Chapter 14 - Three knocks.Pause.
Three knocks.
Pause.
Two knocks.
I remembered.
The bathroom.
Mark had taught her the sequence.
I looked at her.
She repeated it.
Three.
Three.
Two.
Officer Harris suddenly understood.
“It's a signal.”
“To who?”
I didn't know.
Then a hidden panel opened beneath the hallway.
Inside was a speaker.
Mark's voice came through.
“Good girl, Sophie.”
Ethan shouted.
“No!”
The speaker crackled again.
Mark continued.
“Harris, the cameras are live.”
Officer Harris looked at the ceiling.
Tiny red lights blinked.
Mark had been recording everything.
The room came alive with police chatter.
Backup teams were surrounding the building.
Ethan panicked.
“You think this changes anything?”
Mark replied:
“It ends tonight.”
A door slammed.
Footsteps thundered through the corridor.
Ethan appeared at the far end.
He was older than the photographs.
Gray hair.
Dark coat.
The silver ring.
He pointed a gun toward Sophie.
Rachel screamed.
“You'll never get away with this!”
Ethan smiled.
“I already did.”
He looked at me.
“You were the experiment.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“Your father wanted to know whether fear could be inherited.”
I couldn't understand.
“He wanted to know whether people could be conditioned without knowing it.”
Ethan laughed.
“He raised you inside the environment.”
Mark's voice came through the speaker.
“Don't listen to him.”
But Ethan continued.
“Your father believed he could control every variable.”
“He couldn't.”
“No.”
“He forgot one.”
He pointed at me.
“Love.”
Everything stopped.
“You loved Sophie.”
“That was the one thing he couldn't measure.”
I realized then what Mark had been doing.
The bath wasn't only a trap.
It had been a test.
A terrible, manipulative test.
He wanted to know whether I would notice.
Whether I would investigate.
Whether I would choose Sophie over the story everyone told me.
Ethan had built the system.
My father had helped.
Mark had entered my life.
And then, somehow, Mark had turned against them.
But there was still one question.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
Mark answered through the speaker.
“Because Ethan controlled every conversation.”
“That's not an excuse.”
“I know.”
His voice was broken.
“I thought I could protect you.”
“You made Sophie afraid.”
“I know.”
He paused.
“I failed.”
Ethan raised his weapon.
A sudden gunshot rang out.
Ethan dropped.
Police flooded the corridor.
Rachel ran to Sophie.
I followed.
Sophie threw herself into my arms.
I held her so tightly that I never wanted to let go.
Then Officer Harris noticed something.
The journal.
It wasn't on the floor.
It had disappeared.
“Where is it?”
I looked around.
Ethan was being handcuffed.
Mark was still in jail.
Nobody had touched the journal.
Then Sophie tugged my sleeve.
“Mommy.”
“What?”
She pointed to the stuffed rabbit.
There was a zipper on its side.
Inside was a tiny folded page.
I opened it.
One sentence was written there in my father's handwriting.
If they ever discover the nursery, never trust the person who says the experiment is over.
I looked at Harris.
“It's not over.”
He didn't answer.
Because at that exact moment, every light in the underground chamber went out.
And a voice whispered through the darkness.
Not Ethan.
Not Mark.
May you like
A woman's voice.
“Hello, daughter.”
