The Still Heartbeat..

The vat glowed faintly under flickering halogen tubes. Eve stood perfectly still, her palm pressed to the reinforced glass.

Inside floated a girl. Maybe fifteen. Limbs suspended in cobalt-blue gel. Her face was soft—unlined by conflict, untouched by memory. The Genesis symbol was branded at her temple.

She wasn’t awake.

But she wasn’t dead.

Her biometric vitals blinked steadily: Subject E-01.Δ
Codename: Delta

The clone of the clone.
Not Eve.
Not Eden.

But something between them.

Something new.

The Simulation Files..

Back in the control chamber, Damian scrolled through the files Eve had found. Each dataset painted a horrific picture.

Delta had been activated once before—briefly. Months ago. The footage was encrypted, fragmented. But what they recovered chilled them.

Delta had spoken. Not in rage or confusion. But in curiosity.

“Am I the first?”
“Why does pain feel like someone else’s memory?”
“Where is she?”

Eve sat in silence. She knew exactly who Delta was asking for.

Not Eden.

Herself.

Nurture or Annihilation..

For hours, Eve said nothing. Damian brought her water. Updates. Silence.

Then, at dawn, she gave the order:

“Stabilize her pod. Keep her asleep. No neural link. No external feed. Not yet.”

Damian stared. “You're not destroying her?”

Eve’s voice barely carried. “She didn’t ask to be born. She could be dangerous. She will be. But maybe not in the way we were.”

He stepped closer. “You think you can raise her? Correct the path?”

Eve turned, her face unreadable. “I think… this is what they never expected. They programmed control. We can offer choice.”

The Conversation They Feared..

That night, lying beside Damian in the cold sterility of Genesis quarters, Eve finally asked the question she'd been avoiding since the beginning:

“Did they ever consider just… letting us live?”

Damian didn’t answer right away.

He reached over, slid his fingers into hers.

“No. They weren’t building people. They were building fail-safes. War without conscience. Power without noise.”

Eve’s voice cracked. “And now I’m the last one holding the blueprints.”

“And rewriting them,” he whispered.

But Eve didn’t smile.

Because rewriting meant revisiting.

And Delta—still asleep in the shadows beneath them—was a door to every failed dream, every manipulated gene, every pain Eve had swallowed to survive.

Could she raise something without breaking it?

Could she teach someone to be human…

When no one had ever done the same for her?

The Final Entry (Private Log — Eve L.)..

I don’t know what she’ll become.
I only know this: I will not train her. I will not control her. I will not be her warden.
I will teach her how to ask questions.
How to feel fear. How to make mistakes. How to cry without punishment.
And when the day comes that she asks me where she came from—
I will tell her everything.
Not to burden her… but to remind her that she never has to be what we were.

She is my last inheritance.
And I will not let Genesis define her.

–Eve Lanchester.

~TO BE CONTINUED....