Chapter 83 - The Parlor of Ghosts
We stepped out of the pod onto thick, cream-colored wool carpet. The temperature was set to precisely seventy degrees—the exact climate of the Lake Forest estate ballroom where my braid had fallen in ribbons across the parquet floor.
Classical strings drifted through concealed acoustic channels, playing the haunting, melancholic strains of Chopin’s Nocturne in C minor.
"This is madness," Nicholas whispered, his weapon raised, sweeping the cavernous expanse. "We're two hundred feet under Lake Michigan, and she built a replica of the reception hall."
"Look closer," I said, a shiver running down my spine.
It wasn't just a replica. It was an inventory.
Lining the perimeter of the ballroom, encased within towering glass vitrines, were the relics of our manufactured lives. In one display case hung the silk dress I had worn the night Nicholas first proposed along the Chicago riverfront—stained with the grease of a surveillance tracker woven into the hem. In another, the leather-bound ledger my father had signed thirty years ago, trading my genetic lineage to the Vance dynasty to settle an impossible maritime debt.
And in the center of the hall, suspended beneath a massive chandelier forged of twisted steel cables, was a round banquet table set for three.
Seated at the head of the table was a woman.
She wore the same emerald-green velvet gown she had worn on my wedding day. Her silver-streaked hair was pinned up with antique mother-of-pearl combs. She held a crystal champagne flute between two slender, manicured fingers, swirling the vintage liquid with lazy, hypnotic grace.
"Mother," Nicholas breathed, the gun in his hand trembling ever so slightly.
Miriam Vance set down her glass. The crystal clicked softly against the bone china saucer. When she looked up, her eyes were not clouded with the gray film of synthetic blindness, nor were they the dull lenses of an automaton. They were razor-sharp, calculating, and unmistakably alive.
"Lower the weapon, Nicholas," she said, her voice carrying that terrible, familiar cadence that had commanded boardrooms and terrified senators for half a century. "You look undignified. A groom should never point steel at his mother on his wedding night."
"The wedding was three days ago," I snarled, stepping around Nicholas's shoulder so she had to look directly at me. "And you cut off my hair in front of two hundred guests before trying to feed us to a blast furnace beneath the city."
Miriam smiled—a cold, paper-thin crescent that didn't reach her eyes.
May you like
"I cut off your leash, Clara," she said softly. "The braid carried the tracker your biological mother planted in your scalp when you were five. I did you a courtesy. And as for the fire... well, gold is tested only by the crucible."
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