PART 2: “My neighbor insisted she saw my daughter at home during school hours… so I pretended to go to work and hid under the bed.

The phone grew intensely hot in my hand, and I dropped it onto the carpet with a cry. It began to melt, the plastic bubbling and sizzling into a toxic puddle.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Lily said, taking another step closer. “But you know too much now. The Architect doesn’t allow anomalies. If the others find out you witnessed the extraction, they will purge this entire household. They will erase us both from the timeline.”

“Then let’s run!” I pleaded, reaching out a hand blindly, desperately wanting to grab the daughter I knew. “Lily, please. Whatever they’ve done to you, whatever they’re forcing you to do, we can escape. We can drive away right now. Just you and me.”

Lily looked at my outstretched hand. For a second, just a fraction of a second, I saw a glimpse of my little girl—the one who cried when she scraped her knee, the one who loved to paint. Her lip quivered.

“There is nowhere to run, Mom,” she whispered. “They are already everywhere.”

Before I could reply, a sudden, violent pounding echoed from downstairs. It wasn’t the polite knock of a neighbor. It was a heavy, rhythmic, shattering strike against the front door, slamming against the wood so hard that the entire house shook.

BAM. BAM. BAM.

“Prime!” a distorted, synthesized voice boomed from the front porch, amplified through some kind of loudspeaker. “The mother’s personal device just pinged a localized security alert before it was neutralized. The perimeter has been compromised. Open the door or we initiate a hard purge!”

I looked at Lily in sheer panic. “Is that the police?!”