Chapter 13 - THE SECOND MANIFEST
Mara woke on the floor with Jonah calling her name.
Cass was gone.
So was Lena.
Theo and May remained unconscious beside the open tunnel, breathing normally.
Mara checked the photograph again.
Hangar Twelve stood on the airport’s abandoned eastern edge. Officially, it had been sealed after a fuel accident.
Unofficially, someone had used it less than an hour earlier.
Jonah recovered a data chip Cass had dropped.
Its files contained two passenger manifests.
The first belonged to Flight 718. It listed 184 ordinary travelers.
The second listed the same passengers under different names, nationalities and passport numbers.
Every identity belonged to someone who had died.
“What does that mean?” Mara asked.
“The passengers weren’t kidnapped,” Jonah said. “They were copied.”
Orpheus had harvested their faces, voices and travel patterns. It could now create convincing records of them crossing any border in the world.
Theo opened his eyes.
“The red lady took Mommy.”
“Did she say where?”
He nodded toward the photograph.
“She said Mommy had to wake Daddy.”
Mara crouched beside him.
“Is Elias your father?”
Theo looked at May before answering.
“Mommy told us never to say.”
Lena had introduced the children as the family of a missing airport engineer.
She had never mentioned Elias.
May opened her hand.
Inside was a silver button torn from Lena’s coat.
A tiny transmitter blinked beneath it.
Jonah connected it to his tablet.
A live signal appeared beneath Hangar Twelve.
Then another signal appeared beside it.
Both were labeled LENA VALE.
May you like
One was moving.
The other had been stationary underground for eighteen months.
