Chapter 17 - FIFTY-TWO SECONDSAmelia heard the gunshot before she reached the factory entrance.
Nathaniel pressed a hand against her shoulder and pulled her behind a concrete barrier.
“You have fifty-two seconds before the exterior cameras reset,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“I designed the interruption.”
Amelia turned sharply.
“You told me you had never entered this facility.”
“I said I had never entered through the front.”
Before she could question him, the service door unlocked.
Samuel Kane stood on the other side.
His suit was wet from the cemetery rain, but his expression remained calm.
“You should not have trusted the coordinates,” he said.
Amelia aimed her weapon.
“You sent the distress code from Evelyn’s coffin.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To force you away from the federal convoy.”
“You could have told me the warrant was false.”
Samuel’s gaze shifted toward Nathaniel.
“Not while Gabriel was listening through your husband.”
Amelia looked at Nathaniel.
He did not deny it.
A small listening device had been embedded beneath the skin near his collarbone.
Nathaniel removed a medical blade from his pocket and cut it out without flinching.
Blood ran beneath his shirt.
“I discovered it two days ago,” he said.
“And you said nothing?”
“If Gabriel believed it was active, he would lead us to Theodore.”
The factory alarms began pulsing.
Samuel glanced at his watch.
“Forty seconds.”
They moved through a narrow maintenance passage.
Amelia kept her weapon trained between Samuel and Nathaniel.
“Which one of you is lying?”
Nathaniel answered first.
“Both of us.”
Samuel entered a code at the next door.
“Orpheus was never a single project. It had three divisions.”
Amelia remembered the label on the vial.
Successor A.
“What divisions?”
“Succession,” Samuel said. “Continuity. Correction.”
The steel door opened onto a corridor lined with observation windows.
Behind the first window stood a hospital bed.
Leather restraints hung from its sides.
Behind the second was a child’s bedroom preserved beneath dust.
Two wooden nameplates had been mounted above identical beds.
AMELIA.
ELIAS.
Amelia stopped.
Her childhood blanket lay folded on one bed.
She had believed it had burned with her mother’s belongings.
Nathaniel touched the glass.
“You were brought here.”
“I would remember.”
“That was the purpose of Correction.”
Samuel continued toward the underground chamber.
At the final door, they found Gabriel’s bloodied knife.
No body.
Only a trail of blood leading in two directions.
One toward Theodore.
The other toward the flood-control room.
Amelia heard footsteps behind the wall.
Then the factory speakers activated.
Theodore’s voice filled the corridor.
“Amelia, do not open the chamber.”
She moved toward it.
Nathaniel blocked her.
“That may not be him.”
The voice continued.
“If you open this door, Gabriel will kill Elias.”
Amelia froze.
Then another voice spoke through the same speaker.
Her own voice.
“If you leave it closed, I will kill Theodore.”
Samuel looked at her.
“Orpheus Continuity,” he whispered.
“They can reproduce voices.”
Amelia stared at the chamber door.
A digital timer appeared above it.
00:01:00.
Two buttons illuminated.
FATHER.
BROTHER.
May you like
A message appeared beneath them.
CHOOSE WHO LEAVES ALIVE.
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