Chapter 25 · The Other Eve

The door sealed behind them with a sound like a mountain grinding its teeth.

Eve stood beneath the core chamber’s white glare, one hand still pressed against the black metal of the access frame. Heat crawled through her palm. Not warmth. Recognition.

The chamber stretched beyond the reach of the emergency lamps, a cathedral built for something too large to worship. Conduits descended from the ceiling in bundled veins. Pools of amber coolant trembled beneath grated walkways. At the center, suspended inside a cage of rotating rings, the Ashlight core pulsed like a captive sun.

And beneath it stood the girl.

She had Eve’s face.

Not similar. Not close. The same narrow jaw. The same scar cutting through the left eyebrow. The same gray eyes, though the girl’s pupils glowed with a thin gold rim. Her dark hair floated around her head in the nutrient fluid filling a transparent vertical tank. Cables disappeared beneath her collarbones and climbed along her throat like metallic roots.

Eve’s breath caught.

The girl opened her eyes.

“Cain Rook,” she said through every speaker in the chamber. Her voice was Eve’s voice, stripped of fear and sharpened into something ancient. “Raise your weapon.