As the syringe pushed against Lila's molars, she tasted the sweetness of rust and spoiled breast milk. Selina's wrist artery was pulsating before her eyes, and the blood transfusion tube was winding around her neck like an umbilical cord.
"Drink," Selina said, holding her jaw in place with forceps, "unless you want to be buried with those little parasites."
Seven pods were bubbling in the cold storage, with clones of Lila floating inside them. They pounded on the glass walls in sync, with bracelets of Selina's hair braided in her childhood tied around their wrists.
(When the first mouthful of blood entered her throat, Lila saw her own milk teeth growing in her reflection. The smell of disinfectant from 1989 seeped out from the gaps between the tiles, and the alarm of the incubator was mixed with the hoarse cry of the baby.)
Hallucination is an old movie with skipped frames:
Selena, five years old, stood on tiptoe to steal the footprint card of newborn Lila
The same hands trembled and covered the incubator alarm
There was a sound of a closet door banging in the darkness. Young Selena curled up inside and bit her nails: "Let me out! Lila should be here!"
In reality, Selena suddenly convulsed, and the blood infusion tube was backflowing. Lila took the opportunity to bite her wrist, and the bloody taste exploded more memory fragments in her mouth - twelve-year-old Selena sneaked into the archives late at night and pierced her fingertips with the pen tip when she tampered with the sisters' birth certificates.
"Ahem...you are afraid of the dark..." Lila laughed, spitting blood foam, "because mom locked you in the cabinet where Lila's hair was kept?"
Selina's forceps pierced her palm: "Shut up!"
Lila's blood formed a map on the floor of the cold storage. The clones suddenly became quiet, and their pale fingertips pointed to the ventilation duct in sync—there hung half of Selina's severed braid, and the key at the end was dripping with wolfsbane serum.
"Do you want it?" Selina pulled Lila up by the blood transfusion tube. "Beg me, just like you begged me not to remove the oxygen tube the night mom died."
Lila used the incubator to swing up, and the moment she bit the key to her hair, the clones screamed. The sound waves shattered the three incubators, and amniotic fluid mixed with the baby's limbs splashed all over the ground.
"You were supposed to be mine..." Selina caught a floating severed finger, "the perfect vessel for my emotions."
Lila spat out the key and inserted it into the lock: "Go to hell and play house."
When the door of the secret room opened, a dazzling white light leaked out. Lila leaned against the door frame and panted. Her pupils suddenly shrank after adapting to the light. The whole wall was covered with her "birth certificate". The papers were arranged year by year from 1979 to 1999, and each one was marked with a different age.
The ink on the most recent certificate is still wet:
Lila Evans
Date of Birth: 2005.3.15
She tore off the certificate from 1999. On the back was her mother's handwriting:
Subject 7A has severe age-related cognitive disorder, memory reset recommended
Suddenly there was a scratching sound in the corner. Lila kicked open the movable brick panel and found a life-size doll of Selena when she was six years old curled up inside, with a key stuck in its chest. The shape of the keyhole perfectly matched the braid key.
The puppet's eyes are miniature projectors. The moment Lila inserts the key, the ceiling plays the destroyed surveillance video:
2001.7.4 03:14
The young girl Selina rushed into the laboratory holding the baby Lila and stabbed the blood transfusion tube into her heart: "Let everything go back to the beginning..."
All the instruments burst into sparks as blood flowed back into the baby's fontanelle. Lila finally understood the fake birth years - each memory reset was overwriting Selina's "correction" behavior.
In reality, Selina broke open the door of the secret room, and the blood transfusion interface on her chest was gushing blood: "Do you think you can escape? You are my most successful work..."
Lila holds up her 1999 birth certificate: "No, I am the confession of your failure."
The puppet suddenly starts up and screams with a childhood recording of Selena: "Sister! The closet is so dark!"
Postscript: The ghost of lactation
That night, Lila found a bottle of milk in the medical waste dump, with a blackened umbilical cord soaking in it. When she unscrewed the bottle cap, the night wind blew in, making a baby-like whimper.
Elvira disassembled Selena's braid key in the next room and found a microfilm embedded in the metal layer. After developing, it turned out to be a birthday card that had been repeatedly altered:
Happy birthday to me, really
——Your eternal shadow
When the moonlight is at its brightest, the clones in the cold storage will open their eyes synchronously, with fragments of Lila's memories at different ages flowing in their pupils.
The youngest one always stared at the ventilation duct and cried silently.