“My neighbor kept insisting she saw my daughter at home during school hours… so I pretended to go to work and hid under the bed. Minutes later, I heard several footsteps moving down the hall.

My name is Olivia Carter, and I always thought I knew everything about my 13-year-old daughter, Lily. After my divorce two years ago, it had just been the two of us in our small house in a quiet Massachusetts suburb. She was responsible, intelligent, polite; she never caused any trouble. At least, that’s what I thought.

One Thursday morning, as I was leaving with my work bag, my elderly neighbor, Mrs. Greene, waved at me.

—Olivia— she said gently—, is Lily skipping school again?

I was stunned. —Absent? No… she goes every day.

Mrs. Greene frowned. “But I always see her coming home during the day. Sometimes with other children.”

My heart sank. “That can’t be true,” I insisted, forcing a smile. “She must be mistaken.”

But on my way to work, the unease wouldn’t leave my chest. Lily had been quieter lately. She was eating less. She was tired all the time. I’d chalked it up to high school stress… but what if it was something more?

That evening at dinner, she seemed normal: polite, calm, assuring me that school was “fine.” When I repeated what Mrs. Greene had said, Lily stiffened for a split second, then dismissed it with a laugh.

“He probably saw someone else, Mom. I’m at school, I promise.”

But I could tell that something inside her was trembling.

I tried to sleep, but my mind kept racing. What if I was skipping class? What if I was hiding something? Something dangerous?

At 2 am, I knew what I had to do.

The next morning, I acted as if everything was normal. “Have a great day at school,” I said as I walked out the door at 7:30.

—You too, Mom—she said softly.

Fifteen minutes later, I got in my car, drove down the street, parked behind a hedge, and walked home in silence. My heart pounded with every step. I slipped inside, locked the door, and went straight to Lily’s room.

Her room was spotless. The bed was perfectly made. The desk was tidy.

If she was coming home secretly, she wouldn’t expect me to be here.

So I got down on the rug and crawled under the bed.

It was cramped, dusty, and too dark to see anything but the bottom of the mattress. My breathing was heavy in the small space. I silenced my phone and waited.

9:00 am Nothing. 9:20 am. Still nothing. My legs were numb. Had I imagined it all?

So…

CLICK. The front door opened.

My whole body froze.

Footsteps. Not a pair, but several. Light, hurried, stealthy steps, like children trying not to be heard.

I held my breath.

And then I heard it:

—Shh, be quiet— a voice whispered.

Lily’s voice.

I was at home.

She was not alone.

And whatever was happening downstairs… I was about to find out the truth…
The sound of creaking wood on the stairs was the only thing that broke the silence after Lily’s whisper. One, two, three pairs of feet. Maybe four. The weight of each step echoed on the floorboards like a hammer blow straight to my nerves. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to merge with the floor, praying that the dust accumulated under the bed frame wouldn’t make me sneeze and give away my position.

“Are you sure he won’t come back?” a male voice asked. It sounded young, in the throes of puberty, with that fragile tone that oscillates between deep and high.

“I’ve already told you, Leo.” Lily’s voice was different from the one I knew. There was no sweetness, no hesitation typical of adolescence. It was cold, sharp, authoritarian. “Mom’s like clockwork. She starts work at eight, has her break at twelve, and doesn’t walk through that door until five-thirty. Stop whining.”

I felt a sudden wave of nausea. Was that my daughter? The little girl who had asked me to make her hot chocolate the night before because she was cold?

The footsteps reached the landing and, to my horror, turned directly toward her room. Toward where I was.

I saw the first shoes enter my field of vision, limited by the bed frame. Black sneakers, worn and caked with dried mud. Then, military-style boots, much too big for whoever was wearing them. And finally, Lily’s immaculate white sneakers. The ones I had bought her myself two weeks ago as a reward for her good grades.

“Close the door,” Lily ordered.

The click of the lock echoed like a gunshot. Now she was trapped. If they looked under the bed, there was no escape. No window was open, no possible excuse.

“Get him out. I want to see him,” Lily said. She sat on the edge of the bed, right above my head. The mattress dipped slightly, pressing against my shoulder. I could smell her perfume, a blend of vanilla and strawberry, the same innocent scent as always, but now mixed with the acrid stench of fear emanating from my own pores.

I heard the sound of a heavy zipper, like the one on a sports backpack, being yanked open. Then, the sound of something metallic hitting the wooden floor. And paper. Lots of paper.

“It’s all here,” said the boy in boots. “The Johnsons’ house, Mrs. Greene’s house, and the new guy’s house on the corner.”

“Mrs. Greene?” Lily’s voice dripped with contempt. “That nosy old woman is the priority. She almost caught me the other day. She’s becoming a problem.”

My heart stopped for a moment. Mrs. Greene? What were they doing to her?

“What do we do with her, Lil?” a third voice asked, female this time, trembling. “I don’t want… you know, I don’t want anyone to get really hurt. We said it was just in and out.”

“Shut up, Sarah,” Lily snapped. The mattress creaked as she leaned forward. “No one gets hurt if they do what they’re supposed to. But old Greene has eyes everywhere. We need to scare her. Or at least make sure she stops looking out the window.”

From my hiding place, I saw a hand drop something to the floor near Lily’s slippers. It was a crowbar. An iron crowbar, rusted at the tip. And next to it fell several bundles of banknotes held together with rubber bands, and what appeared to be jewelry: a gold watch, several pearl necklaces, rings with stones that glittered even in the dim light under the bed.

I brought my hand to my mouth to stifle a scream. They weren’t skipping school to smoke cigarettes or drink stolen beer. My daughter, my little Lily, was leading a gang of thieves. They were robbing the neighborhood.

“How much did we get from the house at number 42?” Lily asked, impatiently tapping her feet.

“About three thousand in cash. And the jeweler,” replied the boy with the dirty sneakers. “But the dog almost heard us. We had to give him the meat you brought.”

—Fine. As long as it doesn’t bark, I don’t care what it eats.

There was a tense silence. I could see the military boots moving nervously.

“Lil…” the boy, Leo, began. “There’s a problem.”

-That?

—In the house at 42… we found this.

There was a rumble of papers being unfurled. I tried to crane my neck, to see more than ankles and soles, but the angle was impossible.

“What is this?” Lily asked. Her voice lowered its tone, losing its aggression and becoming something darker, more calculating.

—It was in the safe, next to the money. They’re photos, Lil. Photos of… us.

The air in the room seemed to turn to ice.

“From us?” she repeated.

“Yes. Look. That’s you leaving school. That’s me in the park,” said the girl, Sarah. “And there are dates written on the back. Someone was watching us before we started watching them.”

Lily jumped out of bed. Her white sneakers paced frantically back and forth in front of my nose.

“Give me that!” he shouted, snatching the papers from the other man’s hands. “This doesn’t make any sense. The guy from 42 is a boring accountant who lives alone. Why would he have pictures of me?”

“Perhaps he knows…” Leo began.

“Nobody knows anything!” Lily interrupted. “We’re like ghosts. We come in when they’re not there, we leave without a trace. We wear gloves, we cover the cameras. Nobody knows anything.”

“But this proves they do know,” Sarah insisted, her voice on the verge of tears. “Lil, I’m scared. If they know who we are… they could go to the police. Or worse.”

“No one’s going to the police about this,” Lily said slowly, and the tone of her voice chilled me to the bone. It was the tone of a dangerous adult, not a thirteen-year-old girl. “Because if he was watching us, it means he has something to hide too. Something much worse than a few robberies.”

Suddenly, Lily’s phone rang. It wasn’t her usual ringtone, that catchy pop song that played all the time. It was a dry, vibrating buzz.

“Silence,” he ordered.

I saw her shoes stop.

“Yes?” she answered. There was a long pause. “Yes, we have the package… No, there was an unexpected problem… We found something else… No, not by phone… Okay. In an hour. At the usual place.”

He hung up.

“Pack everything up,” he said, returning to his commanding tone. “We have to go. The Buyer wants to see us first.”

“What do we do with the photos?” Leo asked.

—We’ll take them. And the crowbar too. If the guy from ’42 was following us, we’re going to have to pay him a special visit tonight.

“Tonight?” Sarah squealed. “But my parents…!”

—Your parents will think you’re sleeping at Emma’s, like always. Move it! Now!

The frenzy of movement resumed. Young hands picking up loot from the floor, the sound of zippers closing, the clinking of jewelry disappearing into backpacks.

“Wait,” said the boy in boots suddenly. “I’ve dropped an earring.” He rolled over.

I saw a large, calloused hand reach down to the floor. Into the darkness beneath the bed.

My lungs burned from lack of air. I pressed myself against the back wall, drawing my legs up as much as I could, praying that the shadows would be enough.

My hand felt across the carpet. My fingers brushed against a wisp of fluff just inches from my nose. If I moved my head, he’d see me. If I breathed heavily, he’d hear me.

“Do you have it or not?” Lily grumbled from the doorway.

—I don’t see it… wait.

The boy’s fingers moved a little further. They brushed against the fabric of my sleeve.

I froze, waiting for the scream, waiting for the discovery. My mind, in an act of desperation, was already calculating how to get out, how to confront three teenagers, how to explain why I was spying on my own daughter.

“Leave it alone!” Lily ordered. “It’s just a trinket. Let’s go, we’re late.”

The hand stopped. It hesitated for a second. The fingers closed into a fist and withdrew.

—Okay, okay. I’m coming.

The boy stood up. I watched the boots walk away.

“Let’s go through the back door,” Lily said. “And wipe your shoes on the carpet before you go out. If my mother sees mud in the hall, she’ll be furious about cleaning it.”

The irony of her comment almost made me burst out laughing hysterically. She was worried I’d get angry about the mud, not about the fact that she was the head of a criminal gang.

They left the room. I heard their footsteps coming down the stairs, this time faster, less cautious. I heard the back door open and close. The click of the automatic lock.

And then, silence.

A dense, heavy silence that felt like a slab on my chest.

I waited a full two minutes. Then five. Only when I was absolutely sure they were gone did I dare to exhale. The air left my lungs in a ragged sob.

I crawled out from under the bed like a wounded animal. My limbs were numb, but I felt no physical pain. My mind was shattered.

I stood up and looked around the room. It was the same as before. Spotless. Tidy. A model child’s room. But now, every stuffed animal, every book on the shelf, seemed like a lie. A set designed to deceive me.

My gaze fell to the floor, where the boy had been searching for the earring. There, half-hidden by the bed leg, lay a scrap of paper. It must have fallen from the folder when Lily snatched it from Leo.

I bent down and picked it up with trembling hands. It was a photograph printed on ordinary paper.

In the grainy image, taken from a distance with a telephoto lens, Lily was visible. She was standing on a street corner, talking to a tall man who had his back to the camera. The man was wearing a long gray coat. But what made my heart stop wasn’t the man.

That’s what Lily was holding in her hand in the photo.

A gun.

And she didn’t seem scared. She seemed to be examining her, weighing her up, with the same coldness with which she would examine a piece of fruit in the supermarket.

I turned the paper over. There was something written in red marker, an angular and aggressive handwriting:

*PROJECT CHRYSALIS – SUBJECT 1: ACTIVE.*

The world started spinning. I sat on my daughter’s bed, crumpling the photo in my hand. Subject 1? Active? What the hell was going on?

Lily had mentioned a “buyer.” They had talked about the neighbor at 42. And now this.

I had to go to the police. It was the logical, sensible thing to do. But a voice in my head stopped me. Lily had said that the neighbor at 42 had photos of them. That he knew. And if I went to the police… what if the police were involved? Or worse, what if by reporting them I lost my daughter forever, locked up in a juvenile detention center or taken away by whoever was behind this “Chrysalis Project”?

No. I had to find out what this was before I acted.

I remembered what they had said. *The house at 42. The bored accountant.*

I stood up. My legs were no longer trembling. Fear had been replaced by a cold determination, a maternal fury I didn’t know I possessed. No one was going to turn my daughter into a monster. And if she already was, I was going to find out who had done it.

I looked at the clock. It was 10:15 am. Lily had said they would meet with the Buyer in an hour. That gave me time.

I went to my room, took an old toolbox out of the closet, and grabbed a screwdriver and a flashlight. Then I went downstairs, making sure to lock everything.

I stepped outside. The sun was shining, the birds were singing. The suburb seemed as idyllic as ever. Mrs. Greene was on her porch watering the petunias. She saw me come out and waved, but this time I noticed the worry in her eyes. She knew something. Maybe not everything, but she knew something dark was lurking on our street. I nodded slightly to her, a silent promise that I would look into it, and turned left.

Towards house number 42.

The house was identical to mine in structure, but the blinds were down and the lawn a little more neglected. There was no car in the driveway. If Lily was right and the man lived alone, he was probably at work. Or watching other children.

I walked to the front door, rang the doorbell, and waited. Nothing. I rang again. Silence.

I looked around to make sure no one was watching, jumped over the small side fence, and went to the back. A kitchen window was ajar. “We go in when they’re not here, we leave without a trace,” Lily had said. The irony of almost breaking in to save my daughter from becoming a thief didn’t escape me.

I forced the screen open with the screwdriver and pushed the window upwards. It was stiff, but it gave way. I pulled myself up with difficulty and landed awkwardly on the sink in the other person’s kitchen.

The house smelled musty, like stale coffee and chemicals, like those used to develop photos.

I walked down the hallway. The living room was spartan. Basic furniture, no decoration, no family photos. Everything functional. As if whoever lived here was ready to leave at any moment.

I looked for a room that could serve as an office. I found it at the end of the hall. The door was locked, but it was a cheap interior lock. A hard kick near the doorknob—something I’d seen in movies and never thought would work—made the mechanism pop with a crack of splintering wood.

Between.

The walls were covered.

There wasn’t a single centimeter of paint visible. Everything was covered with photographs. Hundreds of them.

I approached, feeling my stomach churn.

They were photos of children. All teenagers from the neighborhood. I saw the boy in the boots, Leo. The girl, Sarah. And many others I recognized by sight, school friends, neighbors’ children.

And in the center, occupying the place of honor, the largest wall was entirely dedicated to Lily.

Lily in the park. Lily sleeping (taken through her bedroom window). Lily at school. And then, a series of more disturbing photos: Lily receiving money from a man in a black car. Lily delivering a package. Lily… shooting at a shooting range in the middle of the woods.

But what terrified me most wasn’t the photos. It was the map on the desk.

It was a detailed map of the city. There were red lines connecting different houses. Ours was marked with a bright red circle. And next to the circle, a handwritten note:

*PHASE 1 COMPLETED. THE SUBJECT HAS ELIMINATED EMPATHY. PREPARE FOR PHASE 2: ELIMINATION OF THE MATERNAL BOND.*

I felt the ground disappear beneath my feet.

“Elimination of the maternal bond.”

That’s what I meant.

Lily wasn’t just stealing. She was being trained, conditioned. And the next test, the next step in this macabre “Project Chrysalis,” was to get rid of me.

Suddenly, I heard the unmistakable sound of the front door opening.

I froze in the middle of the room, surrounded by the thousands of faces of my daughter watching me from the walls.

“Hello?” a male voice called. Deep. Calm.

The neighbor from number 42 had returned.

I looked around for a hiding place, but this room had no bed, no wardrobe. Just the desk and the accusing walls.

The footsteps were approaching down the hall. Slow. Methodical. He knew someone had broken in. He’d seen the window, or the forced door to the office.

There was no way out.

I gripped the screwdriver so tightly my knuckles turned white. If this man wanted to eliminate me, I wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

The figure appeared in the doorway. It was a man in his fifties, with metal-framed glasses and an unassuming appearance. The kind of man you’d forget five seconds after seeing him. But his eyes… his eyes were two black wells, devoid of any human emotion.

He looked at me. He looked at the screwdriver in my hand. And then he smiled, a sad, tired smile.

“Mrs. Carter,” she said gently, “you’re earlier than expected. I was hoping Lily would handle this before you had to see… the background.”

“What have you done to my daughter?” I growled, raising the screwdriver like a dagger.

He sighed and adjusted his glasses.

—I haven’t done anything to him, Olivia. I’m just documenting the process. I’m not the creator. I’m the observer.

—Observer of what? Get away!

The man took a step inside, partially closing the door behind him.

—From evolution. Your daughter is special. Very special. She has an innate capacity for moral dissociation that we haven’t seen in decades. She’s perfect for the show.

“It’s a girl!” I shouted.

“She was a child,” he corrected. “Now she’s an asset. And I’m afraid you’ve become a liability.”

He put his hand in his jacket pocket.

I didn’t wait to see what he’d pull out. I lunged at him with a scream of pure desperation, driving the screwdriver into his shoulder.

The man moved with unnatural speed, dodging the blow and grabbing my wrist with steely strength. He twisted my arm, and the screwdriver fell to the floor. He shoved me against the desk, making me crash into the map and the notes about my own death.

“I don’t want to hurt her, Olivia,” he said, immobilizing me. “I really don’t. Lily’s supposed to do it. It’s part of her graduation. If I do it, it’ll invalidate the data.”

“He’s crazy!” I gasped, struggling uselessly against his grip.

—Perhaps. But look at the photos. Look at your daughter. Do you see fear in her eyes? Do you see remorse? No. She enjoys the power. We just gave her a channel to express it.

Suddenly, a loud crash of breaking glass came from the front of the house.

The man tensed, turning his head toward the hallway. His grip loosened for a split second.

“Police!” shouted a voice not far away, but it didn’t sound like the police. It sounded young. Forced.

The man from number 42 frowned. “What…?”

I took advantage of his confusion. I kneed him in the groin with all my might. He groaned and doubled over. I broke free, grabbed a heavy metal stapler from the desk, and smashed it against his temple.

He fell to the ground, stunned, bleeding.

I didn’t stay to check if she was unconscious. I ran out of the room and into the hallway.

There, in the living room, standing on the remains of the front window that she had just broken with a brick, was Lily.

But she wasn’t alone. Behind her were Leo, Sarah, and two other boys I didn’t know. They were all wearing ski goggles, but I recognized their clothes. And they were all carrying baseball bats, iron bars… and Lily, in the middle, was holding the gun I’d seen in the photo.

I stopped dead in my tracks at the end of the corridor.

Lily saw me. Her eyes widened behind the mask, which had been pulled up to her forehead. The gun was pointing vaguely at the ground, but her finger was close to the trigger.

“Mom?” she said. Her voice was that of a child again, full of confusion and real panic. “What are you doing here?”

Behind me, I heard the man from number 42 groan and try to get up.

“Lily…” I began, my voice breaking, raising my hands. “That man… he has photos. He says you…”

Lily looked over my shoulder, towards the office door where the man was appearing, with blood running down his face.

Lily’s expression changed in an instant. The confusion vanished. The girl disappeared. The coldness returned, more intense than ever.

He raised the gun. He didn’t point it at me. He pointed it over my shoulder, directly at the neighbor’s head.

 

“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?

Lily gripped the pistol again. The sound of the safety being released was deafening in the silence.

“There’s an exit through the drainage tunnel. It leads to the river. You have to go, Mom. I’ll keep them busy.”

“No way,” I said, and my voice sounded firmer than I felt. “I’m not going to leave you. If we go out, we go out together.”

—Mom, they’re trained killers. You don’t stand a chance.

I remembered the sensation of the stapler hitting the Observer’s temple. I remembered the fury I felt when I saw the photos on the wall.

“I may not have training, Lily,” I said, searching in the darkness until my hand closed around the iron bar they used to bar the door. “But I have something they don’t.”

-The fact that?

—I have my daughter. And nobody touches my daughter.

The wooden ceiling creaked violently, and with a crash, the entrance trapdoor was ripped off its hinges. A blinding beam of light flooded the basement, followed by a smoke grenade that rolled across the floor.

“Down!” Lily shouted.

We threw ourselves to the ground as the acrid gray smoke filled the space. I coughed, covering my mouth with my sleeve.

Two figures descended into the basement wearing gas masks and carrying assault rifles. They moved with machine-like precision.

—Subject 1. Surrender and the civilian’s death will be swift—said a voice distorted by the mask.

Lily shot.

The blast was brutal in the confined space. One of the men grunted and clutched his shoulder, taking a step back. The other opened fire, but Lily had already rolled behind the metal table, pulling me down with her. Bullets whizzed past the electronic equipment, sending sparks flying.

“Cover me!” Lily shouted at me.

“With what?” I squealed.

—With whatever!

The unharmed man was advancing toward us. I saw his black boots circle the table. He was going to execute us.

I didn’t think. Animal instinct took over. I grabbed one of the heavy computer CPUs lying on the floor and, taking advantage of the smoke obscuring my vision, I stood up and threw it with all my might across the table.

The computer hit the soldier in the chest, knocking him off balance for a second. It was enough.

Lily stood up and fired two more shots. The man fell to the ground, motionless.

But the first one, the one who had been wounded in the shoulder, had recovered. He raised his rifle, pointing it directly at Lily’s chest.

“No!” I shouted.

I lunged at him with the iron bar. The man turned the rifle barrel toward me, but I was faster, driven by a desperation no military training could replicate. I struck the rifle barrel, deflecting the shot that pierced the concrete wall, and then brought the bar down on his helmet. The man collapsed like a sack of potatoes.

Silence returned to the basement, broken only by our gasps and the ringing in my ears.

Lily was staring at me, mouth open, the gun hanging from her hand.

—Wow, Mom—he murmured.

“Wash your face,” I said, throwing the bar to the floor, my hands trembling uncontrollably. “We’re leaving.”

We left the mill and headed into the cold night. There were no more pursuers nearby; those two must have been the vanguard. But we knew more would come.

We ran toward the river, where Lily said Leo had hidden an old boat. As we paddled downstream, away from the suburban lights, my house, my mortgage, Mrs. Greene, and my old life, I watched Lily throw her phone into the dark water.

“And now what?” she asked, her voice small and fragile again. She snuggled up to me, seeking warmth.

I hugged her, feeling the weight of the gun in her pocket against my hip. I looked back at the life we ​​were leaving behind. I knew they would come looking for us. I knew Project Chrysalis wouldn’t stop. But they had made a fatal miscalculation.

They had tried to eliminate my empathy, my maternal bond, believing that would make me weak. They didn’t understand that a mother’s love isn’t just gentleness and hugs. It’s also teeth, claws, and primal violence when her offspring are threatened.

“Now,” I said, gazing into the darkness of the river that carried us toward an uncertain future, “we’re going to find the other parents. We’re going to find Leo and Sarah. And then…”

Lily looked up, waiting for my decision.

“Then we’ll stop running,” I concluded, feeling a new, cold determination settle in my chest. “They wanted to create weapons, Lily. Well, they’ve succeeded. Only now, the weapon is pointed at them.”

Lily smiled. It was a sad, tired smile, but genuine. She rested her head on my shoulder and closed her eyes.

The water gently rocked us as the current carried us away, into darkness, into war, into our new life. We were no longer Olivia and Lily, the divorced mother and the model student. We were survivors. And we were together.

[END]

The sound of the wooden floorboards creaking on the stairs was the only thing that broke the silence after Lily’s whisper. One, two, three pairs of feet. Maybe four. The weight of each step echoed on the floorboards like a hammer blow straight to my nerves. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to merge with the floor, praying that the dust accumulated under the bed frame wouldn’t make me sneeze and give away my position.

“Are you sure he won’t come back?” a male voice asked. It sounded young, in the throes of puberty, with that fragile tone that oscillates between deep and high.

“I’ve already told you, Leo.” Lily’s voice was different from the one I knew. There was no sweetness, no hesitation typical of adolescence. It was cold, sharp, authoritarian. “Mom’s like clockwork. She starts work at eight, has her break at twelve, and doesn’t walk through that door until five-thirty. Stop whining.”

I felt a sudden wave of nausea. Was that my daughter? The little girl who had asked me to make her hot chocolate the night before because she was cold?

The footsteps reached the landing and, to my horror, turned directly toward her room. Toward where I was.

I saw the first shoes enter my field of vision, limited by the bed frame. Black sneakers, worn and caked with dried mud. Then, military-style boots, much too big for whoever was wearing them. And finally, Lily’s immaculate white sneakers. The ones I had bought her myself two weeks ago as a reward for her good grades.

“Close the door,” Lily ordered.

The click of the lock echoed like a gunshot. Now she was trapped. If they looked under the bed, there was no escape. No window was open, no possible excuse.

“Get him out. I want to see him,” Lily said. She sat on the edge of the bed, right above my head. The mattress dipped slightly, pressing against my shoulder. I could smell her perfume, a blend of vanilla and strawberry, the same innocent scent as always, but now mixed with the acrid stench of fear emanating from my own pores.

I heard the sound of a heavy zipper, like the one on a sports backpack, being yanked open. Then, the sound of something metallic hitting the wooden floor. And paper. Lots of paper.

“It’s all here,” said the boy in boots. “The Johnsons’ house, Mrs. Greene’s house, and the new guy’s house on the corner.”

“Mrs. Greene?” Lily’s voice dripped with contempt. “That nosy old woman is the priority. She almost caught me the other day. She’s becoming a problem.”

My heart stopped for a moment. Mrs. Greene? What were they doing to her?

“What do we do with her, Lil?” a third voice asked, female this time, trembling. “I don’t want… you know, I don’t want anyone to get really hurt. We said it was just in and out.”

“Shut up, Sarah,” Lily snapped. The mattress creaked as she leaned forward. “No one gets hurt if they do what they’re supposed to. But old Greene has eyes everywhere. We need to scare her. Or at least make sure she stops looking out the window.”

From my hiding place, I saw a hand drop something to the floor near Lily’s slippers. It was a crowbar. An iron crowbar, rusted at the tip. And next to it fell several bundles of banknotes held together with rubber bands, and what appeared to be jewelry: a gold watch, several pearl necklaces, rings with stones that glittered even in the dim light under the bed.

I brought my hand to my mouth to stifle a scream. They weren’t skipping school to smoke cigarettes or drink stolen beer. My daughter, my little Lily, was leading a gang of thieves. They were robbing the neighborhood.

“How much did we get from the house at number 42?” Lily asked, impatiently tapping her feet.

“About three thousand in cash. And the jeweler,” replied the boy with the dirty sneakers. “But the dog almost heard us. We had to give him the meat you brought.”

—Fine. As long as it doesn’t bark, I don’t care what it eats.

There was a tense silence. I could see the military boots moving nervously.

“Lil…” the boy, Leo, began. “There’s a problem.”

-That?

—In the house at 42… we found this.

There was a rumble of papers being unfurled. I tried to crane my neck, to see more than ankles and soles, but the angle was impossible.

“What is this?” Lily asked. Her voice lowered its tone, losing its aggression and becoming something darker, more calculating.

—It was in the safe, next to the money. They’re photos, Lil. Photos of… us.

The air in the room seemed to turn to ice.

“From us?” she repeated.

“Yes. Look. That’s you leaving school. That’s me in the park,” said the girl, Sarah. “And there are dates written on the back. Someone was watching us before we started watching them.”

Lily jumped out of bed. Her white sneakers paced frantically back and forth in front of my nose.

“Give me that!” he shouted, snatching the papers from the other man’s hands. “This doesn’t make any sense. The guy from 42 is a boring accountant who lives alone. Why would he have pictures of me?”

“Perhaps he knows…” Leo began.

“Nobody knows anything!” Lily interrupted. “We’re like ghosts. We come in when they’re not there, we leave without a trace. We wear gloves, we cover the cameras. Nobody knows anything.”

“But this proves they do know,” Sarah insisted, her voice on the verge of tears. “Lil, I’m scared. If they know who we are… they could go to the police. Or worse.”

“No one’s going to the police about this,” Lily said slowly, and the tone of her voice chilled me to the bone. It was the tone of a dangerous adult, not a thirteen-year-old girl. “Because if he was watching us, it means he has something to hide too. Something much worse than a few robberies.”

Suddenly, Lily’s phone rang. It wasn’t her usual ringtone, that catchy pop song that played all the time. It was a dry, vibrating buzz.

“Silence,” he ordered.

I saw her shoes stop.

“Yes?” she answered. There was a long pause. “Yes, we have the package… No, there was an unexpected problem… We found something else… No, not by phone… Okay. In an hour. At the usual place.”

He hung up.

“Pack everything up,” he said, returning to his commanding tone. “We have to go. The Buyer wants to see us first.”

“What do we do with the photos?” Leo asked.

—We’ll take them. And the crowbar too. If the guy from ’42 was following us, we’re going to have to pay him a special visit tonight.

“Tonight?” Sarah squealed. “But my parents…!”

—Your parents will think you’re sleeping at Emma’s, like always. Move it! Now!

The frenzy of movement resumed. Young hands picking up loot from the floor, the sound of zippers closing, the clinking of jewelry disappearing into backpacks.

“Wait,” said the boy in boots suddenly. “I’ve dropped an earring.” He rolled over.

I saw a large, calloused hand reach down to the floor. Into the darkness beneath the bed.

My lungs burned from lack of air. I pressed myself against the back wall, drawing my legs up as much as I could, praying that the shadows would be enough.

My hand felt across the carpet. My fingers brushed against a wisp of fluff just inches from my nose. If I moved my head, he’d see me. If I breathed heavily, he’d hear me.

“Do you have it or not?” Lily grumbled from the doorway.

—I don’t see it… wait.

The boy’s fingers moved a little further. They brushed against the fabric of my sleeve.

I froze, waiting for the scream, waiting for the discovery. My mind, in an act of desperation, was already calculating how to get out, how to confront three teenagers, how to explain why I was spying on my own daughter.

“Leave it alone!” Lily ordered. “It’s just a trinket. Let’s go, we’re late.”

The hand stopped. It hesitated for a second. The fingers closed into a fist and withdrew.

—Okay, okay. I’m coming.

The boy stood up. I watched the boots walk away.

“Let’s go through the back door,” Lily said. “And wipe your shoes on the carpet before you go out. If my mother sees mud in the hall, she’ll be furious about cleaning it.”

The irony of her comment almost made me burst out laughing hysterically. She was worried I’d get angry about the mud, not about the fact that she was the head of a criminal gang.

They left the room. I heard their footsteps coming down the stairs, this time faster, less cautious. I heard the back door open and close. The click of the automatic lock.

And then, silence.

A dense, heavy silence that felt like a slab on my chest.

I waited a full two minutes. Then five. Only when I was absolutely sure they were gone did I dare to exhale. The air left my lungs in a ragged sob.

I crawled out from under the bed like a wounded animal. My limbs were numb, but I felt no physical pain. My mind was shattered.

I stood up and looked around the room. It was the same as before. Spotless. Tidy. A model child’s room. But now, every stuffed animal, every book on the shelf, seemed like a lie. A set designed to deceive me.

My gaze fell to the floor, where the boy had been searching for the earring. There, half-hidden by the bed leg, lay a scrap of paper. It must have fallen from the folder when Lily snatched it from Leo.

I bent down and picked it up with trembling hands. It was a photograph printed on ordinary paper.

In the grainy image, taken from a distance with a telephoto lens, Lily was visible. She was standing on a street corner, talking to a tall man who had his back to the camera. The man was wearing a long gray coat. But what made my heart stop wasn’t the man.

That’s what Lily was holding in her hand in the photo.

A gun.

And she didn’t seem scared. She seemed to be examining her, weighing her up, with the same coldness with which she would examine a piece of fruit in the supermarket.

I turned the paper over. There was something written in red marker, an angular and aggressive handwriting:

*PROJECT CHRYSALIS – SUBJECT 1: ACTIVE.*

The world started spinning. I sat on my daughter’s bed, crumpling the photo in my hand. Subject 1? Active? What the hell was going on?

Lily had mentioned a “buyer.” They had talked about the neighbor at 42. And now this.

I had to go to the police. It was the logical, sensible thing to do. But a voice in my head stopped me. Lily had said that the neighbor at 42 had photos of them. That he knew. And if I went to the police… what if the police were involved? Or worse, what if by reporting them I lost my daughter forever, locked up in a juvenile detention center or taken away by whoever was behind this “Chrysalis Project”?

No. I had to find out what this was before I acted.

I remembered what they had said. *The house at 42. The bored accountant.*

I stood up. My legs were no longer trembling. Fear had been replaced by a cold determination, a maternal fury I didn’t know I possessed. No one was going to turn my daughter into a monster. And if she already was, I was going to find out who had done it.

I looked at the clock. It was 10:15 am. Lily had said they would meet with the Buyer in an hour. That gave me time.

I went to my room, took an old toolbox out of the closet, and grabbed a screwdriver and a flashlight. Then I went downstairs, making sure to lock everything.

I stepped outside. The sun was shining, the birds were singing. The suburb seemed as idyllic as ever. Mrs. Greene was on her porch watering the petunias. She saw me come out and waved, but this time I noticed the worry in her eyes. She knew something. Maybe not everything, but she knew something dark was lurking on our street. I nodded slightly to her, a silent promise that I would look into it, and turned left.

Towards house number 42.

The house was identical to mine in structure, but the blinds were down and the lawn a little more neglected. There was no car in the driveway. If Lily was right and the man lived alone, he was probably at work. Or watching other children.

I walked to the front door, rang the doorbell, and waited. Nothing. I rang again. Silence.

I looked around to make sure no one was watching, jumped over the small side fence, and went to the back. A kitchen window was ajar. “We go in when they’re not here, we leave without a trace,” Lily had said. The irony of almost breaking in to save my daughter from becoming a thief didn’t escape me.

I forced the screen open with the screwdriver and pushed the window upwards. It was stiff, but it gave way. I pulled myself up with difficulty and landed awkwardly on the sink in the other person’s kitchen.

The house smelled musty, like stale coffee and chemicals, like those used to develop photos.

I walked down the hallway. The living room was spartan. Basic furniture, no decoration, no family photos. Everything functional. As if whoever lived here was ready to leave at any moment.

I looked for a room that could serve as an office. I found it at the end of the hall. The door was locked, but it was a cheap interior lock. A hard kick near the doorknob—something I’d seen in movies and never thought would work—made the mechanism pop with a crack of splintering wood.

Between.

The walls were covered.

There wasn’t a single centimeter of paint visible. Everything was covered with photographs. Hundreds of them.

I approached, feeling my stomach churn.

They were photos of children. All teenagers from the neighborhood. I saw the boy in the boots, Leo. The girl, Sarah. And many others I recognized by sight, school friends, neighbors’ children.

And in the center, occupying the place of honor, the largest wall was entirely dedicated to Lily.

Lily in the park. Lily sleeping (taken through

Lily in the park. Lily sleeping (taken through her bedroom window). Lily at school. And then, a series of more disturbing photos: Lily receiving money from a man in a black car. Lily delivering a package. Lily… shooting at a shooting range in the middle of the woods.

But what terrified me most wasn’t the photos. It was the map on the desk.

It was a detailed map of the city. There were red lines connecting different houses. Ours was marked with a bright red circle. And next to the circle, a handwritten note:

*PHASE 1 COMPLETED. THE SUBJECT HAS ELIMINATED EMPATHY. PREPARE FOR PHASE 2: ELIMINATION OF THE MATERNAL BOND.*

I felt the ground disappear beneath my feet.

“Elimination of the maternal bond.”

That’s what I meant.

Lily wasn’t just stealing. She was being trained, conditioned. And the next test, the next step in this macabre “Project Chrysalis,” was to get rid of me.

Suddenly, I heard the unmistakable sound of the front door opening.

I froze in the middle of the room, surrounded by the thousands of faces of my daughter watching me from the walls.

“Hello?” a male voice called. Deep. Calm.

The neighbor from number 42 had returned.

I looked around for a hiding place, but this room had no bed, no wardrobe. Just the desk and the accusing walls.

The footsteps were approaching down the hall. Slow. Methodical. He knew someone had broken in. He’d seen the window, or the forced door to the office.

There was no way out.

I gripped the screwdriver so tightly my knuckles turned white. If this man wanted to eliminate me, I wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

The figure appeared in the doorway. It was a man in his fifties, with metal-framed glasses and an unassuming appearance. The kind of man you’d forget five seconds after seeing him. But his eyes… his eyes were two black wells, devoid of any human emotion.

He looked at me. He looked at the screwdriver in my hand. And then he smiled, a sad, tired smile.

“Mrs. Carter,” she said gently, “you’re earlier than expected. I was hoping Lily would handle this before you had to see… the background.”

“What have you done to my daughter?” I growled, raising the screwdriver like a dagger.

He sighed and adjusted his glasses.

—I haven’t done anything to him, Olivia. I’m just documenting the process. I’m not the creator. I’m the observer.

—Observer of what? Get away!

The man took a step inside, partially closing the door behind him.

—From evolution. Your daughter is special. Very special. She has an innate capacity for moral dissociation that we haven’t seen in decades. She’s perfect for the show.

“It’s a girl!” I shouted.

“She was a child,” he corrected. “Now she’s an asset. And I’m afraid you’ve become a liability.”

He put his hand in his jacket pocket.

I didn’t wait to see what he’d pull out. I lunged at him with a scream of pure desperation, driving the screwdriver into his shoulder.

The man moved with unnatural speed, dodging the blow and grabbing my wrist with steely strength. He twisted my arm, and the screwdriver fell to the floor. He shoved me against the desk, making me crash into the map and the notes about my own death.

“I don’t want to hurt her, Olivia,” he said, immobilizing me. “I really don’t. Lily’s supposed to do it. It’s part of her graduation. If I do it, it’ll invalidate the data.”

“He’s crazy!” I gasped, struggling uselessly against his grip.

—Perhaps. But look at the photos. Look at your daughter. Do you see fear in her eyes? Do you see remorse? No. She enjoys the power. We just gave her a channel to express it.

Suddenly, a loud crash of breaking glass came from the front of the house.

The man tensed, turning his head toward the hallway. His grip loosened for a split second.

“Police!” shouted a voice not far away, but it didn’t sound like the police. It sounded young. Forced.

The man from number 42 frowned. “What…?”

I took advantage of his confusion. I kneed him in the groin with all my might. He groaned and doubled over. I broke free, grabbed a heavy metal stapler from the desk, and smashed it against his temple.

He fell to the ground, stunned, bleeding.

I didn’t stay to check if she was unconscious. I ran out of the room and into the hallway.

There, in the living room, standing on the remains of the front window that she had just broken with a brick, was Lily.

But she wasn’t alone. Behind her were Leo, Sarah, and two other boys I didn’t know. They were all wearing ski goggles, but I recognized their clothes. And they were all carrying baseball bats, iron bars… and Lily, in the middle, was holding the gun I’d seen in the photo.

I stopped dead in my tracks at the end of the corridor.

 

Lily saw me. Her eyes widened behind the mask, which had been pulled up to her forehead. The gun was pointing vaguely at the ground, but her finger was close to the trigger.

“Mom?” she said. Her voice was that of a child again, full of confusion and real panic. “What are you doing here?”

Behind me, I heard the man from number 42 groan and try to get up.

“Lily…” I began, my voice breaking, raising my hands. “That man… he has photos. He says you…”

Lily looked over my shoulder, towards the office door where the man was appearing, with blood running down his face.

Lily’s expression changed in an instant. The confusion vanished. The girl disappeared. The coldness returned, more intense than ever.

He raised the gun. He didn’t point it at me. He pointed it over my shoulder, directly at the neighbor’s head.

“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?

Lily gripped the pistol again. The sound of the safety being released was deafening in the silence.

“There’s an exit through the drainage tunnel. It leads to the river. You have to go, Mom. I’ll keep them busy.”

“No way,” I said, and my voice sounded firmer than I felt. “I’m not going to leave you. If we go out, we go out together.”

—Mom, they’re trained killers. You don’t stand a chance.

I remembered the sensation of the stapler hitting the Observer’s temple. I remembered the fury I felt when I saw the photos on the wall.

“I may not have training, Lily,” I said, searching in the darkness until my hand closed around the iron bar they used to bar the door. “But I have something they don’t.”

-The fact that?

—I have my daughter. And nobody touches my daughter.

The wooden ceiling creaked violently, and with a crash, the entrance trapdoor was ripped off its hinges. A blinding beam of light flooded the basement, followed by a smoke grenade that rolled across the floor.

“Down!” Lily shouted.

We threw ourselves to the ground as the acrid gray smoke filled the space. I coughed, covering my mouth with my sleeve.

Two figures descended into the basement wearing gas masks and carrying assault rifles. They moved with machine-like precision.

—Subject 1. Surrender and the civilian’s death will be swift—said a voice distorted by the mask.

Lily shot.

The blast was brutal in the confined space. One of the men grunted and clutched his shoulder, taking a step back. The other opened fire, but Lily had already rolled behind the metal table, pulling me down with her. Bullets whizzed past the electronic equipment, sending sparks flying.

“Cover me!” Lily shouted at me.

“With what?” I squealed.

—With whatever!

The unharmed man was advancing toward us. I saw his black boots circle the table. He was going to execute us.

I didn’t think. Animal instinct took over. I grabbed one of the heavy computer CPUs lying on the floor and, taking advantage of the smoke obscuring my vision, I stood up and threw it with all my might across the table.

The computer hit the soldier in the chest, knocking him off balance for a second. It was enough.

Lily stood up and fired two more shots. The man fell to the ground, motionless.

But the first one, the one who had been wounded in the shoulder, had recovered. He raised his rifle, pointing it directly at Lily’s chest.

“No!” I shouted.

I lunged at him with the iron bar. The man turned the rifle barrel toward me, but I was faster, driven by a desperation no military training could replicate. I struck the rifle barrel, deflecting the shot that pierced the concrete wall, and then brought the bar down on his helmet. The man collapsed like a sack of potatoes.

Silence returned to the basement, broken only by our gasps and the ringing in my ears.

Lily was staring at me, mouth open, the gun hanging from her hand.

—Wow, Mom—he murmured.

“Wash your face,” I said, throwing the bar to the floor, my hands trembling uncontrollably. “We’re leaving.”

We left the mill and headed into the cold night. There were no more pursuers nearby; those two must have been the vanguard. But we knew more would come.

We ran toward the river, where Lily said Leo had hidden an old boat. As we paddled downstream, away from the suburban lights, my house, my mortgage, Mrs. Greene, and my old life, I watched Lily throw her phone into the dark water.

“And now what?” she asked, her voice small and fragile again. She snuggled up to me, seeking warmth.

I hugged her, feeling the weight of the gun in her pocket against my hip. I looked back at the life we ​​were leaving behind. I knew they would come looking for us. I knew Project Chrysalis wouldn’t stop. But they had made a fatal miscalculation.

They had tried to eliminate my empathy, my maternal bond, believing that would make me weak. They didn’t understand that a mother’s love isn’t just gentleness and hugs. It’s also teeth, claws, and primal violence when her offspring are threatened.

“Now,” I said, gazing into the darkness of the river that carried us toward an uncertain future, “we’re going to find the other parents. We’re going to find Leo and Sarah. And then…”

Lily looked up, waiting for my decision.

“Then we’ll stop running,” I concluded, feeling a new, cold determination settle in my chest. “They wanted to create weapons, Lily. Well, they’ve succeeded. Only now, the weapon is pointed at them.”

Lily smiled. It was a sad, tired smile, but genuine. She rested her head on my shoulder and closed her eyes.

The water gently rocked us as the current carried us away, into darkness, into war, into our new life. We were no longer Olivia and Lily, the divorced mother and the model student. We were survivors. And we were together.

[END]