Chapter 14 - Five minutes to resurrection
Thomas unlocked the glass door.
“Claire, stay back.”
She entered anyway.
Daniel followed her, while Reed and the tactical team spread through the chamber. Evelyn stopped several feet from Thomas.
For eight years, she had known he was alive.
Yet when their eyes met, she looked as devastated as Claire felt.
Thomas’s hair had turned almost completely gray. A scar ran from his temple to his jaw. His left hand trembled around the gun pointed at Marcus.
Celeste held the knife against his back.
No one moved.
The countdown continued.
04:32.
“Turn off the archive,” Claire ordered.
Marcus remained beside the controls.
“I cannot.”
“You helped build the security system.”
“Thomas changed it.”
Thomas shook his head.
“Malcolm changed it through Daniel.”
Daniel stepped toward the central console.
“I can close it.”
Thomas aimed the gun at him.
“Do not touch the system.”
Claire placed herself between them.
“He is your son.”
“He is carrying the man who destroyed this family.”
“You abandoned him to fight Malcolm alone.”
“I spent twelve years searching for a way to separate them.”
“While experimenting on other people.”
Thomas’s expression hardened.
“Every subject volunteered.”
Anna entered behind Claire.
“No, we didn’t.”
Thomas looked at her.
“You were dying.”
“That did not make my body yours.”
The synchronized patients gathered outside the chamber. They stood silently behind the glass, watching.
Celeste pressed the knife harder against Thomas.
“Touching reunion,” she said. “But the clock is moving.”
03:51.
“What do you want?” Claire asked.
“The family trust.”
“You already stole the patents.”
“The archive created a global release. Every government on earth now knows Lazarus exists. Legal ownership matters again.”
“You want me to transfer control.”
“I want you and Daniel to sign.”
“And then?”
“I allow Thomas to close the archive.”
Marcus laughed bitterly.
“She cannot close it.”
Celeste glared at him.
“Be quiet.”
“That countdown is not a release sequence,” Marcus said. “It is a transfer.”
“To whom?” Claire asked.
Marcus looked at Thomas.
“Ask him.”
Thomas’s hand tightened around the gun.
“Marcus is compromised.”
“By whom?”
“Continuum.”
Marcus slowly stood.
“My father’s neural map was not the only identity Thomas preserved.”
The countdown reached three minutes.
The central screen changed.
A list of names appeared.
Scientists.
Political leaders.
Military commanders.
Billionaires.
Some were alive.
Others had died decades earlier.
Claire understood the true purpose of the island.
Continuum had not merely preserved minds.
It had collected them.
“Whose identity is being transferred?” Claire asked.
The final name appeared.
THOMAS HART.
Claire looked at her father.
“You copied yourself.”
Thomas lowered the gun.
“I had no choice.”
“There is always a choice.”
“My body is failing.”
He leaned heavily on the cane.
“The chemicals from the laboratory accident damaged my nervous system. I have months left.”
“So you built Lazarus to survive.”
“I built the identity lock to stop Malcolm.”
“And then you decided to use it.”
Thomas looked at Daniel.
“I watched my son return from death.”
“You watched something return.”
“Enough of him survived.”
Daniel’s face twisted.
“Is that what I am to you? Proof?”
“You are my son.”
“Which one?”
Thomas had no answer.
02:19.
Claire approached the console.
“Who is the intended host?”
The screen displayed a biometric outline.
It belonged to Daniel.
Claire turned toward her father.
“You want to place yourself inside him.”
“Daniel’s body has already survived convergence.”
“You would erase both Daniel and Malcolm.”
“I would stabilize the system.”
Evelyn stepped forward.
“You told me the treatment would save him.”
“It will save the body.”
Evelyn’s face collapsed.
For twelve years, she had betrayed Claire, protected secrets and authorized crimes because she believed Thomas was trying to save their son.
Now she finally saw the truth.
Thomas had been preparing Daniel as his replacement.
Celeste smiled.
“There is the confession I wanted.”
“You knew?” Claire asked her.
“I knew Thomas planned to use Daniel. I intended to replace Thomas’s pattern with my own.”
Marcus stared at her.
“You do not have a neural map.”
“Malcolm made one for me.”
Daniel suddenly moved.
He seized Celeste’s wrist and pulled the knife away from Thomas.
Reed’s team rushed forward.
Celeste struck a control hidden in her bracelet.
The chamber doors sealed, separating the tactical officers from Claire’s family.
01:38.
The synchronized patients outside began screaming.
Anna fell to her knees.
“The archive is entering them.”
Claire grabbed the clear injector.
Daniel saw it.
“If you use that on me, Malcolm may disappear.”
“That is the point.”
“He is the only one who knows how to stop the transfer.”
Malcolm’s expression surfaced.
“Give me control,” he said.
Claire stared into her brother’s face.
“Why should I trust you?”
“Because Thomas will erase us both.”
The countdown reached one minute.
Thomas attempted to reach the console.
Evelyn blocked him.
“You used me.”
“I did what was necessary.”
“You made me believe I was saving our child.”
“You were saving the family.”
“You mean yourself.”
Evelyn struck him across the face.
The movement echoed the ICU, but this slap was not theater.
Thomas fell against the console.
Celeste attacked Daniel with the knife.
Marcus pulled her backward.
The three struggled beside the identity chamber as the countdown reached thirty seconds.
Claire held both injectors.
Clear to suppress Malcolm.
Black to strengthen the dominant transferred identity.
Daniel looked at her.
“Choose.”
The synchronized patients struck the glass in perfect unison.
Twenty seconds.
Thomas shouted for Claire to use the black serum.
Marcus shouted for the clear.
Celeste screamed that both would kill Daniel.
Evelyn told Claire to trust herself.
Ten seconds.
Claire made her decision.
She drove one injector into Daniel’s arm.
The countdown reached zero.
Every light in the facility became white.
Daniel screamed.
The synchronized patients fell silent.
Thomas collapsed.
And Claire felt a foreign memory enter her mind—a memory of herself standing beside her father’s supposed corpse twelve years earlier.
But in the memory, Claire was not watching through her own eyes.
May you like
She was watching through Evelyn’s.
👉 Claire stopped the island transfer, but the serum carried another person’s memories into her—and those memories proved her mother had hidden one final crime.
