Chapter 7 - The House Where Names Were Taken
Saint Orison House stood beyond a rusted gate and a wall covered in ivy.
The official fire had destroyed the upper floors, but the lower stone structure remained. Victoria held the deed, and Detective Chen obtained a warrant to search every sealed room.
Lucia entered with Mateo, Chen, Pike, and a forensic team. Edmund was excluded because of his connection to the property. Victoria waited outside.
The air smelled of wet ash even after twelve years.
In the old nursery, faded animals marched along the walls beneath smoke stains. Six iron bedframes remained bolted to the floor. Above each was a carved symbol: V-1 through V-6.
Lucia stood before the last bed.
Her fingers fit into shallow scratches along the rail.
A memory surfaced, not as an image but as sound: a woman humming through a wall, keys turning, a child crying because she had forgotten the name assigned that morning.
Mateo touched her shoulder.
“You do not have to stay.”
“Yes, I do.”
Behind the nursery, investigators found a concealed stairway leading underground. The fire had never reached it.
There were classrooms, examination rooms, and a recording chamber with a one-way mirror. Shelves held tapes labeled by subject number. Most had been removed. Three remained.
V-6.
E-8.
M-1.
Pike found an old projector. The V-6 tape showed Lucia at approximately three years old seated beneath a bright light. A woman off camera asked her name.
“Elena,” the child answered.
A hand struck the table.
“That is not your name.”
The child began crying.
Lucia stepped away from the screen.
Elena had given her own name as the safest word she knew.
The E-8 tape showed Scarlett at seven, reciting details about Victoria’s house: the color of the bedroom curtains, Richard’s favorite drink, the names of dead grandparents. When she made a mistake, Malcolm Rusk entered and turned off the light.
Scarlett screamed before the screen went black.
The M-1 tape showed a teenage girl with Richard’s eyes.
Miriam.
She sat across from a younger Edmund Harrow.
“You cannot take my baby,” she said.
Edmund replied, “Your father says you are unwell.”
“My father is the reason I am unwell.”
The tape jumped.
Miriam leaned close to the camera.
“If Victoria’s child survives, he will replace mine with hers. He thinks children are pieces on a board.”
The recording ended.
Lucia turned to Chen. “Miriam had a baby.”
“And believed Richard would exchange the children,” Chen said.
In the next room, forensic technicians uncovered a wall of birth records hidden behind plaster. Two infants were born on the same date at Whitmore Memorial Hospital: Baby Hale, daughter of Victoria, and Baby Cross, daughter of Miriam.
Both were transferred to Saint Orison.
One became Lucia.
The other became Scarlett.
The records did not say which was which.
The DNA test proved Lucia was Victoria’s daughter, meaning Scarlett was almost certainly Miriam’s. Richard had taken his granddaughter and raised her as his daughter, erasing Miriam entirely.
A scream sounded upstairs.
Chen drew her weapon and ran toward it. Lucia followed.
Outside, Victoria stood beside an open car door. Her driver lay unconscious on the ground. A note had been pinned to the steering wheel with a silver needle.
Bring V-6 to the chapel at midnight, or E-8 dies.
Beneath the message was a fresh photograph of Scarlett bound to a chair.
The chapel referred not to the foundation chapel but to the ruined chapel at the rear of Saint Orison.
Chen insisted on a controlled operation. Lucia agreed publicly and made a different plan privately.
At eleven thirty, she found Mateo waiting near the service gate.
“You knew I would come alone,” she said.
“I knew you would try.”
“You are supposed to be in protective custody.”
“So are you.”
They entered through the ruined cloister. Rain slipped through the broken roof. At the chapel doors, Lucia heard someone speaking inside.
Not Rusk.
Edmund.
“You promised me no one would be hurt,” he said.
A woman answered from the darkness.
“I promised you the program would end.”
Lucia knew that voice.
It was the voice from the cassette.
Elena was alive.
The realization did not soften the danger. Lucia could see that Elena was standing too straight, the way frightened people stand when a weapon is aimed where no one else can see. Her left hand rested against her coat, fingers spread in the old signal she had taught Lucia as a child: Do not run toward me.
Mateo noticed it too. He shifted toward the side aisle while Lucia kept her eyes on Elena. Behind the altar curtain, a boot scraped stone. There was at least one more person in the chapel.
Edmund said, “You were told to come alone.”
May you like
Elena answered, “So were you.”
Only then did Lucia understand that no one in the chapel had arranged the meeting. They had all been summoned by the same unseen hand.
