Chapter 9 - The Facility Beneath the Hill
Masked attackers emerged from the trees.
Emily pulled Peter to the floor as bullets struck the armored door.
Beck returned fire from the front vehicle.
Agents moved into defensive positions.
One attacker opened the rear door and reached for Peter.
Emily drove her shoulder into him, seized his weapon and struck him across the throat.
Peter kicked the man away.
Even handcuffed, he moved with unexpected precision.
“You’ve done this before,” Emily said.
“My mother insisted on private training.”
“Of course she did.”
They escaped into the trees while Beck’s team secured the road.
The attack lasted less than three minutes.
Two assailants were captured.
The others disappeared.
One of the captured men carried an Orison security badge.
Beck examined the disabled vehicles.
“We continue on foot.”
Peter led them toward an old maintenance route through the hills.
By dawn, they reached the abandoned research campus.
Broken windows and rusted signs made the buildings appear deserted.
But fresh tire tracks crossed the loading area.
Peter used the retinal scanner at a concealed entrance beneath the eastern laboratory.
The underground corridor was brightly lit.
Emily smelled antiseptic.
They passed empty patient rooms, sealed laboratories and storage chambers filled with outdated equipment.
On one wall, photographs displayed the history of Project Eos.
Elaine appeared in many of them.
Young.
Confident.
Standing before teams of scientists.
Emily touched the glass.
Her mother had lived an entire life that Emily never knew existed.
A monitor activated.
Helen’s image appeared.
“Welcome home, Emily.”
Beck aimed his weapon at the camera.
Helen smiled.
“You came much closer to the truth than your father did.”
“Where is Maisie?” Emily demanded.
“Safe.”
“Show me.”
The screen changed.
Maisie sat inside a transparent medical chamber, crying and clutching the blanket from Nora’s hotel room.
A technician prepared a syringe nearby.
Emily stepped toward the screen.
“Touch her and I will bury every person involved in this.”
Helen’s voice remained calm.
“You continue to think this is about cruelty. It is about survival.”
“Whose?”
“Everyone’s.”
The image returned to Helen.
“Your mother created a treatment that could preserve blood for decades, eliminate organ rejection and repair cellular damage after radiation exposure.”
“And kill the patients who receive it.”
“The failures occurred before the formula was perfected.”
“You tortured her for twelve years.”
“I kept her alive.”
“You murdered my father.”
Helen paused.
“Your father murdered himself with his weakness.”
Peter stepped into view of the camera.
“Let Maisie go.”
Helen’s expression softened.
“You were always the disappointing one.”
“You used me.”
“I gave you purpose.”
“You told me Emily’s father stole from us.”
“He did steal. He stole the future.”
Emily drew Peter’s gun from his holster.
“Tell your guards to release my daughter.”
Helen laughed.
“You cannot threaten a woman you cannot find.”
The screen went dark.
Alarms sounded.
Steel doors sealed behind the team.
Gas began to hiss from the ceiling vents.
Agents pulled masks over their faces, but Emily had none.
Peter removed his own respirator and pushed it onto her.
“What about you?”
“I know the ventilation system.”
He led them through a service hatch beneath the floor.
They crawled into a narrow duct as the gas filled the laboratory.
Peter began coughing.
Emily dragged him forward.
At the end of the duct, they dropped into a refrigerated storage room.
Hundreds of blood bags hung from metal racks.
Each bore a code rather than a name.
Beck examined one label.
“These dates go back fifteen years.”
Emily found a drawer containing patient records.
The first file listed a young soldier injured overseas.
Status: deceased after unauthorized infusion.
The second file listed a child with leukemia.
Status: deceased.
The third file made Emily stop.
Patient E-17.
Elaine Carter.
Status: active.
The final line read:
Biological continuation achieved through Subject E-19.
Emily turned the page.
A photograph of Maisie was attached.
May you like
Beneath it was another picture.
An ultrasound image dated nearly two years before Emily became pregnant.
