Chapter 6 - The Father Who Died Twice
Emily had been told her father died in a car accident when she was six.
Later, she had been told the memory itself was false.
Ward Twelve had taught her not to trust either version.
Micah led Emily and Aaron through the hidden passage into an abandoned rail tunnel beneath the city.
Daniel and Ruiz caught up with them near an old maintenance platform.
Ruiz aimed his weapon at Aaron.
“You escaped custody.”
“Your officers were murdered,” Aaron said.
Ruiz glanced at Emily.
“Is that true?”
“He helped us.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one you’re getting until we’re out.”
Daniel stared at Micah.
“You’re M-04.”
Micah’s eyes narrowed.
“And you’re Daniel Cross.”
“You know me?”
“I know what happened at Black Harbor.”
Daniel took one step closer.
“Then you know what happened to my brother.”
Micah looked away.
“We don’t have time.”
He guided them through a rusted service door into an underground pumping station. A generator hummed in the corner. Maps and surveillance photographs covered several tables.
Emily saw pictures of herself.
Not only recent photographs.
School pictures.
College graduation.
Her first day at St. Catherine’s Hospital.
Every major moment of her life had been documented.
She turned toward Micah.
“You watched me for sixteen years?”
“To keep Meridian from taking you.”
“You could have spoken to me.”
“If I approached, they would know you mattered.”
“They already knew.”
“Not until six months ago.”
“What changed?”
Micah opened a metal case.
Inside were newspaper clippings, encrypted drives, and a small cassette recorder.
He pressed play.
Static filled the room.
Then a man’s voice emerged.
“Elise, if you are hearing this, I failed.”
Emily gripped the edge of the table.
She recognized the voice despite not consciously remembering it.
Her father.
“My name is Adrian Voss. I worked for the Meridian Circle for twelve years. I believed we were protecting governments from instability. I was wrong.”
The recording crackled.
“Meridian controls people through secrets. Judges, military officers, doctors, executives, and elected officials. Ward Twelve was created to turn vulnerable children into living storage systems. Human archives that could not be hacked, traced, or seized.”
Emily felt sick.
“I stole Meridian’s master directory,” Adrian continued. “I encoded the information using images, music, and stories Elise already knew. If the conditioning is reversed, she will remember everything.”
The recording stopped.
“Where is he?” Emily asked.
Micah hesitated.
“Alive.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“You just said he was alive.”
“I received a transmission from him eighteen months ago. It contained a phrase only he and I knew.”
Emily looked at him sharply.
“You knew my father?”
“He helped us escape.”
The pumping station seemed to tilt beneath her.
“Tell me everything.”
Micah sat across from her.
“During the fire, your father entered Ward Twelve through the north service corridor. He had already been captured by Meridian, but a sympathetic guard released him. He got six children out.”
“How many survived?”
“Three.”
Emily looked at Aaron.
“K-09.”
Aaron nodded.
Micah touched his own chest.
“M-04.”
“And me.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to my father?”
“He stayed behind to hold the corridor.”
Emily remembered a silhouette through smoke.
A man pushing her toward an open door.
A voice shouting, Run, Elise.
“I saw him fall.”
“So did I,” Micah said. “But Meridian took his body before the authorities arrived. There was no death certificate. No autopsy.”
Daniel studied the maps.
“Why contact you eighteen months ago?”
Micah inserted a drive into a laptop.
A waveform appeared.
“The transmission contained coordinates in northern Maine and one warning.”
He played the audio.
Adrian’s voice whispered through static.
“Do not wake Elise. The key is not the memory. The key is the child.”
Emily’s throat tightened.
“What child?”
Micah looked at her.
“That’s what we’ve been trying to discover.”
Ruiz shook his head.
“This is insane.”
A phone rang.
Everyone looked around.
The sound came from Emily’s scrub pocket.
Her phone had been taken by police hours earlier.
Yet it was there.
She slowly removed it.
The screen showed an incoming call from an unknown number.
Micah nodded.
“Answer.”
Emily pressed the speaker icon.
For several seconds, there was only breathing.
Then her father spoke.
“Elise.”
Her legs nearly failed.
“Dad?”
“You must leave the city.”
“Where are you?”
“There is no time.”
“You said something about a child.”
Silence.
“Dad, what child?”
A door slammed somewhere behind him.
Adrian’s voice became urgent.
“Meridian knows about Sophie.”
Emily’s heart stopped.
No one in the room knew that name.
No one except Emily and the adoption agency.
May you like
Sophie was the daughter Emily had given birth to eleven years ago.
The daughter she had been told died before she could hold her.
