CHAPTER 1
THE GIRL WHO SHOULDN'T EXIST
Lena Marcellus had always known there were things her mother would rather die than talk about.
Her father.
Her past.
And the accident that turned their family name into something whispered instead of spoken.
At twenty-seven, Lena had learned to stop asking questions. She had built her life on silence—disciplined, controlled, elegant silence. A job in a prestigious Boston biotech firm. A small, perfect apartment. A circle of friends who only knew the version of her she allowed them to see.
Everything stable. Everything calculated.
Until tonight.
It started with a phone call she almost didn't answer.
"Miss Marcellus?" The man's voice was low, urgent. "I have something that belonged to your father."
She froze.
Her father had been dead for nineteen years.
"You're mistaken," Lena said. "My father—"
"—did not die the way they told you," the man interrupted. "Meet me in Beacon Hill. Thirty minutes. The truth can't wait."
The line cut.
For a long moment Lena sat motionless, the cold weight of her phone pressing against her palm. She should have ignored it. Deleted the call. Gone back to her controlled, carefully arranged life.
But curiosity had always been her curse.
---
Beacon Hill was unusually dark when she arrived. Fog curled around the iron streetlamps, swallowing the glow before it touched the pavement. A single figure stood beneath the gate of the old Tremont Chapel—hood up, shoulders tense.
"Miss Marcellus?" he whispered.
"Yes."
He pressed a small, metal object into her hand. Not a phone. Not a USB.
A **microcoded capsule**—the kind typically used by intelligence agencies, not civilians.
"I've been followed," he said. "This contains your father's final message. He wanted you to have it—when the time was right."
"Why now?" Lena demanded.
His answer never came.
A sharp crack echoed through the night. A bullet tore through his chest, spinning him backward. Lena stumbled, choking on a gasp as he crashed to the ground, blood blooming across his coat.
She dropped to her knees beside him. His lips moved.
"Run."
Another shot rang out. Stone exploded inches from her head.
She didn't wait to be told twice.
Clutching the capsule, Lena sprinted into the fog, her heartbeat drowning the world. She didn't look back. Couldn't.
But she felt eyes on her—the same eyes that had watched him fall.
The moment she reached the street, her phone buzzed violently.
Unknown number. Again.
She answered with trembling fingers.
A woman's voice whispered through the line, soft and chilling.
"Lena… you should not exist."
The call ended.
And for the first time in her life, Lena Marcellus realized the truth:
Her father's death wasn't a tragedy.
It was a warning.
And she had just ignored it.