Stranger at the Wedding

Chapter 9 The Face of the Father

Early the next morning, they continued on their journey.

Anna ate her first crepe in her life in the car - made by the proprietress Simone herself, with bananas and chocolate sauce. When Anna took her first bite, her expression reminded Ai Mili of her own childhood when she first ate ice cream. It wasn't "delicious", but rather "so there's such a thing in the world".

"Is it delicious?" Ai Mili asked.

Anna, with her mouth full of crepes, couldn't speak and could only nod desperately.

James laughed in the back seat.

It was a smile that Ai Mili hadn't seen in a long time - a pure, carefree smile, untouched by secrets and lies. In that moment, she could almost deceive herself into believing that they were not fugitives, not test subjects, not avengers. They were just three young people cruising on a rural road in France, going to eat a delicious crepe and see a very blue sea.

But they are not.

Because ahead is Switzerland.

Ahead is William Sterling.

When the car entered Swiss territory, there were only two uniformed officers at the border checkpoint, one checking passports and the other checking the trunk. James gave them three fake passports, which were very realistic, and the officers glanced at them and let them through.

Emily's heart was beating very fast at that moment.

It's not because she's afraid of being stopped, but because she realizes that once she crosses this border, there's no turning back.

Geneva.

Colony District.

17 Wutong Road.

William Sterling doesn't live in a villa but a manor. It is smaller than Wentworth Manor but more exquisite. The wrought-iron gate bears a family crest with the letter "S", the lawn in the yard is trimmed like a golf course, and the fountain refracts a rainbow in the sunlight.

Emily parked the car across the street and turned off the engine.

"This is the place." James said.

Three people sat in the car, looking at the manor.

It's beautiful. Too beautiful to be a monster's lair.

"He's in there." Anna said. She didn't ask; she was certain.

"How do you know?"

"I can feel it." Anna placed her hand on her chest. "Here, there's something vibrating. It's not my heart. It's the tracker inside my body. It's sensing."

William knew they had come.

Maybe he knew from the very beginning.

The door slowly opened.

No one came out, no car drove out, and there was no sign of welcome. The door simply opened, like an open mouth, waiting for the prey to walk in on its own.

"Are we really going in?" James's voice was very soft.

"You don't have to come with me." Emily said.

"You knew I would follow."

Emily shook his hand and then opened the car door.

The living room at No. 17 Wutong Road is so large that it doesn't look like a living room but rather a small banquet hall. A crystal chandelier hangs from the two-story ceiling, and outside the floor-to-ceiling windows lies the view of Lake Geneva, with white sails dotting the lake and the distant Alps glistening with snow-capped peaks in the sunlight.

A man stood in front of the window, with his back to them.

He was dressed in a bespoke dark gray suit, polished leather shoes, his hair was gray but thick, and he maintained a good figure - not the kind of strength built in the gym, but the kind of natural, well - structured uprightness.

He turned around.

William Sterling.

Sixty-two years old. Twenty-five years older than in the video, but his eyes remained unchanged. Those eyes were identical to Ai Mili's—same shape, same color, same spacing. He looked at her as if looking into a mirror. A mirror that showed him what he looked like in his youth.

"Ai Mili." He said, his voice low and flat, like a windless lake, "You're here."

"You knew I would come."

"I knew it." He walked up to the sofa and made a "please sit" gesture. "I've known you'd come since the day you checked the number. I just didn't expect you to bring so many companions."

His gaze swept past Anna and then stopped.

His expression remained unchanged, but his pupils dilated slightly.

Anna stood there, wearing the white dress Ai Mili bought for her, barefoot—she didn't like wearing shoes, saying they were just another form of basement. Her face was identical to Ai Mili's, but her eyes were gray, her skin was pale, and her body beneath the dress was thin, gaunt, like a painting that had been rubbed too many times.

"Anna." William spoke her name, his voice carrying something Ai Mili had never anticipated—not guilt, not fear, but surprise. "You're still alive."

"You thought I should be dead."

"I signed your death certificate myself," William said. "March 20, 1999, organ failure. I signed it with certainty."

"You made a mistake," Anna walked up to him, tilted her head back to look at his face—the face with the same eyes as her sister's. "I'm not dead. You gave me to the Wen Tewosi family, and they locked me in the basement, regularly taking my blood, my bone marrow, and my stem cells. You didn't want me to die because a dead backup is useless. You wanted me to live, but not too well."

William didn't say a word.

He sat down, crossed his legs, and placed his fingers interlaced on his knees.

"You're right," he finally spoke. "I don't want you to die. I need your organs. But not now, in the future. When Emily's mitochondria start to fail, I need a perfect match donor. You're the only one who matches."

"So you created me just to be her medicine."

"I created you to save each other." William's tone remained flat, as if stating a fact he had stated countless times before. "The goal of Project M-17 is not to create victims, but to create solutions. Human genes are degenerating, and mitochondrial diseases are becoming increasingly common. Without intervention, humans will be unable to reproduce naturally in 500 years. I need a perfect model to study how to repair genetic defects. You two - you are the key components of this model."

Ai Mili smiled.

It's not a happy laugh, nor a sarcastic laugh, but the kind of laugh that comes when a person finally confirms their worst suspicions and instead feels relieved.

"Critical component." She repeated, "Not a daughter, not a person. A component."

"If you insist on using that kind of vocabulary --"

"This is not my vocabulary. It's yours. You've never treated us as human beings. You've never treated any child as a human being. We're petri dishes on your lab bench, numbers in your files, Data Points in your papers. We're M-17-1 and M-17-2, not Ai Mili and Anna."

William looked at her.

There was no expression on his face, but something appeared in his eyes—small, hidden, like a dark cloud on the distant horizon. It was anger. The anger of a creator who had been challenged.

"Who do you think you are?" He stood up and walked towards Emily, each step slow and heavy. "Do you think your twenty-six years of privilege are a given? Do you think the wealth, fame, and status of Wen Tewosi were bestowed by whom? It was me. I placed you in that family not for you to enjoy, but for you to survive. Your biological mother had a fatal mitochondrial defect. You inherited her egg, but not her disease—because I repaired your genetic defect at the embryonic stage. Your health was given by me. Your life was given by me. You have no right to judge me."

"And what about Anna?" Ai Mili's voice was very soft, but every word was like a nail. "Who gave her life? Who gave her the twenty-six years in the basement? Who gave her the illness in her body?"

William turned to Anna.

He looked at her for a long time.

Then he said something that no one in the room had expected.

"Anna, do you hate me?"

Anna was silent for a long time.

The clock on the wall ticks away, and the sailboats on Lake Geneva move slowly.

"No," Anna said. "I don't hate you. Hate is a privilege of the strong. I am weak; I have only two states: alive and dead. You are not in my equation."

William's face changed for the first time.

It's not anger, not fear, but something older, more primitive - it's bewilderment. A creator discovers that their creation has ignored them. Not resented, not forgiven, but completely, indifferently, and without a trace erased from the other's world.

He no longer exists.

In Anna's world, he had existed for twenty-six years - as the source of fear, as the creator of pain, and as the person who injected her with tranquilizers punctually at nine every morning. But now, Anna says he no longer exists.

This is more cruel than any accusation.

"I didn't come here to hate you," Anna said as she sat down on the sofa, her body sinking into the soft leather. "I came here because my sister wanted to. I accompanied her. I don't need your apology, your explanation, your money, or your organs. I don't need anything from you. I'm dying, and a dying person doesn't need anything."

"You're not going to die," William said, walking up to Anna, crouching down, and looking her in the face—forty years separated their faces, but their cheekbones were the same shape. "I know how to regenerate your mitochondria. I've already succeeded in the lab. A three-month treatment, and your cells can return to normal levels."

"What's the cost?"

William did not answer.

"What's the cost?" Anna asked again.

"It's too early for you to ask about the price now."

"It's not too late. Every 'gift' you give comes with a price. You gave Ai Mili a healthy body, and the price was her being used as a political bargaining chip for exchange. You gave her Wen Tewosi's home, and the price was her right to know the truth. You gave her James, and the price was that James had to be your spy. Now you want to give me health. What's the price? My ovaries? My corneas? Or my brain tissue?"

William stood up and took a step back.

He looked into Anna's eyes, those gray eyes that were different in color from all his children's.

"Your eyes are like hers." He said.

"Like who?"

" Ai Linna. Your mother. Ai Mili inherited her face shape, and you inherited her eyes. Grey, like the sea before a storm."

This is the only moment in the entire conversation when William Sterling shows something resembling human emotion.

But it was only for a moment.

The next second, his phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID, and his face changed.

It's not fear, but alertness.

"You need to leave." He said, his voice regaining that imperative, unassailable tone.

"What?"

"Lieutenant Colonel Mora. She traced your signal. Her men will be here in twenty minutes. She's not here to negotiate; she's here to destroy evidence. And you are the evidence."

"You're going to protect us?" Ai Mili looked at him incredulously. "Are you having a conscience now?"

"It's not a conscience awakening." William walked up to the desk, pulled open the drawer, and took out a black folder. "It's a calculation of interests. If Mora catches you, the M-17 project will be exposed. If the project is exposed, I'll lose everything. So I'm protecting you, not because I love you, but because you're my insurance policy."

He handed the folder to Ai Mili.

"The complete dossier of Project M-17. The list of all subjects, copies of all experimental data, and testimonies of all involved personnel. Including Mora, including the Deputy Secretary of Defense, including three Members of Parliament, and including your adoptive father, Richard Wentworth. Once this dossier is made public, the entire Department of Defense will be shaken. No one can suppress it."

"Isn't giving this to us like handing a knife to the person you want to kill?"

"A knife is most threatening when it's still in its sheath." William said, "Take it and leave. Never make it public, never mention it. As long as you live, this file is a deterrent. Mora won't dare to touch you because she doesn't know if you have a backup. She won't dare to touch me because she doesn't know if I've left other copies. This is a balance. You live, I live, and the file sleeps. This is the best outcome."

"What about Samantha and Veronica?" James asked.

"Veronica has been released. Mora has no evidence to hold her. Samantha—she needs to disappear for a while. I have an apartment in Barcelona where she can stay until the heat dies down."

"What are your terms?" Ai Mili asked.

"There are no conditions." William looked at her, and something glinted in those blue eyes that were exactly like hers - not tenderness, not guilt, but an expression Ai Mili had never seen before, an extremely rare one. It was hesitation. It was the hesitation of a man who had never hesitated in his life.

"There's one condition," he corrected himself. "Anna stays."

"Impossible." Ai Mili's voice was as sharp as a blade.

"Let me finish. Anna stays, and I'll treat her. In three months, her mitochondria can return to the level of a normal person. I have the world's best gene therapy team in my lab. She can live."

"Your laboratory." Anna repeated. "Your basement."

"It's different. This time you're a patient, not a test subject."

"Is there a difference?"

William fell silent for a few seconds.

"Anna," he said, "I've made many mistakes in my life. You were the biggest one. Not because of your genetic defects, but because I never saw you as a person. I want to make amends. Not out of morality, not out of guilt, just like you - out of an equation. An equation I must solve before I die. If you still hate me when I die, then my equation will remain unsolved."

Anna looked at him.

She stood up and walked up to him.

She reached out and touched his face.

William didn't move.

"You're not cold," Anna said. "Your face is warm. I always thought you were cold."

When she said this, her expression was very calm, but Ai Mili saw a teardrop at the corner of her eye, very small, almost invisible, like morning dew that briefly existed and then evaporated.

"I'm staying here," Anna said. "Not because I trust you, but because I want to live. Not because I want to see your equation solved, but because I want to watch more sunrises with my sister. That's enough."

William tried to say something, his lips moved but no sound came out.

Then the doorbell rang. Not the front door, but the back door—a entrance known only to a few people.

"The priest of the church," William said. "He comes to give me communion every Wednesday. Today is Wednesday."

"Do you believe in religion?" Emily asked.

"I don't believe it. But the priest doesn't know." William walked towards the back door. "You go through the front door. Mora will arrive in fifteen minutes. Head to Italy; the border is a forty-minute drive southeast. James knows the way."

"Wait a minute." Anna called out to him.

William stopped walking without looking back.

"You've never called me by my name," Anna said. "You've called me M-17-2, Subject, Backup, Donor. You've never called me Anna."

William turned around.

"Anna," he said.

There is only this one word.

There was no "sorry", no "take care", and no extra words at all.

But Anna's tears finally fell.

It's not because of forgiveness.

It was because her father - the man who experimented on her, locked her in the basement, and treated her like a d**g - finally called her name.

Not a number.

is the name.

Anna.