Chapter 14 - The Blackout at the Listening Room
Emergency lights glowed red along the hallway.
Aria lifted Elias from the carpet and moved behind the reception desk while Nora drew her weapon. Emily locked the front doors. The center’s opening ceremony had ended only an hour earlier, but staff and several families remained inside.
A security alarm should have sounded.
It did not.
The blackout was local. Buildings across the street still had power.
Nora called federal security. Her phone showed no signal.
“Jammer,” she said.
A sound came from the records room.
Emily took Elias and led the families toward a reinforced consultation suite. Aria followed Nora down the corridor, ignoring the pain in her leg. The center had been designed with panic buttons, cameras, and controlled access after everything they survived.
Someone had disabled all of it.
The records-room door stood open.
Inside, the flash drive remained connected to Aria’s computer. The screen ran on battery power. A video file was playing.
Charles Vance appeared older than in the first recording. Bernard Hale sat across from him.
Charles said, “The maternal marker protects against oxygen deprivation, but the male expression affects neural recovery. A son born after a controlled hypoxic event may demonstrate accelerated repair.”
Hale asked, “And if he survives?”
“We follow him.”
“And if he does not?”
Charles looked away. “Then the model was wrong.”
Aria felt the room tilt.
Elias’s fetal distress had not been an unfortunate byproduct. It had been part of the experiment.
A figure moved behind the shelving.
Nora raised her weapon. “Come out.”
A young man stepped into the red light. He wore a maintenance uniform and held both hands visible.
“My name is Daniel Price,” he said. “I am one of the sons.”
Aria recognized the surname from Aurora records. His mother, Subject Three, had died during childbirth. Daniel had been raised through foster homes and later received a Vance Foundation scholarship.
He claimed he caused the blackout to prevent the flash drive from transmitting its location.
“Serena placed a tracker in the files,” he said. “The moment you opened the protocol, her people knew where you were.”
Nora searched him and found no weapon.
“Why should we trust you?” Aria asked.
“You should not. But you should know the building is surrounded.”
Through a narrow window, headlights appeared along the alley.
Daniel explained that the Sons Protocol involved twelve male children believed to show unusual recovery after neonatal oxygen deprivation. Hale’s network monitored them, recruited them into high-risk professions, and collected neurological data after injuries.
Daniel discovered the truth after surviving a construction accident that should have left him paralyzed. Serena contacted him during rehabilitation and promised answers.
“She said Elias is the cleanest subject,” Daniel said. “No childhood trauma, no later injury, complete genetic history.”
“He is an infant,” Aria replied.
“To them, that makes him perfect.”
A crash sounded at the front entrance.
Nora ordered everyone into the consultation suite. Daniel opened a hidden service hatch he had discovered while posing as a contractor. It led to the basement parking area.
Aria hesitated.
“You caused the blackout. You knew this building’s systems.”
“I helped install them.”
“Were you sent by Serena?”
“Yes.”
Emily stared at him.
Daniel continued, “I was supposed to take the drive and bring Elias. I changed my mind when I saw the families here.”
The front glass shattered.
There was no time to decide whether repentance could be trusted. Aria had learned that trust without verification was surrender, but refusal to act could also become a choice.
She handed Elias to Emily and took the flash drive.
“Lead us out,” she told Daniel. “Nora goes behind you. One wrong movement and this ends.”
They descended through the service hatch as armed intruders entered the center above. In the basement, federal vehicles arrived, alerted by a silent analog alarm Emily had installed separately from the digital system.
The intruders fled. Two were arrested.
Daniel surrendered.
Serena was not among them.
Investigators traced the flash drive’s beacon to a private medical transport plane scheduled to depart from a small airport that night. Agents intercepted the plane and found laboratory equipment, neonatal restraints, and travel documents prepared for Elias under another name.
The pilot carried a phone with one unread message from Serena.
Do not take the child yet. The mother has not completed the sequence.
Aria read the message in silence.
“What sequence?” Nora asked.
Daniel, seated in handcuffs, looked at Elias.
“The three tests,” he said. “Hemorrhage. Separation. Choice.”
Aria’s blood ran cold.
“What choice?”
Daniel answered carefully.
“The mother must decide whether to save the child or expose the program. Hale believed she could not do both.”
Aria looked at the flash drive in her hand.
May you like
A final encrypted folder had appeared.
Its title was CHOICE.
