Chapter 67 - The Mother's Shears
I stepped forward and pressed my bandaged left wrist against the terminal’s glass scanning plate.
A sharp, microscopic needle clicked through the glass, puncturing the skin right over the golden filament.
A pulse of violet light flared beneath my flesh, mirrored by the screen. The machine groaned, an internal drive spinning up with a high-pitched whine that cut through the silence of the tower.
The screen flickered. The amber prompt vanished, replaced by a video recording.
The date stamp in the lower corner was from twelve years ago—the morning of my wedding.
Elena Sterling sat in the high-backed velvet chair of the bridal suite, her silver hair perfectly coiffed, her silk mother-of-the-groom gown pristine. But her hands were shaking. In her lap lay the heavy gold shears.
*"If you are watching this, Clara,"* Elena’s voice came from the terminal’s small speakers, stripped of all the sneering cruelty, all the aristocratic venom she had worn like armor for thirty years, *"then Arthur has initiated Phase Three, and I am almost certainly dead."*
Nicholas stepped up beside me, his breath catching in his throat. "Mother..."
*"You spent your wedding day hating me,"* the recorded Elena continued, looking directly into the camera lens with eyes that were hollow, haunted by horrors I was only beginning to comprehend. *"You hated me when I took the shears and severed your braid. You thought I was showing you your place. You thought I was reminding you that a girl from an orphanage, a girl with no pedigree, would never be an equal in the House of Sterling."*
She let out a dry, bitter laugh that ended in a cough.
*"You poor, brave child. You never were an orphan. You were the prototype. Arthur and Miriam took thirty of my eggs, fertilized them with Vance DNA, and genetically altered the neural crests to create living, biological storage drives. You were designed to carry the master encryption keys to the Sterling global holdings—keys no government could subpoena, keys no rival could hack, because they were woven into the very myelin of your brain."*
Elena picked up the shears on the screen, her knuckles whitening.
*"Arthur arranged your marriage to Nicholas not because he approved of your love, but because he needed you brought inside the perimeter where the primary node could be tethered to you. The braid at the base of your skull was the physical port. If I had let you walk down that aisle with that braid intact, Arthur’s automated servers would have uploaded the override sequence during the vows. You would have ceased to be Clara. You would have become his machine."*
Tears blurred my vision as I watched the woman who had made my life a living hell weep on the screen.
*"I couldn't destroy the project without Arthur killing us both,"* Elena whispered. *"So I did the only thing a monster like me could do. I played the part. I humiliated you. I cut the tether out with those shears while the room watched, pretending it was mother-in-law malice. I stole the transmitter node and hid it in the salt vaults of Calumet."*
May you like
She leaned forward, her face filling the frame.
*"Arthur thinks the braid was the only link. He is wrong. Clara... you are not just the key. You are the kill-switch."*
