CHAPTER 2: THE WOMAN ON THE SCREEN
The woman on the monitor stared at me as if she had spent years waiting for this exact moment.
Tears streamed down the scars that crossed her face.
“Lucy,” she whispered.
The name hit me harder this time.
Lucy.
Not Valerie.
Lucy.
Something inside my mind cracked.
A flash.
A little girl running through a sunflower field.
A woman laughing.
A red bicycle.
Then darkness.
The memory vanished before I could grab it.
Marcus turned toward the screen.
His calm expression disappeared.
“Who gave you access?” he snapped.
The scarred woman ignored him.
Her eyes never left mine.
“Lucy, listen to me carefully,” she said.
“Don’t let him inject you.”
Inject.
The word echoed through the room.
My eyes darted toward the tray beside the gurney.
A syringe rested there.
Filled with clear liquid.
Marcus immediately stepped between the screen and me.
“You shouldn't have called.”
The woman’s voice hardened.
“You stole her life.”
Eleanor moved toward the monitor.
“End the connection.”
“No.”
The woman leaned closer.
“Lucy, your mother is alive.”
The room froze.
Every sound disappeared.
My mother.
Alive.
Not dead.
Alive.
Marcus lunged toward the monitor.
The screen went black.
But it was too late.
The words had landed.
My mother is alive.
Something deep inside me woke up.
I looked at the old photograph lying on the table.
The teenage girl.
Lucy Archer.
I knew her face.
Because it was mine.
Marcus turned back toward me.
For a second, nobody moved.
Then he smiled.
Not the gentle smile he showed his patients.
Not the smile he used with neighbors.
This smile was cold.
Calculated.
Dangerous.
“Well,” he said quietly.
“I suppose we skip Phase Four.”
Eleanor took a step backward.
“Marcus—”
“No.”
His voice sharpened.
“She remembers.”
I jumped off the gurney.
My legs nearly collapsed beneath me.
The drugs still lingered in my body.
The room tilted.
Marcus reached for me.
I grabbed the tray.
The syringe crashed against the floor.
Glass shattered.
The sound echoed through the hidden laboratory.
For the first time in two years, fear appeared in Marcus’s eyes.
Not fear of me.
Fear of losing control.
I ran.
The hallway blurred around me.
The hidden passage.
The closet.
The bedroom.
I stumbled through the darkness.
Behind me, Marcus shouted.
“Lucy!”
Not Valerie.
Lucy.
That terrified me more than anything.
Because he had stopped pretending.
I slammed the bedroom door.
Locked it.
Grabbed my phone.
No signal.
Of course.
The device displayed a message I had never seen before.
NETWORK RESTRICTED.
My husband had blocked my phone.
The realization made my stomach turn.
Every part of my life had been controlled.
Every call.
Every message.
Every memory.
The door shook violently.
Marcus was coming.
I searched the room desperately.
Then I remembered the smoke detector.
The hidden camera.
I climbed onto a chair and ripped it from the ceiling.
A tiny memory card fell onto the carpet.
Marcus hit the door again.
The frame cracked.
I shoved the card into my laptop.
Folders appeared instantly.
Hundreds of them.
Years of recordings.
Videos.
Medical files.
Psychological evaluations.
Photographs.
And one folder labeled:
ORIGINAL SUBJECT.
My hands trembled.
I opened it.
A picture appeared.
A woman with dark hair smiled at the camera.
Beside her stood a teenage girl.
Me.
The file title read:
LUCY ARCHER & ELIZABETH ARCHER.
Mother and daughter.
Date: May 2014.
I clicked another file.
Police report.
MISSING PERSON.
Lucy Archer.
Age: 15.
Last seen after vehicle accident on Interstate 87.
Presumed dead.
Dead.
Not missing.
Dead.
Someone had declared me dead.
The door splintered.
Marcus shouted my name again.
I kept reading.
Then I found a video.
Recorded twelve years earlier.
The image shook violently.
Someone was filming from inside a car.
Rain poured across the windshield.
A woman drove.
A teenage girl sat beside her.
Me.
Younger.
Laughing.
Then headlights appeared.
A truck.
Coming directly toward us.
The woman screamed.
The recording ended.
I stared at the frozen frame.
Another memory exploded inside my head.
Glass breaking.
Metal twisting.
Blood.
Screaming.
Then a man's voice.
Not Marcus.
Someone saying:
“We found the girl.”
Another voice replied:
“What about the mother?”
Silence.
Then:
“She’s still breathing.”
My vision blurred.
The room spun.
The door burst open.
Marcus stepped inside.
I backed away.
He raised both hands.
“Lucy, calm down.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“It’s your name.”
“You lied to me.”
“I protected you.”
“You drugged me.”
His face tightened.
“You were damaged.”
The words hit me like a slap.
Damaged.
Like I was an object.
A project.
An experiment.
Not a person.
Marcus moved closer.
“You suffered catastrophic trauma after the accident.”
“You kidnapped me.”
“No.”
“You erased me.”
His voice dropped lower.
“I saved you.”
I opened another file.
The screen displayed a medical report.
Prepared by Marcus himself.
Diagnosis:
Memory recovery progressing faster than expected.
Subject may regain identity.
Recommended intervention:
Continued pharmaceutical suppression.
I looked up.
“You did this intentionally.”
Marcus said nothing.
That silence was enough.
Everything became clear.
The pills.
The cameras.
The notes.
The missing memories.
None of it had been treatment.
It had been imprisonment.
For two years.
I picked up a lamp.
“If you come closer, I swear—”
“Lucy.”
His voice softened.
Almost pleading.
“You don’t understand.”
“Then explain.”
He looked exhausted.
Older.
For a moment, I thought he might finally tell the truth.
Instead, he said:
“If you remember everything, they'll kill you.”
The room fell silent.
“What?”
“They've been hunting your family for twelve years.”
“Who?”
Before he could answer, every light in the house suddenly went dark.
Blackness swallowed the room.
Eleanor screamed downstairs.
A second later, the sound of shattering glass echoed through the house.
Then another.
And another.
Marcus's face changed instantly.
Pure panic.
Not staged.
Not controlled.
Real panic.
“They found us.”
The front door exploded inward.
Voices filled the house.
Men shouting.
Running footsteps.
Marcus grabbed my arm.
“We have to leave.”
I jerked away.
“No.”
“Lucy, listen to me.”
“You lied to me for years.”
“And right now those people downstairs are worse.”
Another gunshot echoed through the darkness.
Gunshot.
My blood froze.
Marcus rushed toward the closet.
Toward the hidden passage.
Then he stopped.
Because someone stood in the doorway.
A woman.
Scarred face.
Dark coat.
Holding a handgun.
The woman from the screen.
She looked directly at me.
“Lucy.”
I stared.
She lowered the weapon.
“My name is Rachel Archer.”
Archer.
The same last name.
“My God,” she whispered.
“You look exactly like your mother.”
The room seemed to stop breathing.
Marcus stepped forward.
“What are you doing here?”
Rachel never looked at him.
“Saving her.”
May you like
Then she spoke the words that changed everything.
“Lucy, I’m your sister.”
