“I told you not to go near my mother,” Lily said, with terrifying calm.
“Subject 1, put the weapon down,” the man said, panting, leaning against the doorframe. “This is a deviation from protocol. You must eliminate the link, not the observer.”
“The protocol has changed,” she replied.
—Lily, no!—I yelled, throwing myself towards her to cover her line of fire.
“Mom, move it!” she bellowed, a military order.
—I won’t let you kill anyone!
In that moment of chaos, the sound of real sirens began to wail in the distance. Someone else had called the real police. Probably Mrs. Greene.
The man from number 42 smiled through bloody teeth. “Time’s up, Lily. The cleanup crew will be here in three minutes. If you kill me, they’ll kill you all. If you leave now, you might survive.”
Lily hesitated. Her hand trembled slightly. She looked at her friends, then at me, and finally at the man.
“This isn’t over,” he whispered.
He lowered the weapon, grabbed my arm with surprising strength, and pulled me toward the broken door.
“Let’s go! Everyone!” he shouted to his band.
“I’m not going anywhere with you!” I protested, digging my heels in. “We have to wait for the police!”
Lily turned to me. Her eyes were a storm of conflicting emotions, but for the first time, I saw a tear run down her cheek, wiping away a smudge of dirt.
“Mom, please,” she begged, her voice breaking. “The police aren’t the police. They work for him. If we stay here, we’re dead. You have to trust me. Please.”
I looked at my daughter. I looked at the gun in her hand, the gang of armed teenagers behind her, and the bleeding man in the hallway who looked at us with the satisfaction of a scientist watching his lab rats run through the maze.
The sirens were already on the corner.
I had to make a decision. Believe in the system that was supposed to protect us, or believe in the little girl I had raised, who had now become a dangerous stranger, but who was offering me her hand.
I heard the screech of tires screeching to a halt in front of the house. Car doors opening. Heavy footsteps running toward us. They didn’t sound like neighborhood cops. They sounded like an army.
“I trust you,” I said.
Lily nodded, angrily wiping away her tear.
—Run—he ordered.
And we ran. We jumped out the broken window, across the backyard, over the neighbors’ fences, and plunged into the woods bordering the suburb, leaving behind my quiet life, my spotless house, and everything I thought I knew about the world. As branches whipped at my face and I gasped for breath, I could only think of one thing:
My daughter wasn’t skipping school. My daughter was at war. And I had just been drafted.
The woods behind our neighborhood weren’t deep, but that night they seemed endless. The bare autumn branches lashed at us like invisible whips, and the ground, covered in dead leaves and dampness, threatened to make us slip with every step.
“This way!” Lily whispered, pulling on my hand. Her grip was firm, lacking the nervous sweat that I had.
Behind us, the voices of the men who had gotten out of the black cars barked short, precise orders. They weren’t shouting. There was no chaos in their pursuit, only predatory efficiency. The beams of their tactical flashlights cut through the darkness, sweeping across tree trunks, drawing ever closer.
“Lily, I can’t…” I gasped, feeling a sharp pain in my side. My office shoes weren’t made for this.
“You have to be able to do this, Mom. If they catch us, we’re gone. Literally.” She paused for a second behind a thick oak tree and looked me in the eye. In the dimness, her pupils were dilated, absorbing all the available light. “Leo and Sarah have split up toward the stream to draw them away. We’re going to the old mill.”
—To the mill? That’s a dead end.
“Not if you know what’s underneath,” she said, and resumed running.
We ran for what felt like hours, though it was probably only ten minutes of pure terror. The sound of our pursuers’ heavy boots began to fade slightly to the west, following the other kids’ false trail. I silently prayed that Leo and Sarah were as fast as they looked.
We arrived at the ruins of the old watermill, a graffiti-covered stone structure on the edge of the village. Lily didn’t head for the main entrance. She went over to a pile of rubble at the back, pushed aside an old, rusty metal sheet, and revealed a dark alcove.
—Inside. Quickly.
We slid through the hole into a darkness that smelled of earth and mold. Lily turned on her phone’s flashlight, illuminating a small concrete basement. There were sleeping bags, boxes of canned food, and, on a folding table, several unlit monitors and disassembled electronic equipment.
“What is this?” I asked, trying to catch my breath.
“Our base of operations,” Lily said, letting go of my hand to go and block the entrance from the inside with an iron bar. “This is where we plan the jobs. And where we hide when things get rough.”
She turned toward me. The light from her phone cast long shadows across her face, making her look much older than thirteen. She took off her ski mask and threw it to the ground. Underneath, her face was dirty, with a scratch on her cheek, but her eyes… those were my daughter’s eyes. Eyes that now looked at me with a mixture of shame and defiance.
“Why, Lily?” I asked, my voice trembling with adrenaline and pain. “Why were you doing this? Robbing houses? Stoling guns?”
She slumped down in an old camping chair.
“We didn’t start by stealing, Mom. We started by searching.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Six months ago, a man approached me in the park. He said I was special. That I had ‘potential.’ He offered me money for doing simple things: watching a house, delivering a package. I thought it was easy. I wanted to buy my own things, help out around the house without asking…”
—You should have told me.
“I couldn’t!” she cried, her voice echoing off the concrete walls. “By the time I realized what they were… they already had me. They showed me pictures of you walking into work. Pictures of you sleeping. They said if I quit the show, you’d have an ‘accident.’”
I felt an icy chill in my stomach.
“So I recruited Leo and Sarah,” he continued, lowering his voice. “They were trapped too. We decided that if we did what they asked, if we were their best ‘assets,’ they wouldn’t hurt you. But we started hoarding things. Money. Jewelry. And files. We were looking for a way out.”
—The neighbor from 42… the Observer… said that your final test was to eliminate me.
Lily nodded slowly, tears welling up in her eyes again. “I received the order this morning. ‘Cut the link.’ They gave me the gun. They told me if I didn’t do it tonight, they would come and kill us both.”
He stood up and came over to me, taking my hands in his. His fingers were ice cold.
“I was going to go after him, Mom. I was going to kill the Watcher before he could give the order to the cleanup crew. But you… you had to go play detective.”
“I’m your mother,” I said, squeezing her hands. “It’s my job to protect you, even from yourself.”
“Not anymore,” she whispered. “Now we’re on their kill list. Project Chrysalis leaves no loose ends.”
Suddenly, a dull thud echoed above our heads. Footsteps. Heavy and slow.
Lily turned off her phone’s light instantly. We were left in total darkness, listening to the dust falling from the ceiling.
“They’ve found us,” I whispered in Lily’s ear.
“They shouldn’t… unless…” Lily patted her pocket. She pulled out her phone. The screen glowed dimly. “Damn it. The tracker. I thought I’d turned it off.”
—What do we do?
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