Chapter 44 - The Woman in the First House
They reached the observatory during a snowstorm.
Celeste met them at the western entrance. She claimed the Curator had disappeared into the lower levels with Eli.
Mara did not trust her.
“Who else is here?”
Celeste led them to a sealed room beneath the telescope.
An elderly woman sat beside the window, wrapped in a dark blanket. Her face was lined with age, but Mara recognized the shape of her eyes and the familiar scar above her eyebrow.
“My name was Amelia Voss,” the woman said.
Mara could not speak.
Amelia explained that the memory transfer had never produced exact copies. Every recipient altered the memories, creating a new person rather than preserving the old one.
Mara was not Amelia.
Celeste was not Amelia.
Even the elderly woman was only one continuation of her.
“The Curator wants us to fight over which one is real,” Amelia said. “There is no original left.”
Mara asked why Eli had called her his mother.
“Because you raised him for two years inside the First House.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It happened between the life you remember and the life they returned you to.”
Amelia opened a cabinet filled with photographs.
Each showed Mara and Eli together.
In the final image, Elias stood beside them.
On his wrist was a wedding ring.
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But Mara had never married him.
According to the date, the photograph had been taken tomorrow.
