Chapter 6 - The Other Oliver
They left the service road before the federal team reached the woods.
Judge Holt drove the utility vehicle while Marcus sat beside her with his weapon ready. Daniel stayed in the back beside Edward’s wheelchair. Oliver and Lucy sat on the floor between them, wrapped in blankets.
No one spoke for several miles.
The storm weakened as they approached the northern highway.
Oliver finally looked at Daniel.
“Why didn’t Dad tell me I had a twin?”
Edward’s hand moved.
His fingers formed a slow circle, then opened.
He did not know.
Daniel checked the ledger again.
Subject O-2 had no name.
The entry began two days after Oliver’s birth.
Both infants had been delivered at Saint Orison’s Hospital. One was released to Edward and his first wife, Catherine. The other was transferred to a restricted neonatal unit under an emergency authorization.
The authorization bore Catherine’s signature.
Catherine had died four years later after a sudden aneurysm.
Daniel remembered her as kind, intelligent, and fiercely protective of Oliver.
She would never have surrendered one child and kept another.
The signature had been forged.
“Perhaps your parents were told only one baby survived,” Daniel said.
Oliver stared through the window.
“Vanessa knew?”
Edward tapped once.
Yes.
Lucy leaned against Oliver.
“Maybe the other boy thinks she is his mother.”
The possibility was worse than anything Daniel had considered.
Judge Holt turned from the highway onto a narrow road.
“Saint Orison’s is twelve minutes away.”
Marcus studied the mirrors.
“We are being followed.”
Two sets of headlights appeared behind them.
Judge Holt accelerated.
“Are they federal vehicles?”
“No markings.”
Daniel looked at Edward’s oxygen gauge.
Twenty-eight minutes.
“We cannot outrun them with this vehicle.”
“There is a sheriff’s station in Glenmoor,” Holt said.
“The Cradle controls law enforcement,” Marcus replied.
“Not everyone.”
“One honest officer is enough to slow us down until the others arrive.”
The headlights drew closer.
A black sedan moved into the opposite lane.
Marcus lowered his window and aimed.
“Do not fire unless they do.”
The sedan pulled beside them.
The rear window opened.
A woman leaned out.
Not with a weapon.
With a white cloth.
“Hold your fire,” Daniel said.
The woman shouted through the rain.
“Daniel Vale?”
He recognized her from the medical reports.
Dr. Samuel Kessler.
The physician who had treated Edward in secret.
Marcus did not lower the gun.
“You signed the termination order.”
Kessler’s face tightened.
“I signed it because Vanessa held my daughter.”
Daniel looked at the second vehicle behind her.
“Who is following you?”
“Cradle retrieval team. They intercepted me after I left the manor.”
“Why did they let you drive?”
“They did not.”
The rear of her sedan was damaged. One taillight hung loose.
She had escaped.
A shot shattered her side mirror.
The retrieval vehicle behind her moved closer.
Marcus returned fire, aiming at its front tire.
The vehicle swerved but stayed on the road.
Judge Holt turned sharply onto an old bridge.
Kessler followed.
The retrieval vehicle accelerated between them.
Its passenger fired at the utility vehicle.
Glass exploded beside Oliver.
Daniel pulled both children down.
Marcus shot through the rear window.
The retrieval vehicle lost control near the middle of the bridge. It struck the stone barrier, spun, and blocked the road.
Judge Holt continued toward Saint Orison’s.
Kessler’s damaged sedan remained trapped on the opposite side.
Daniel watched her climb out.
Armed men emerged from the crashed vehicle.
“Stop,” he told Holt.
“We cannot.”
“They will kill her.”
“Edward has twenty minutes.”
Daniel looked at his brother.
Edward shook his head.
He pointed backward.
Save her.
Marcus opened the rear doors before the vehicle fully stopped.
“I will get her.”
“You are injured.”
“So are you.”
Marcus jumped out and ran toward the bridge.
Judge Holt drove on.
Oliver watched through the shattered rear window.
“Will he come back?”
Daniel did not answer.
Sometimes promises became lies because the person making them had no control over what came next.
He would not give Oliver another false certainty.
Saint Orison’s Hospital appeared on the hill.
The main building was six stories of pale stone surrounded by modern glass extensions. At that hour, only the emergency entrance remained open.
Judge Holt stopped near the doors.
Medical staff rushed toward them with a stretcher.
Daniel blocked their approach.
“Who called you?”
A nurse stared at him.
“We received an emergency alert from Dr. Kessler.”
“When?”
“Two minutes ago.”
Kessler was still at the bridge.
The alert had not come from her.
Daniel looked at the hospital windows.
Several figures stood behind the glass on the third floor.
Watching.
“We need another entrance.”
Edward’s oxygen alarm began beeping.
Lucy pointed toward the older wing.
“There is a door under the chapel.”
“How do you know?”
“My mother brought me here.”
Judge Holt drove around the building.
They found a small stone chapel attached to the original hospital structure. A service door beneath the steps was secured by an antique lock.
Holt inserted the black key.
It turned.
The door opened onto a tunnel illuminated by blue emergency lights.
“This is too easy,” Daniel said.
“It is meant to be,” Holt replied.
They carried Edward inside.
The tunnel led to an old elevator.
When Oliver approached, the control panel activated automatically.
WELCOME, SUBJECT O-1.
A second line appeared.
SUBJECT O-2 AWAITING REUNIFICATION.
Oliver stepped back.
Daniel pressed the button for the medical level.
The elevator descended instead of rising.
Lucy grabbed his hand.
“It is taking us underground.”
The doors opened onto a bright white corridor.
A woman in surgical clothing waited beside a hospital bed.
She appeared to be in her seventies, with silver hair and a face Daniel recognized from family photographs.
His mother.
Eleanor Vale had supposedly died when Daniel was nine.
He remembered the funeral.
The closed coffin.
His father refusing to let him say goodbye.
The woman smiled at him.
“Daniel.”
He could not move.
She looked exactly as she had in the final photograph taken before her death, aged by decades but unmistakable.
“Mother?”
Oliver stared between them.
Edward began struggling against his wheelchair straps.
The woman’s smile remained gentle.
“You have brought my sons home.”
Daniel raised the stolen weapon.
May you like
“My mother is dead.”
“No,” she said. “Your mother became the Custodian.”
