Chapter 13 - The Test
Red emergency lights flashed along the corridor.
Daniel checked the nearest console.
"Generator overload."
Vega shouted into her radio. "Evacuate! Everybody out!"
Thomas grabbed Ethan's arm.
"No. The files."
"We can come back."
"No, you can't. She's purging the servers."
Daniel ran to the glass server room. Rows of drives were already shutting down.
"Remote wipe."
Thomas pointed toward a smaller cabinet. "Physical archive. Blue binders."
Ethan saw them.
Hundreds.
There was no time to carry them all.
"Which ones matter?"
Thomas answered immediately. "Raven. County. Continuation."
Daniel froze at the last word.
"Continuation?"
"Take it."
They loaded six binders into duffel bags and moved.
A blast shook dust from the ceiling.
Not a bomb.
A transformer.
Then smoke rolled through the lower hall.
Cole's medics were already evacuating above. The tactical team formed a moving corridor around Thomas.
Ethan carried one duffel and supported his father with the other arm.
Halfway up the stairs, Thomas stopped.
"Ethan."
"Keep moving."
"Listen to me."
Ethan looked at him.
"Rachel didn't start with Cole six months ago."
Ethan's face went still.
Thomas continued, "Helix approached her before your wedding."
"How do you know?"
"I saw her file."
"Was she working for them?"
Thomas shook his head. "I don't know. The file was incomplete."
The floor jolted beneath them.
Vega shouted from above.
"Move!"
They emerged from the bunker seconds before smoke filled the entrance.
Outside, Ethan helped Thomas into an ambulance.
Daniel opened the binder labeled CONTINUATION.
Inside were profiles of children.
Not soldiers.
Children.
Some from military families. Some from law enforcement families. Some from foster systems.
The documents tracked education, stress response, attachment, aggression, leadership, compliance.
Vega stared.
"What the hell is this?"
Thomas looked sick.
"The next generation."
Ethan turned pages.
Then he saw a photograph that made his blood turn cold.
A little girl, maybe seven years old, standing outside a school in Virginia.
Name: Emma Cross.
Daniel's daughter.
Daniel took the binder with shaking hands.
"She died with my wife."
Thomas looked at him.
"No."
Daniel went white.
The page listed Emma as ACTIVE, current location restricted.
For eight years Daniel had believed his wife and child died in a car bombing meant for him.
Now Ethan understood why Daniel had been kept alive.
Not to hunt Helix.
To control him with hope he did not know he had.
Another page fell from the binder.
Rachel Hayes.
Candidate Contact Assessment.
Date: four months before Ethan and Rachel first met.
Ethan read the first line.
TARGET HAS HIGH PROBABILITY OF FORMING ATTACHMENT WITH COMMANDER HAYES.
He stopped.
Rachel had told him they met by chance at a veterans' charity auction in Bozeman.
The file said otherwise.
Daniel watched his face.
"What is it?"
Ethan handed him the page.
Daniel read it.
Neither man spoke.
Vega looked between them.
"Does Rachel know?"
Ethan stared toward Red Creek, invisible beyond the mountains.
"I'm going to ask her."
Thomas closed his eyes.
"Be careful how you ask."
"Why?"
"Because if she was placed in your life, she may not know it."
Before Ethan confronted Rachel, he spent twenty minutes alone on the porch.
The porch swing his father built when Ethan was nineteen still creaked in the wind. Rachel had repainted it twice. His mother had once sat there shelling peas. Luke had slept there drunk one summer night before treatment. Every board seemed to contain a piece of somebody.
Thomas came outside and stood beside him.
"You want advice?"
"No."
"Good. I don't have any."
Ethan looked at him.
Thomas smiled tiredly.
"Marriage was never my specialty."
"Mom stayed with you forty years."
"Your mother was stubborn."
"So are you."
"Exactly. Terrible system."
They stood in silence.
Then Thomas said, "Don't ask Rachel a question when you've already decided what answer will hurt least."
Ethan frowned.
"Meaning?"
"If you want the truth, be willing to hear the answer that destroys what you hope is true. Otherwise you're not asking. You're negotiating."
Ethan remembered interrogations, debriefings, funerals.
His father was right.
May you like
Inside, Rachel waited with no idea that her entire marriage was about to be examined through the language of an intelligence program.
Ethan opened the door.
