Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the Boardroom
Headline: The Ultimate Betrayal—The Assistant He Trusted For A Decade Was The Puppet Master Behind His Nightmare.
Ethan felt the room tilt. "Don't play games with me, Victor. I know her face. I know her handwriting."
"Oh, she has Rachel's DNA, certainly," Dr. Vance said, stepping into the room. He pointed a finger at Lily. "And so does the child. But the woman lying there is Clara. Rachel's genetic twin, created in our proprietary lab six years ago during the first phase of Project Lazarus."
Ethan’s mind reeled. Project Lazarus.
It was a theoretical bio-engineering project Marlo Industries had funded years ago. It was supposed to be a research initiative for organ regeneration. Ethan had personally shut it down when he found out they were crossing ethical boundaries regarding human cloning.
Or at least, he thought he had shut it down.
"You didn't shut it down, Ethan," Dr. Vance said, reading his mind. "You simply stopped looking. Your board of directors saw the trillion-dollar potential of cellular replication. Rachel agreed to participate. She wanted a child so desperately, and since she was barren, we used her own genetic material to gestate Lily. But there were... side effects."
"You lied to me," Ethan whispered, his fists clenching so hard they shook. "You told me she died of heart failure."
"She did," Dr. Vance said calmly. "The original Rachel is indeed buried in the cemetery. Her heart failed because the genetic treatments we used to create Lily destroyed her cardiovascular system. But before she died, she demanded we save Lily and Clara. Clara was her fail-safe—a clone created to harvest compatible organs to keep Rachel alive. But Clara developed a consciousness of her own. Rachel couldn't let us harvest her. So, she helped Clara escape."
"And the note?" Ethan demanded, pulling the crumpled paper from his pocket. "This is Rachel's handwriting! It was written three months ago!"
Dr. Vance smiled, a chilling, pitying look. "Rachel didn't die two years ago, Ethan. We kept her in a drug-induced coma, extracting her genetic stem cells to perfect the cloning process for our international buyers. She woke up three months ago. Just for a day. Long enough to write that note and smuggle it out through a sympathetic nurse before we had to... terminate her permanently."
The words felt like physical blows. Ethan’s chest heaved. Rachel had been alive. She had been tortured, used as a biological factory, while he sat in his mansion, drowning in expensive grief.
"You monsters," Ethan roared, lunging at Vance.
But the two armed men instantly grabbed Ethan, pinning his arms behind his back. One of them pressed a taser to his ribs. A violent shock rippled through his body, sending him crashing to his knees.
"Take the child," Dr. Vance ordered.
"No! Let me go!" Lily screamed as one of the guards grabbed her, lifting her off the ground.
"And what about Mr. Marlo?" the guard asked.
"Inject him," a new voice said from the doorway.
Ethan looked up through blurred vision.
Margaret Whitmore stepped into the room. She was no longer wearing her reading glasses. Her posture was erect, cold, and commanding.
"Margaret..." Ethan gasped, pain radiating through his chest.
"I'm sorry, Ethan," Margaret said, looking down at him with no trace of warmth. "I built Marlo Industries with you. But you became weak after Rachel died. You stopped caring about progress. You stopped caring about the billions we could make. Project Lazarus is going public next week. We have buyers from three global superpowers. We couldn't let your sentimentality ruin a multi-trillion-dollar empire."
"You... you killed Rachel," Ethan choked out.
"Rachel was a sacrifice for the greater good," Margaret said smoothly. "And now, Lily’s stem cells will finalize the formula. As for you, Ethan... you’re going to have a tragic, grief-induced car accident tonight. The public will understand. A mourning billionaire, finally joining his wife."
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Dr. Vance stepped forward with a syringe filled with a clear, amber liquid. "This will look exactly like a sudden stroke."
Ethan struggled, but the guards held him pinned to the floor. The needle gleamed under the harsh fluorescent lights of the clinic.
