The garden breathed.
Anna Vance sat on her stone bench, surrounded by plants that should not exist beneath a mountain, and watched her granddaughters with eyes that had seen too much. Her hands rested in her lap, twisted with age but steady. She had waited sixty years for this moment. She could wait a few minutes more.
"Speak," Scarlett said.
She did not sit. She stood with her gun still in hand, her body positioned between Anna and her team, her mind calculating exits and angles and the thousand ways this could end.
"What would you have me say?" Anna's voice was soft, carrying the accent of a country that no longer existed on maps. "That I am sorry? That I did not know what Vincent would become? That I believed his lies about medical research, about curing disease, about helping humanity?"
"Did you believe?"
"At first." Anna smiled, and the expression transformed her face from ancient to timeless, revealing the beauty that had launched a thousand experiments. "I was twenty-two. Poor. Pregnant with Elena, though I did not yet know. Vincent offered money, security, a future. He took samples. Blood. Tissue. The genetic code that made me."
"And then?"
"He returned. Five years later. Elena was four. He showed me what he had made. Copies. Improvements. Children with my face but not my flaws, my strength but not my weakness." Anna's smile faded. "I should have stopped him then. Should have burned his laboratory, destroyed his research, killed him if necessary. But I was afraid. And I was curious. I wanted to meet them. The daughters I would never have naturally. The family science offered instead of biology."
Claire stirred against the floor where Scarlett had left her bound. "You rejected us. When we came to you. When we found you here. You called us monsters."
"Because you are monsters." Anna did not look at her. Her eyes remained on Scarlett, searching for something she had lost or never possessed. "All of you. Including Elena. Including myself. We are the crime and the victim, the weapon and the wound. I rejected you because I could not bear to see what my vanity had created."
Scarlett moved closer. The gun lowered but did not holster. "The facility. This garden. How long have you been here?"
"Vincent built it for me. Thirty years ago. When the first copies began to fail, to question, to demand rights he had not programmed them to want." Anna gestured at the stone walls, the flowing water, the impossible green. "A prison and a palace. I could leave at any time. I chose to stay. To watch. To remember what I had done."
"And now?"
"Now I am old. Now the copies copy themselves, and the original matters less with each generation. Now you have come, the last and the best, to end what I began." Anna leaned forward, and for the first time, her composure cracked. "Or to continue it. Vincent believed you would be the culmination. The perfect synthesis of design and freedom. The weapon who chooses her own targets."
"I am not Vincent's weapon."
"No." Anna's eyes held hers. Green meeting green, separated by decades and methodology but united by something deeper, something genetic, something manufactured and real simultaneously. "You are mine. My DNA. My flaw. My hope. The only one who came to destroy rather than inherit."
The facility shook. Distant explosions. Jules's virus continuing its work, or the Consortium's failsafes activating, or both. Time was shortening.
"The other sisters," Scarlett said. "The five captured. Where are they?"
"Safe. Beyond this garden, through the eastern passage. I protected them from Claire's activation. From the manufacturing. From becoming what you saw in the tanks." Anna stood, slowly, carefully, her aged body demanding respect for its persistence. "I can show you. But first, you must choose."
"Choose what?"
"What to do with what remains. The facility can be destroyed. The data erased. The manufacturing ended. But the copies who live, who breathe, who think and feel and believe themselves human—what of them?"
Scarlett thought of the tanks. Of number thirteen, unfinished, dreaming. Of the army that had collapsed before birth. Of herself, standing in a garden that should not exist, speaking with her creator's creator.
"They are not human," she said.
"No."
"They are not me."
"No."
"But they are alive."
Anna nodded. "Yes. That is the crime. That is the miracle. That is the choice Vincent forced upon us all."
---
The eastern passage was narrow. Anna moved through it with the certainty of decades, her fingers trailing the walls she had memorized in darkness and light. Scarlett followed, her gun ready, her senses extended. Behind her, Dom and Inga carried Claire, still bound, still dangerous. Jules and Maya secured the rear, watching for pursuit that had not yet materialized but certainly would.
The chamber opened without warning.
Five women looked up from where they sat on simple beds. Their faces were Scarlett's, but different in the details that life etches. One had a scar across her cheek, poorly healed. Another had shaved her head, rejecting the red hair that marked them. A third had tattooed her arms with symbols that meant nothing and everything simultaneously.
They were armed. They had been trained. They had survived capture and imprisonment and the knowledge of what they were.
"Number eight," Anna said, indicating the scarred one. "Number ten. Number six. Number two. Number five. My granddaughters. Your sisters."
The scarred one—number eight—stood. Her eyes found Scarlett's and held them without flinching. "You are the last. The one who burned the Seven Houses."
"I burned the Houses. Not the system. Not the manufacturing. Not this."
"Will you burn this?"
Scarlett looked at them. At herself multiplied. At the family she had not chosen and could not deny.
"I will end the manufacturing. The copying. The design of weapons disguised as daughters."
"And us?"
"You choose. Stay and die with the facility. Leave and live as you can. Fight with me, or hide without me. I am not your leader. I am not your template. I am only the one who came before you in sequence, not in importance."
Number eight smiled. The expression was hard, practiced, but real beneath the training. "Vincent said you would offer freedom. He said you would not understand that we do not want it. That we were designed for purpose, and purpose is all we desire."
"Then find new purpose. Or keep the old. But find it yourself, not in Vincent's design, not in Claire's activation, not in my command."
The facility shook again. Closer now. The garden's impossible plants trembled in their beds.
"We need to move," Jules said. His voice was tight, controlled, but Scarlett heard the fear he managed. "The virus is accelerating. Structural collapse in twenty minutes, maybe less."
"Exit routes?" Dom asked.
"Three. North passage leads to surface, but sensors show Consortium forces arriving. South passage is blocked by the collapse. East—" Jules checked his screen. "East leads deeper. To the original research labs. To Vincent's first work. To—"
"To me," Anna said. "To where this began. Where it must end."
Scarlett made her decision. "Inga. Take the five sisters. North passage. Fight through or negotiate, but get them out."
"And you?"
"I go east. With Anna. With Claire. With whoever chooses to see this finished."
"I choose."
Zoya stepped forward. She had said little since their reunion, had fought and survived and waited. Now her green eyes burned with the same fire Scarlett felt in her own chest.
"I choose to see the beginning. To understand what made us. To end it properly, not through destruction alone, but through knowledge."
Maya nodded. "Communications. I can ensure the data is preserved. Destroyed. Whatever you decide. But preserved first. The world should know."
"Dom?"
He stood with his damaged arm, sparks still cascading from the impact he had absorbed. "I have followed you to fire and death and rebirth. I will follow you to the beginning."
"Jules?"
He smiled. Sad. Proud. Present. "Someone needs to ensure the exit stays open. I will hold the north passage. Wait for your signal. Or your absence."
Scarlett looked at him. At his bruises. At his loyalty. At his love, which she had never reciprocated and never refused.
"Wait," she said.
"I always do."
---
The eastern descent was steep. Stairs carved from bedrock, worn by decades of secret passage. Anna moved with surprising speed, her aged body driven by purpose or relief or simple acceptance of ending. Claire walked between Dom and Zoya, no longer bound but watched, her enhanced systems disabled by Jules's virus, her perfect face showing nothing.
"Why did you activate them?" Scarlett asked her. "The clones. The army. If you knew it could be stopped, why begin?"
"Because I had to know." Claire's voice was flat, stripped of the musical manipulation she had used before. "Had to know if I was replaceable. If the design could improve beyond me. If I was obsolete, as Elena became obsolete, as Anna became before her."
"And?"
"I am obsolete. The design continues. The copies improve. The original matters less with each generation." Claire looked at Scarlett, and for the first time, something human showed through the manufactured perfection. "You are the end, Scarlett. The last improvement Vincent designed. After you, he planned no more. You were his masterpiece. His completion. His suicide note in flesh."
The stairs ended.
The chamber beyond was not stone or steel or biotech.
It was wood.
Ancient wood, polished by centuries, imported from a world that no longer existed in the way Anna remembered.
And on the walls, photographs.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Faces.
The first copies.
The early failures.
The partial successes.
Elena as a child, then a woman, then the template Scarlett had known.
And earlier.
Anna young, pregnant, hopeful.
And beside her, Vincent.
Not the Vincent Scarlett had known.
Younger.
Softer.
In love, or something he believed was love.
"This is where he brought me," Anna said. "Where he showed me the first results. Where I held my first copy, my first grandchild, and felt my heart break with joy and horror."
She moved to a cabinet. Opened it with a key she wore around her neck. Removed a file, old, fragile, precious.
"The original research. The complete genetic map. The manufacturing protocols. Everything required to begin again. Or to ensure no one begins again."
She held it out to Scarlett.
"Choose. Preserve it, and the knowledge survives, for good or ill. Destroy it, and the copies who live are the last, finite, mortal."
Scarlett took the file.
Felt its weight.
Its history.
Its possibility.
She thought of the sisters above, fighting or fleeing or waiting. Of the clones in the tanks, dead before birth. Of herself, designed and free, manufactured and choosing, weapon and woman simultaneously.
She opened the file.
Read the first page.
The scientific notation.
The genetic codes.
The recipes for creating life that was not life, daughters who were not daughters, family that was only design.
Then she walked to the brazier that burned in the corner of the wooden room, that had warmed Anna through decades of winter, that represented the only heat in this mountain tomb.
She fed the file to the flames.
Page by page.
Watching the knowledge burn.
Watching the possibility end.
Watching the future she refused to allow become ash.
"No copies," she said.
"No more manufacturing. No more design. What lives, lives. What dies, dies. We are the last. The twelve. The final."
Anna watched her creation destroy itself.
Smiled.
Wept.
Accepted.
"Then it is done," she said.
"Not done." Scarlett turned to her.
To Claire.
To the sisters who had followed.
To Dom, who waited in shadow.
"Now we survive. Now we escape. Now we become what Vincent never designed—ordinary. Human. Free."
The facility screamed.
Final collapse.
The wooden room shook.
Dust fell from ceilings that had stood for decades.
"Move," Scarlett said.
And they ran.
Through passages that crumbled behind them.
Through the death of everything that had made them.
Into light.
Into air.
Into the snow and cold of a mountain that did not care about their freedom or their design.
Into the future.
Scarlett Vance ran last.
Making sure they all passed.
Making sure Anna survived.
Making sure the fire behind them consumed everything.
She emerged into gray afternoon.
The helicopter waited, Maya at the controls, the five sisters aboard, Jules signaling frantically.
They lifted off as the mountain swallowed its secret.
As the facility died.
As the manufacturing ended.
Scarlett looked down.
At smoke rising from snow.
At the end of her origin.
At the beginning of her life.
Anna took her hand.
Old fingers in young.
Human and manufactured.
Real and designed.
"Thank you," Anna said.
"For what?"
"For choosing. For ending what I began. For being better than your design."
Scarlett did not answer.
She watched the mountain shrink.
Watched the past become geography.
Watched the future open, uncertain, unwritten, free.
The crown was broken.
The copies were ended.
The original was saved.
And Scarlett Vance was finally, completely, irrevocably alive.