My husband forgot his medication at home, so I decided to drop it off at his office on my way to work. But when I asked the receptionist to let him know I was there, she stared at me in confusion.

Dr. Kessel led me through a maze of sterile corridors, down two flights of concrete stairs, and out into an enclosed interior courtyard shielded from external view by towering brick walls and wrought-iron security screens.

The autumn air hit my face like an open hand.

Sitting on a wooden bench beneath the shade of a maple tree was Sarah. She was wearing a thick woolen scarf, her hands wrapped around a porcelain mug. She was looking down at a notebook, sketching something with faint, deliberate strokes.

I stood at the edge of the brick pathway, unable to move.

My sister.

The sister whose childhood drawings were still stored in a cardboard box in my attic. The sister whose perfume bottle still sat on the vanity of our mother’s old house because I couldn't bear to throw it away.

“Sarah,” I whispered.

The sound was no louder than the rustle of leaves, but she froze.

She slowly turned her head. Her gray eyes, so much like our mother’s, widened in shock. The pen slipped from her fingers, clattering against the paving stones.

“Clara?” she breathed.

I didn't walk; I ran.

I fell to my knees in front of the bench, my arms wrapping around her waist, burying my face into her lap. She felt real. She felt warm. Her heartbeat was a rapid, fluttering rhythm against my cheek. She smelled of lavender soap and winter wool—the exact same scent that had lingered in our childhood bedroom.

“You’re alive,” I sobbed hysterically, my tears soaking through her linen trousers. “You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive…”

Sarah’s thin arms came around my shoulders, pulling me tight against her chest. She let out a ragged, broken cry that sounded as if it had been trapped inside her for an eternity.

“I’m sorry,” she wept, kissing the crown of my head over and over. “Clara, I’m so sorry. I wanted to come home. Every single day, I wanted to come home.”

We sat together on the cold stone, two sisters reunited across an eight-year chasm of graves and lies. I held her face in my hands, tracing the crescent scar above her eyebrow, feeling the slight unevenness of her reconstructed jaw. She was scarred, she was fragile, but her eyes held that same fierce, brilliant light that had defined her entire life.

“Eliam did this,” I said, pulling back, searching her eyes. “He kept you from me.”

“Eliam saved my life, Clara,” Sarah said fiercely, her voice shaking with emotion. “When the river took me, I was dead. When those men came to the clinic, Eliam was the one who stood between me and a bullet. He made me swear never to contact you until it was safe.”

“It’s not safe,” I said, the terror rushing back into my chest. “Dr. Kessel told me. Eliam is trying to move you. They found you, didn't they?”

Sarah looked away, toward the high brick walls that ringed the courtyard.

“Eliam has been decrypting the final bank ledgers this week,” she whispered. “The Helios files have an automated security protocol. If they aren't authenticated with my biometric signature and a verified private key before midnight tomorrow, the files self-destruct. Marcus Vance knows this. He isn't just looking for me to kill me. He’s looking for me to wipe the server before the Department of Justice receives the duplicate.”