered for implantation because it was the only way to get the embryo out of Arthur’s laboratory.”
Margaret covered her mouth.
Helena had not been participating.
She had been stealing Lily.
Saving her.
The recording continued.
“I told Arthur the first transfer failed.”
Rachel whispered:
“It didn't.”
Helena had disappeared.
Changed identities.
Carried the pregnancy in secret.
At her age, it nearly killed her.
Rachel helped.
Lily was born.
Helena survived the delivery—but her health never fully recovered.
Sofia looked at Rachel.
“Why didn't she bring Lily to me?”
Rachel’s eyes filled.
“Because you were ten.”
Sofia stopped.
Of course.
Helena had been protecting a child from the knowledge that another child had been created from her stolen cells.
“She waited.”
Rachel nodded.
“She wanted you to become an adult.”
“But I became an adult years ago.”
“Yes.”
“Then why?”
“Because Eden found us.”
Lily whispered:
“We moved seventeen times.”
Sofia looked at her.
“Seventeen?”
“Rachel said hotels were adventures.”
Rachel smiled sadly.
“They weren't.”
Lily continued.
“Sometimes I had different names.”
“How many?”
“Six.”
Sofia felt anger burn behind her ribs.
A child raised running from adults who considered her data.
“What happened to Helena?”
Rachel looked at Margaret.
“She was captured nineteen years ago.”
Sofia frowned.
“Lily is sixteen.”
“She escaped.”
“For three years?”
Rachel shook her head.
“Helena was captured before Lily was created.”
Sofia stopped.
“Then who carried Lily?”
Rachel looked toward the photograph.
“That's where the story changes.”
She took the DNA report back.
“The woman who called herself Helena during the pregnancy was not Margaret's sister.”
Margaret stared.
“What?”
Rachel whispered:
“Your sister died nineteen years ago.”
Silence.
Sofia’s pulse pounded.
“Then who took her identity?”
Rachel looked toward the teenage girl.
“The woman who carried Lily.”
“Who was she?”
Rachel shook her head.
“I never knew.”
“You spent years with her.”
“Yes.”
“And never knew her real name?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because she had undergone memory conditioning.”
Emily stiffened.
“Blackwood?”
Rachel nodded.
“She remembered fragments. Helena. Sofia. Eden. The Garden.”
Sofia stared.
“So we don't know Lily's gestational mother.”
“No.”
Daniel looked at the report.
“But genetically, Sofia is still listed.”
“Yes.”
The phones rang almost simultaneously.
Four laboratories.
Daniel answered one.
Marcus another.
Sofia watched their faces.
Daniel lowered his phone.
“Maternal relationship confirmed.”
Sofia’s chest tightened.
“How strong?”
“Consistent with biological parent-child relationship.”
Lily began crying.
Sofia looked at her.
Not daughter in the ordinary sense.
But genetically?
Yes.
Something stolen from Sofia had become this girl.
A living person.
Not an experiment.
A person.
Sofia approached.
Lily whispered:
“You don't have to be my mother.”
The sentence nearly broke her.
Sofia crouched.
“I don't know what I am to you yet.”
Lily nodded.
“Okay.”
“But you don't have to earn a place here.”
The girl stared.
Sofia continued.
“You don't have to be useful. You don't have to explain your DNA. You don't have to become what Eden designed.”
Lily’s lower lip trembled.
“What if I don't know who I am?”
Sofia smiled sadly.
“Then you're definitely in the right house.”
Lily laughed through tears.
Then Daniel’s phone rang again.
He answered.
His expression changed.
“What?”
Everyone looked at him.
Daniel stared at Sofia.
“Fourth lab.”
“And?”
“The paternal match produced a familial hit.”
Sofia stood.
“To whom?”
Daniel said nothing.
“Daniel.”
His face had gone pale.
“The sample matched someone already in the database.”
Lily whispered:
“My father?”
Daniel nodded.
Sofia’s heart hammered.
“Who?”
Daniel looked across the room.
Not at Luis.
Not Elias.
Not Marcus.
At himself.
Sofia stopped breathing.
Daniel whispered:
“Me.”
Nobody moved.
Sofia stared.
“That isn't possible.”
Daniel held up the report.
“The lab says Lily’s paternal DNA is mine.”
Lily stared at him.
Daniel stared back.
And somewhere inside the wall behind them, a machine that had been silent for decades suddenly clicked on.
A printer began feeding out one page.
Marcus pulled it free.
At the top were four words:
EDEN GENERATION THREE SUCCESS.
Below:
MATERNAL SOURCE: SOFIA RAMIREZ.
PATERNAL SOURCE: DANIEL HAWTHORNE.
And beneath that:
SECOND EMBRYO STATUS: STILL VIABLE.
Sofia stared.
“Second embryo?”
The machine printed one final line.
May you like
CURRENT STORAGE LOCATION: HAWTHORNE VILLA.
TO BE CONTINUED…
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