And she didn’t seem scared. She seemed to be examining her, weighing her up, with the same coldness with which she would examine a piece of fruit in the supermarket.
I turned the paper over. There was something written in red marker, an angular and aggressive handwriting:
*PROJECT CHRYSALIS – SUBJECT 1: ACTIVE.*
The world started spinning. I sat on my daughter’s bed, crumpling the photo in my hand. Subject 1? Active? What the hell was going on?
Lily had mentioned a “buyer.” They had talked about the neighbor at 42. And now this.
I had to go to the police. It was the logical, sensible thing to do. But a voice in my head stopped me. Lily had said that the neighbor at 42 had photos of them. That he knew. And if I went to the police… what if the police were involved? Or worse, what if by reporting them I lost my daughter forever, locked up in a juvenile detention center or taken away by whoever was behind this “Chrysalis Project”?
No. I had to find out what this was before I acted.
I remembered what they had said. *The house at 42. The bored accountant.*
I stood up. My legs were no longer trembling. Fear had been replaced by a cold determination, a maternal fury I didn’t know I possessed. No one was going to turn my daughter into a monster. And if she already was, I was going to find out who had done it.
I looked at the clock. It was 10:15 am. Lily had said they would meet with the Buyer in an hour. That gave me time.
I went to my room, took an old toolbox out of the closet, and grabbed a screwdriver and a flashlight. Then I went downstairs, making sure to lock everything.
I stepped outside. The sun was shining, the birds were singing. The suburb seemed as idyllic as ever. Mrs. Greene was on her porch watering the petunias. She saw me come out and waved, but this time I noticed the worry in her eyes. She knew something. Maybe not everything, but she knew something dark was lurking on our street. I nodded slightly to her, a silent promise that I would look into it, and turned left.
Towards house number 42.
The house was identical to mine in structure, but the blinds were down and the lawn a little more neglected. There was no car in the driveway. If Lily was right and the man lived alone, he was probably at work. Or watching other children.
I walked to the front door, rang the doorbell, and waited. Nothing. I rang again. Silence.
I looked around to make sure no one was watching, jumped over the small side fence, and went to the back. A kitchen window was ajar. “We go in when they’re not here, we leave without a trace,” Lily had said. The irony of almost breaking in to save my daughter from becoming a thief didn’t escape me.
I forced the screen open with the screwdriver and pushed the window upwards. It was stiff, but it gave way. I pulled myself up with difficulty and landed awkwardly on the sink in the other person’s kitchen.
The house smelled musty, like stale coffee and chemicals, like those used to develop photos.
I walked down the hallway. The living room was spartan. Basic furniture, no decoration, no family photos. Everything functional. As if whoever lived here was ready to leave at any moment.
I looked for a room that could serve as an office. I found it at the end of the hall. The door was locked, but it was a cheap interior lock. A hard kick near the doorknob—something I’d seen in movies and never thought would work—made the mechanism pop with a crack of splintering wood.
Between.
The walls were covered.
There wasn’t a single centimeter of paint visible. Everything was covered with photographs. Hundreds of them.
I approached, feeling my stomach churn.
They were photos of children. All teenagers from the neighborhood. I saw the boy in the boots, Leo. The girl, Sarah. And many others I recognized by sight, school friends, neighbors’ children.
And in the center, occupying the place of honor, the largest wall was entirely dedicated to Lily.
Lily in the park. Lily sleeping (taken through her bedroom window). Lily at school. And then, a series of more disturbing photos: Lily receiving money from a man in a black car. Lily delivering a package. Lily… shooting at a shooting range in the middle of the woods.
But what terrified me most wasn’t the photos. It was the map on the desk.
It was a detailed map of the city. There were red lines connecting different houses. Ours was marked with a bright red circle. And next to the circle, a handwritten note:
*PHASE 1 COMPLETED. THE SUBJECT HAS ELIMINATED EMPATHY. PREPARE FOR PHASE 2: ELIMINATION OF THE MATERNAL BOND.*
I felt the ground disappear beneath my feet.
“Elimination of the maternal bond.”
That’s what I meant.
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