Chapter 171: The Midnight Surprise
"I think I just found your doppelgänger."
April’s brows furrowed beneath her mask. She was confused. What was he even on about now?
She stepped out from behind the velvet table and walked over to the edge of the stall. But the moment she cleared the curtain and her eyes landed on the girl standing in front of Nat, April stopped dead in her tracks.
The girl standing before them had the exact same face as April.
The same brow line, the same deep, dark eyes, the same shade of brown hair falling past her shoulders, the exact same contours of her cheeks, and the same shape of her lips.
If April were to take off her mask right now, it would be like looking into a flawless, physical mirror. They were practically identical down to the millimeter.
"Hey," Nat called out to the stranger, his eyes narrowing in deep suspicion as his hand hovered near his coat. "What’s your name?"
"Emily," the girl whispered, her voice slightly trembling under the weight of their intense glares. She took a small, fearful step back. "Emily Gabriel."
For a moment, no one said anything and the words just... Sank. Gabriel.
"Clear the lane," Nat’s voice dropped like a heavy steel blade, completely cutting off his previous easygoing tone.
The enforcers didn’t ask a single question. Within three seconds, they stepped to the entrance of the alleyway, while another pair dragged the heavy black velvet curtains of the stall shut, sealing the four walls of the space completely from the rest of the upper market.
The girl was slightly panicked. What was going on? Why were they closed in? She trembled, but she did not scream and she did not run. She grilled her cloak, clutching with all that she had.
April remained entirely still but her expression behind her mask was anything but still. Her fingers were resting flat against the velvet cloth to steady herself as her mind frantically processed the data.
Same brow structure. Same nose. Same focal distance between the eyes... Same lips.
It was a perfect match.
A cold, dangerous current of confusion surged through April’s chest, but she deliberately kept her posture locked down. She had no intention of exposing her own face just yet.
She didn’t know what kind of psychological or physical reaction would trigger if this stranger realized the seer shared her exact physical identity.
April focused her attention forward and silently pondered.
What the hell is going on here? Why does she look like me?
Her confusion spread throughout her body that her knees almost gave out but she kept herself up. And just then, acting on her confusion, the system reacted.
It pushed a standard diagnostic scan to check for genetic alignment between the host and the identical girl in front of her and April’s eyes scanned the text displayed before her.
[System Target Identification Matrix]
Since when could the system do that?
[Target Profile: Emily Gabriel]
[Core Biological Resonance Sync: 99.9% Match Vector (Monozygotic Identification)]
April’s breath hitched faintly beneath her mask, the system text blurring slightly before her eyes. Ninety-nine point nine percent. It wasn’t a clone, and it wasn’t a precision black-market plastic surgery job meant to build a trap.
This girl was her biological twin. Just... how?
She looked up at the girl.
"You said you wanted a reading?" April asked and the girl began to nod frantically. "Can you wait until twelve o’clock?" She asked, her voice cutting through the heavy silence of the enclosed stall.
But instead of this coming as a relief, Emily flinched, her fingers desperately twisting the fabric of her dark cloak. "Twelve... twelve o’clock?"
"Yes," April said, her dark eyes tracking the trembling movement of the girl’s hands.
She needed thirty minutes. At exactly midnight, the system would reset, and her Eye of Destiny would refresh back to five available slots for the new day.
With a full rank-two reading, she would be able to pull up Emily’s entire domestic history, her past variables, her current structural path, and her future destination.
She would be able to extract the exact truth of how this girl was connected to her, and what the Morgans had truly stolen from her mind when she was sixteen.
"I... I can’t," Emily whispered, her voice cracking with a sudden, sharp spike of panic. She lifted her wrist, checking a small, black-rimmed watch on her wrist. The hands were crawling toward 11:30 PM.
As if she had just seen a death sentence on the dial, the girl’s face went entirely white.
"No, no, I can’t stay past this hour," Emily freaked out, backing up until her back hit the heavy velvet curtain of the exit. "If I’m not back in my room before the midnight guard rotation, my stepmother... she will punish me. She has trackers on the estate gates."
April’s brows narrowed behind her mask. Stepmother.
"I’m sorry, I have to leave. I have to leave right now!" Emily practically sobbed, her hands shaking as she pulled her hood back over her identical brown hair to cover her features. "But I’ll come back tomorrow night! I’ll be early, I swear. I really need this reading... my mother, she’s so sick, and the doctors won’t tell me anything. I need to know what’s going on with her. I don’t want to lose her. She’s the only family I have left... my father doesn’t care about either of us..."
Before Nat or the guards could step forward to pin her down, the girl bolted. She threw the heavy velvet curtain aside and tore down the narrow stone lane of the upper market, her grey cape flying behind her like a shadow as she vanished into the midnight crowd.
Nat didn’t order his men to give chase. He simply stood at the exit of the stall, his hands tucked back into his deep coat pockets as his golden eyes tracked the distant point where the cloak had disappeared.
"Well," Nat murmured, a low, incredibly cynical chuckle escaping his chest as he turned back to look at April. "What in the Cinderella was that?"
April didn’t answer. Slowly, she reached behind her ears, untying the silk ribbons of her mask. She pulled the mask away from her skin, letting the cool, damp air of the underground alley hit her bare face.
She looked down at the empty velvet table, her brows drawn together in a complicated, heavy scowl. The clinical, airtight wall she usually kept around her thoughts felt strangely fractured.
She had spent ten years in the Morgans believing she was just an unwanted piece of garbage thrown into the Morgan household to work as a slave—but this girl proved that her entire reality had somehow been... a lie. Did this have to do with her missing memories?
"I would also like to know that," April whispered, her unblinking dark eyes fixed on the empty space where her supposed twin had just stood. "Because this is officially the most bizarre variable that has ever entered my calculations."