Chapter 7 - Platform Nine
Colin had bruises across his face, but he could walk.
They took him to Elena’s underground meeting place beneath an unused subway station. Platform Nine had been closed after a tunnel collapse twenty years earlier. Elena had converted an old control office into an evidence room.
The walls were covered with photographs, maps, property records, and newspaper articles about missing witnesses.
Mary moved slowly along them.
She recognized several faces.
“This woman was in the house at Woodhaven,” she said, pointing to a photograph of a school administrator named Helen Ward. “They moved her before I escaped.”
Elena added a note beside the picture.
“Then she may still be alive.”
David studied the map.
Red pins marked Armitage properties. Blue pins marked the last known locations of missing people.
The pattern formed a circle around the city center.
City Hall stood in the middle.
Elena connected the Bluebird phone to an isolated computer. The Nightglass files opened immediately.
Lantern remained locked.
Mary tried the lullaby phrase in several variations.
Nothing worked.
Colin sat on a folding chair with an ice pack against his face.
“Harrow’s assistant gave me another instruction,” he said. “After David found Mary, I was supposed to send a message containing one word.”
“What word?” Elena asked.
“Dawn.”
Mary looked at the password screen.
Bluebird. Dawn. River.
She entered the first line of the lullaby without spaces.
WHENBLUEBIRDFINDSTHEDAWN
Access denied.
Leo’s voice returned in her memory.
Follow where the river’s gone.
David placed his father’s inspection report beside the keyboard.
“The original chamber was built beneath City Hall.”
Mary examined the old map.
A river had once crossed beneath the city before being redirected into underground channels.
She entered:
FOLLOWTHERIVERBELOW
The Lantern folder opened.
No one spoke.
The screen displayed hundreds of subfolders arranged by city names.
Not neighborhoods.
Cities.
Elena leaned closer.
“This is not an Armitage operation.”
Mary opened the folder marked Blackstone.
Nightglass appeared inside it.
Other folders were labeled Glasshouse, Shepherd, Orchard, and Quiet Harbor.
Each contained names, financial records, surveillance images, and coded reports.
David felt the scale of it settle over the room.
Sloane had erased seventy-three people in Blackstone.
Lantern covered operations across the country.
Colin whispered, “Who controls this?”
Mary opened an administrative document.
Most names had been replaced with initials.
One title appeared repeatedly.
The Curator.
Elena copied the Lantern directory onto multiple drives.
“We cannot release all of this tonight.”
“Why not?” David asked.
“Because we don’t understand what half of it means. Some names may be witnesses. Others may be undercover investigators. A careless release could endanger the people we are trying to save.”
“Sloane is erasing the local servers at midnight.”
“Then we release Nightglass with enough Lantern data to prove the wider network exists.”
Mary searched for Victor Sloane.
His personnel file listed him as Regional Custodian.
“He isn’t the Curator,” she said.
“No,” Elena answered. “He’s middle management.”
The thought disturbed all of them.
Colin removed the service badge from his pocket.
“The gala begins at eight. Harrow’s speech is at nine thirty. The server transfer starts when the building’s public systems switch to event mode.”
Elena began forming a plan.
The gala would be broadcast online and attended by journalists, investors, judges, police officials, and city administrators. Armitage controlled the presentation system, but the service badge could give them access to the archive level.
Mary would authenticate the records publicly.
David hated the idea.
“You spent eighteen months trying to escape these people. Now you want to walk into a building filled with them.”
“If I hide, Sloane will call the evidence stolen.”
“He’ll call it stolen anyway.”
“But he can’t call me dead while I’m standing in front of every camera in the city.”
Elena contacted two federal investigators she believed were outside Vance’s influence. She sent them a limited evidence package with instructions to watch the gala broadcast.
Colin volunteered to help from the control room.
David looked at him.
“You’ve done enough.”
“I helped them track you.”
“They threatened your daughter.”
“I still did it.”
Colin handed David the badge.
“Let me do one thing that isn’t controlled by fear.”
At seven thirty, Mary changed into a black dress Elena kept for undercover work. She brushed her dark hair and studied her reflection in the cracked station mirror.
The woman looking back was thinner than before.
She was also alive.
David stood behind her.
“You don’t have to prove anything to me.”
“I know.”
“You don’t have to be brave for Leo.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
Mary turned toward him.
“Because there are seventy-two other families who were told to stop waiting.”
David took her hand.
“What happens after tonight?”
“We go home.”
He almost believed her.
Elena entered carrying an envelope found among the Lantern files.
It contained one printed photograph.
Mary took it.
The image showed David’s father entering City Hall two days before his death.
Walking beside him was Victor Sloane.
May you like
On the back, someone had written:
Thomas Hale refused the Curator’s offer.
