Chapter 10 - The Phantom Sister
The silence in the kitchen was broken only by the hum of the refrigerator and the quiet, distant breathing of Lily in the next room. Clara stared at the screen, her mind racing, frantically assembling the shattered pieces of a reality she had taken for granted for half a decade.
"She... she looks like me," Clara whispered, her voice trembling violently as she leaned closer to the monitor.
The woman on the table, despite her emaciated state and hollow eyes, possessed the exact facial structure, the same slope of the nose, the same hairline as Clara.
Clara turned her head slowly, looking at Eleanor with a horror so profound it transcended anger. "Who is she, Eleanor?"
Eleanor didn't answer. She kept her head held high, staring out the glass window toward the empty driveway, her silence a wall of arrogant denial.
Clara slammed her hand down onto the quartz island. "Who is she?!" she screamed, the sound echoing off the high ceilings.
"Her name is Evelyn," Julian said, his voice dropping into a broken, hollow murmur. He uncovered his eyes, looking up at his wife with a face full of tears. "She... she is your twin sister, Clara."
Clara felt the ground beneath her feet tilt. The air in her lungs vanished. "I don't have a sister. I was an only child. My parents died in a car crash when I was twelve. I grew up in state care!"
"You were adopted, Clara," Julian confessed, the words spilling out of him like blood from an open wound. "Your biological parents were researchers working for my family’s pharmaceutical foundation. In 1998, there was an accident—an illegal trial involving synthetic neural inhibitors. Your mother gave birth to twins in secret. My family swept it under the rug. They took Evelyn because she showed early signs of the neurological degradation caused by the trial. They left you in the state system because you were healthy."
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Clara backed away from the island, her hands clutching her head as if trying to hold her mind together. "You... you knew? You met me six years ago... it wasn't a coincidence?"
Julian looked down at his lap. "It was never a coincidence. My mother found you. She tracked you down. We needed your DNA, Clara. We needed your blood, your neural markers, to synthesize the stabilizer keeping Evelyn alive in that room. If Evelyn dies, the entire foundation collapses under federal investigation for illegal human experimentation. I was sent to marry you."
