"I know!" I snap, shoving Reyes hard toward the corridor that leads deeper into the mountain. "Guide us. One wrong turn, one hesitation, and I'll shoot your fucking kneecaps and drag you. You'll still open the door, but you'll do it while bleeding out. Got it?"
Reyes nods and leads us down a stairwell that spirals into the earth, deeper than the bunker level, into rock that feels like the marrow of the mountain itself. The walls change from cinderblock to carved stone, glistening with moisture. The air grows hotter, thick with the smell of machinery and ancient dust. Above us, the building shudders. Heavy doors are being rammed open. Shouted commands echo down the stairwell. The mercenaries are inside. "They'll sweep top to bottom," Reyes says, her breathing controlled as she descends. "Standard clearance protocol. We have four minutes until they reach the sub-basement."
"Then you better fucking hurry," Sterling says, his weapon trained steadily on her back.
We hit the bottom landing. A steel vault door blocks the corridor—matte black, rimmed with red emergency lights. A keypad and a biometric scanner glow beside it. Reyes steps forward. Places her palm on the scanner. The light flashes yellow, then green. But the door doesn't open. "Secondary lock," she says, glancing at me over her shoulder. "Wade implemented it last month. Requires two administrators. I have the biometric. You have the... other." Hergaze drops to my throat. My hand flies to the pearl necklace. The third pearl. The one with the microchip. "The pearls aren't just keepsakes," Reyes says softly. "Evelyn modified them before she died. Or before she disappeared. The third pearl contains another key in the microchip. Press it to the scanner."
My fingers find the pearl, unscrewing it to reveal the chip inside. I press it against the black glass. For a heartbeat, nothing. Then a sound—like a great breath being released. The vault door hisses as pressurized air escapes, then begins to slide open with a low metallic groan. Beyond it is a long corridor lined with small, reinforced windows. Through the glass, I see faces. Babies crying at the top of their lungs. Young children and teenagers, eyes wide in the darkness, illuminated by the emergency lights flooding in from the hallway. Seventeen children. Alive. Waiting. But Reyes isn't looking at them. She's looking past them, to the end of the corridor, where another figure stands in the shadows. A woman in a lavender dress, holding a gun. "Hello, Sunshine," my mom says, her voice steady as stone. "You're late."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The alarm screams through the concrete corridor, red strobes painting everything in the rhythm of a heartbeat. My weapon is still aimed at Dr. Reyes's center mass, but my peripheral vision tracks the new shadow at the end of the hall, gun raised with a steady hand that tells me she’s been holding firearms longer than I’ve been alive.Evelyn.
Kiera makes a sound beside me. Not a gasp. A fracture. Like something inside her sternum just split open. “Mom?” The word tears out of her, raw and young, as if she were that eight-year-old girl again.
Evelyn steps into the strobe light, and I see the changes sixteen years have carved into her. She’s harder, leaner, but her eyes—the same grey as Kiera’s, the same storm—fix on her daughter with a hunger that makes my trigger finger itch. “Weapons down,” Evelyn says. Her voice is smoky and gravelly. “Now.”
Dr. Reyes laughs, her voice a dry, clicking sound that scrapes against the concrete walls. “Evelyn,” she says almost fondly. You were supposed to wait in the extraction chamber.”
“I got bored,” Evelyn says, her gun tracking smoothly from Reyes to me, then back to the doctor. “And I don’t trust you with my daughter’s life. Not after you flooded Ward B with halothane last Tuesday.”
Cam’s voice is back in my ear, urgent and sharp. “Sterling! The east wing is breached. Six of them. They’re sweeping toward the basement stairwell. You have fifteen seconds before they cut off your exit.”
Fifteen seconds. Not enough time to process the ghost of Evelyn Hawthorne standing ten feet away. Not enough time to understand why the woman who supposedly died sixteen years ago is holding a firearm like she’s been hunting in these tunnels for years. “We’re going to Ward C,” I say, my voice cutting through the siren. I grab Dr. Reyes’s arm, twisting her wrist until the tablet clatters to the concrete. “Open the vault. Now.”
“The mercenaries have kill orders,” Reyes gasps, her composure finally cracking. “They’ll incinerate the entire sub-basement to contain the evidence. You need me to disarm the…”
“You’rethe fucking evidence,” Kiera snarls, the shock burned away, replaced by cold fury. She presses her gun hard against Reyes’s temple.“You’rethe fucking evidence,” Kiera snarls. She’s shaken off the shock, her own weapon pressed against Reyes’s temple. “Open the damn door, or I'll paint the walls with you.” Evelyn moves. Fast. Too fast for a woman her age. She’s beside us in three strides. “I’m the only one who can open Ward C without the secondary codes,” Evelyn says, her eyes locked on Kiera. Not asking for permission. Stating a fact.”Ten seconds.
The stairwell above us shudders. Heavy boots. “Sterling,” Kiera says. My name is a question, a plea, an order.
I make the choice. “Open it.”
Evelyn slaps her hand against the scanner. The vault door hisses as pressurized seals release. Beyond it, the corridor stretches into darkness, lined with those small, reinforced windows —the ones Cam said held the heat signatures.
Reyes lunges. Without thinking, I drive my elbow straight into her temple. Bone meets bone with a sickening crack. She staggers, eyesglazed over, dazed and unsteady on her feet. I grab her by the collar and drag her limp body into the vault. Evelyn is already moving inside. Kiera covers our rear, her Glock trained back toward the stairwell, steady as stone.
“Cam!” My voice booms down the earpiece. “We’re going dark. Seal the east entrance. Loop the cameras to show us escaping west.”
“Copy,” Cam spits. “But, Sterling, those kids…they’re sedated. You can’t carry seventeen bodies out before…”
“We’ll figure it out.” I cut him off, the words coming out in a rush. “We’re not leaving them.”
The vault door begins to close. Through the narrowing gap, I see the first mercenary round the corner—night vision, suppressed rifle, face covered in black mesh. He raises his weapon. Kiera fires before he has a chance. The mercenary’s chest blooms red. He drops, the door sealing behind him. The sirens muffle to a distant whine. The emergency lighting in the corridor is low and amber, casting long shadows across the floor. “They’re in isolation cells,” Evelyn says. She’s already moving down the corridor, her lavender dress absurd against the tactical environment. “Wade was moving them to the incinerator at dawn.”
“You knew,” Kiera says. Her voice trembles with a violence I know well. “You knew they were going to burn them, and you were just…what? Fucking waiting here? Drinking tea?”
Evelyn stops, turning to face Kiera. “I was waiting foryou,” Evelyn says softly. “For both of you. The program has a kill switch for every facility. I needed Subject 001 and Subject 012 together to activate the failsafe. To burn it all down from the inside.” She looks at me, and there’s something ancient and knowing in her eyes. But there is also somethingthat doesn’t feel right. “I needed the boy who survived Ward B. The one who killed my husband’s mercenaries when he was nine years old. The one who’s been looking for my daughter ever since.”
The words hit like a physical blow. My childhood. The blur of faces. The men in Wade’s employ who came to the facility to ‘evaluate’ me. The blood. I don’t remember, but my body does. “Open the cells,” I sneer.
Evelyn smiles. It’s Kiera’s smile, but sharper—colder, more predatory. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Above us, through ten feet of concrete and stone, the muffled percussion of breaching charges begins. We have minutes. Maybe less. Kiera looks at me, her grey eyes wide, trusting.Yours, my mind snarls.She’s yours. Get her out. Get them all out.“Ready?” she asks.
I rack my slide, chambering a fresh round. “Always, Thorn.”
Evelyn presses her hand to the first cell door; the lock disengages with a heavy clunk. The first cell door swung inward. The girl inside—around fourteen, skin translucent from lack of sun—doesn’t run. She doesn’t scream. She simply unfolds herself from the corner with a mechanical, broken grace that twists my stomach. Her eyes find Evelyn, and she nods. Not relieved.Conditioned.“Status?” I demanded, keeping my weapon trained back down the corridor toward the sealed vault door. The breaching charges above us had stopped, which is worse than the noise.
