Chapter 13 - The Mother Who Refused to Die
Dr. Wren pulled Lydia onto the server table and opened his medical case. The implant had shifted deeper into her palm, releasing a microscopic dose of toxin with each pulse.
“It is tied to her heartbeat,” he said. “If I remove it incorrectly, the archive reads her as dead and CROWN opens immediately.”
Gunfire thundered in the chapel above.
Ethan and Gabriel barricaded the lower doors while Naomi’s agents fought Hollis’s men. Celeste guided the children from the underground dormitory into the estate’s western tunnels. Mara stayed beside Valerie and Lydia.
Lydia gripped Valerie’s wrist. “You should go.”
“No.”
“I have already taken enough of your life.”
“You do not get to leave again because it is easier than staying.”
Lydia’s eyes filled.
Dr. Wren needed a matching biological signal to keep the implant connected while he removed it. Valerie’s blood was the closest match. He attached sensors to mother and daughter, linking their heart rhythms through a portable monitor.
“Your pulse must remain steady,” he told Valerie.
Outside the glass cell, Lucian watched from behind the sealed doors.
“You cannot remove it,” he called. “I designed the trigger.”
Ethan approached the cell. “Then tell us how.”
Lucian smiled. “Restore my access.”
“Not happening.”
“Then say goodbye to your sister.”
Mara raised her pistol and fired at the control panel beside Lucian. Sparks burst. The cell’s environmental system shut down.
Lucian’s smile faded as air stopped flowing.
“Tell us,” Mara said, “or you suffocate before she dies.”
Ethan looked at her. “We are not executing him.”
“We are reminding him that choices belong to everyone.”
Lucian lasted forty seconds before speaking.
“There are two implants,” he gasped. “One in the palm, one beneath the collarbone. Remove the chest transmitter first.”
Dr. Wren scanned Lydia and found the second device. It was wrapped around an artery.
The procedure required equipment from the clinic wing. Naomi volunteered to retrieve it. Gabriel went with her.
Ethan remained at the lower door. Valerie sat beside Lydia, forcing herself to breathe slowly as their heart rhythms synchronized.
“Tell me something true,” Valerie said.
Lydia swallowed. “You hated peas when you were a baby.”
“That is not enough.”
“You slept only when Leon sang badly.”
Valerie’s mouth trembled.
“He kept a photograph of you in his wallet,” Lydia continued. “Every year on your birthday, he sent me a picture through a chain of seven people. I watched you grow from envelopes I burned after one night.”
“Why did you not come?”
“Because I was afraid my love would be selfish.”
“It was selfish to stay away.”
“Yes.”
The answer surprised Valerie.
Lydia did not defend herself. “I made the wrong choice many times. Protection became a word I used when I was too frightened to ask what you needed.”
Valerie squeezed her hand. “I needed a mother.”
“I know.”
Naomi and Gabriel returned with surgical tools as the implant timer reached four minutes.
Dr. Wren cut beneath Lydia’s collarbone. Blood spread across the white sheet. Valerie watched the monitor and kept breathing.
The chapel doors buckled.
Ethan joined Naomi’s agents as Hollis’s men broke through. Hollis entered firing. Victor, wounded and unsteady, shot the rifle from his hand.
Celeste stepped from the side passage and struck Hollis with the butt of her pistol.
“You sold my house to Lucian,” she said.
Hollis spat blood. “Your family sold this county long before I was born.”
The second implant came free.
Dr. Wren placed it beside the palm device and connected both to a pulse simulator. For one second the monitors went flat.
CROWN began opening.
Valerie shouted her mother’s name.
Then Lydia’s heart rhythm returned. The simulator matched it. The archive paused at one percent.
Dr. Wren removed the device from her palm.
Lydia survived.
The lower chamber erupted in exhausted relief, but Ethan saw Lucian watching the CROWN display.
One percent of the ledger had already been released.
A list of seven names appeared on the public monitor.
One belonged to Prosecutor Naomi Reed.
ASSIGNED IDENTITY. ORIGINAL SUBJECT DECEASED.
Every agent turned toward her.
Naomi stared at the screen.
“I did not know,” she whispered.
Lucian laughed from the cell.
“That is the beauty of the system. Even its rebels do not know who they are.”
Naomi lowered her weapon.
A second name appeared.
CELESTE ASHFORD.
STATUS: ASSIGNED MATRIARCH.
Ethan looked at the woman who had raised him.
Celeste seemed genuinely shocked.
The third name began loading.
May you like
Before it appeared, the server chamber lost power.
In total darkness, someone opened Lucian’s cell.
