Chapter 11 - The Network’s Demand
Emma remained conscious, but she could no longer move her arms or legs.
Nathan examined her beneath the red emergency lighting.
“The fragments are following the spinal nerves.”
“Can you stop them?” Claire asked.
“I can slow them.”
He injected the amino-acid solution used during surgery.
The black branching lines stopped spreading.
Emma opened her eyes.
“They’re scared.”
“Who?” Melissa asked.
“The children.”
“The children under the school?”
Emma nodded faintly.
“They don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Claire looked toward the speaker.
“Then why are they doing this?”
“Something else is inside the roots.”
Nathan exchanged a look with Claire.
“The central organism?”
“No,” Emma whispered. “Older.”
Claire held her hand.
“What happens if we take you back to the garden?”
“It opens the door.”
“What door?”
Emma’s eyes rolled upward.
Her voice changed.
A deeper tone emerged beneath it.
“The one Vera buried.”
Nathan immediately administered a sedative.
Emma’s body relaxed.
Claire stared at him.
“What just spoke through her?”
“I don’t know.”
Reyes rejoined them after checking the stairwell.
“The false Claire is gone. Security found a maintenance shaft coated with black residue.”
“Vera wants us at the school,” Melissa said.
“No,” Claire replied. “The network does.”
“Can we trust it?”
“We cannot trust anyone.”
Nathan leaned against the wall.
His face was pale.
Claire noticed blood on his sleeve.
“You’re hurt.”
He rolled it back.
A thin black filament was embedded beneath his skin.
Melissa stepped away.
“Nathan.”
“It touched me during the attack.”
“How long ago?” Claire asked.
“Seven minutes.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because we needed to stabilize Emma.”
Claire stared at the moving line in his arm.
“Can you remove it?”
Nathan picked up a scalpel.
“Possibly.”
He cut into his own skin.
Instead of blood, black fluid seeped from the wound.
The filament retreated deeper.
Nathan dropped the scalpel.
“It is already integrated.”
Reyes raised his weapon.
Claire moved between them.
“No.”
“He may become another copy.”
“He is still Nathan.”
“For how long?”
Nathan looked at Emma.
“I can hear them.”
Claire felt her stomach tighten.
“What are they saying?”
“Coordinates.”
“To the garden?”
“No. Different locations.”
“How many?”
“Hundreds.”
Nathan closed his eyes.
“Schools, clinics, shelters, juvenile hospitals. The network is much larger than Westridge.”
Melissa covered her mouth.
“Vera did this everywhere?”
Nathan shook his head.
“Some locations predate her research.”
Claire remembered Vera calling the buried presence older.
“Then she did not create it.”
“She may have found it.”
The hospital’s emergency systems began failing again.
Oxygen pressure dropped.
Reyes looked toward the stairwell.
“We cannot stay here.”
Claire lifted Emma.
“We go to the garden.”
Melissa stared.
“That is exactly what they want.”
“Yes,” Claire said. “And it is the only place anyone has given us an answer.”
They left through an underground service tunnel connecting St. Matthew’s to a parking structure.
Reyes obtained an older diesel ambulance with minimal electronics.
Leena stayed behind to help evacuate patients.
Nathan sat in the back beside Emma.
The black line had reached his shoulder.
During the drive, he drew a map from memory.
Dots covered the country.
Melissa studied it.
“This cannot all be real.”
Nathan added one final mark.
It was not on land.
It lay in the Atlantic Ocean.
Claire pointed to it.
“What is there?”
Nathan’s hand began trembling.
“The first signal.”
“From what?”
He looked at Emma.
“Something beneath the ocean has been calling to the network for thirty-two years.”
The ambulance approached Westridge.
Federal vehicles surrounded the school.
Armed personnel guarded every entrance.
Reyes slowed.
“We cannot get through that.”
Emma opened her eyes.
“Use the tunnel.”
“What tunnel?” Claire asked.
“The one Daddy built.”
Claire stared at her daughter.
“Your father never worked at Westridge.”
Emma looked toward the school.
“No.”
May you like
The deeper voice returned.
“But Vera’s husband did.”
