Chapter 9 - The Memory They Gave Her
Clara refused to move.
The observation corridor shook as water struck the sealed gates below. A warning light flashed above them, bathing her face in red.
“I am twenty-seven,” she said. “Your daughter would be fifteen.”
Gabriel picked up the newspaper clipping.
“The message could be manipulation.”
“It is,” Alex said. “The question is what part.”
Clara pressed both hands to her temples.
“I have school records. Foster records. Photographs.”
“So did Mariana,” Alex said. “They manufactured an affair, theft, and a disappearance.”
“My mother was Evelyn Shaw.”
“You remember her?” Gabriel asked.
Clara opened her mouth, then closed it.
She remembered a woman singing beside a window. She remembered lavender soap. She remembered hiding beneath a table while men argued. But she could not see the woman’s face clearly.
“I remember enough.”
Gabriel’s expression softened.
“Enough is not always true here.”
They continued toward the control room.
The door required a palm scan. Gabriel placed his hand on the glass. The system rejected him.
Alex tried. Rejected.
Clara stared at the scanner.
Then she placed her palm against it.
The lock opened.
No one spoke.
Inside, banks of monitors displayed the flooding facility. One showed Daniel and Samuel breaking locks in the lower dormitory while Mariana guided frightened children toward the tunnel. Another showed the chapel, now filled nearly to the ceiling.
Eleanor’s body was gone.
James’s chair stood empty on the central screen.
Gabriel moved to the control panel.
“The north gate is manual override only.”
A voice came from the darkness behind them.
“Because I wanted you to make a choice together.”
James Mercer stepped from behind a row of monitors.
He was thinner than on the video, but he stood without assistance. A small oxygen tube ran beneath his nose. In one hand he held a remote control.
Alex moved in front of Gabriel.
James smiled.
“There it is. The paternal reflex.”
“You are finished.”
“Am I? Your mother said that in 2009.”
“Where is she?”
“Alive, for the moment. Leonard’s bullet struck her shoulder. The water carried her into a service channel.”
Gabriel stared at James.
“You promised Vale would never shoot her.”
“I promised many things to keep him useful.”
Clara stepped toward the control console.
James lifted the remote.
“One button opens the north gate and saves the children. Another opens the chamber where the girl is held. You have power for only one system.”
Alex did not believe him.
“Show us the girl.”
James pressed a key.
A monitor came alive.
A teenage girl sat in a small room wearing a school uniform. Her dark hair fell over one eye. She was reading a book as if unaware of the camera.
Mariana’s daughter.
Alex felt certainty before reason.
The girl looked up.
Her eyes were gray-green, like Mariana’s.
“Her name is Elise,” James said. “She has lived in Chicago her entire life. She attends an excellent school. She believes her parents died when she was an infant.”
“Where is that room?”
“Close. Far. It depends which life you choose to save.”
Gabriel studied the control panel.
“He is lying about the power.”
James looked amused.
“Am I?”
“The emergency lights and quarry pumps use separate circuits.”
“Very good.”
“The choice is fake.”
“The choice is always real, Gabriel. The explanation is what changes.”
Clara moved toward a side terminal.
James pressed the remote.
A steel shutter dropped between her and the console, trapping her in a glass booth.
Gas began to seep from vents near her feet.
Alex lunged, but the barrier held.
James spoke calmly.
“Clara is not your daughter. She is Evelyn Shaw’s child, exactly as she remembers. But she carries reconstructed memories from Subject FXM-4418. We used her to test whether identity could be transferred through repeated narrative.”
Clara pounded on the glass.
Gabriel searched the controls.
“Stop the gas.”
“Open the north gate, and the booth remains sealed. Open the booth, and the dormitory floods.”
This time the choice was visible on the monitors.
Daniel had reached the final dormitory. Six children crowded behind him. Water poured under the door.
Clara was already coughing.
Alex looked at Gabriel.
The boy’s hands moved across the panel.
“Give me thirty seconds.”
“We do not have thirty.”
“Trust me.”
James watched with fascination.
Alex wanted to smash the remote from his hand, but he knew the device could trigger something worse.
Gabriel opened a maintenance screen, rerouted power from the surveillance system, and typed a code.
The monitors went dark.
James’s smile vanished.
“What did you do?”
“I stopped performing for you.”
The north gate opened with a distant roar.
At the same moment, Clara’s booth unlocked.
She fell into Alex’s arms, gasping.
Gabriel had used the surveillance circuit to power both systems.
James stared at him not with anger, but pride.
“You see?” he said to Alex. “He is better than you.”
Gabriel turned from the panel.
“No. I am only less afraid of disappointing you.”
James pressed the remote.
Nothing happened.
Clara had taken it from his hand while Alex caught her.
Sirens sounded outside the compound.
Samuel had reached a working emergency transmitter.
James stepped backward toward a concealed door.
Alex grabbed him by the coat.
“For fifteen years, you kept my son in a cage.”
James looked into his face.
“And for fifteen years, your daughter sat at your family table.”
Then he bit down on something hidden between his teeth.
His body convulsed.
Alex lowered him to the floor as foam gathered at his lips.
May you like
Before losing consciousness, James whispered one name.
“Victoria.”
