Chapter 11 - The Choice Diane Designed
The gas smelled faintly sweet.
Margaret covered her mouth with her sleeve.
“Get down!”
Everyone dropped toward the floor except Holt, who ran to the sealed door and fired into the lock.
The bullets did nothing.
Claire crawled toward a wall vent and tried to block it with her coat.
Vanessa helped her.
Jonathan tackled one of Holt’s agents and took his weapon. Officer Marquez freed one hand from the plastic restraint and struck the other agent behind the knee.
Chaos spread through the theater.
The elderly woman behind the glass watched without expression.
Evelyn looked up at her.
“Mother!”
Lydia Shaw pressed another control.
A recording played through the speakers.
“Participants will choose one person to remain. The others will be released.”
Claire recognized the language.
Not from a memory, but from the tapes.
Behavior under controlled crisis.
Meridian was testing them again.
Holt shouted toward the glass.
“You cannot do this!”
Lydia’s voice answered.
“You reopened the study, Director.”
A digital timer appeared above the stage.
Four minutes.
Beneath it, words illuminated.
SELECT ONE SUBJECT.
Vanessa coughed.
“They want us to choose who dies.”
Margaret pulled the gold key from her pocket.
Claire stared at it.
Diane had inserted the same key into the chamber.
“You had another.”
“I made three.”
“Can it open the shutters?”
“No. But it can access the emergency system if we reach the control booth.”
The booth was above the observation seats. No visible staircase led to it.
Jonathan pointed toward an old equipment lift.
Officer Marquez and Evelyn forced the doors apart. The shaft extended upward.
Claire began climbing the interior ladder.
Vanessa caught her arm.
“You’re bleeding again.”
The wound on Claire’s cheek had reopened.
“So are you.”
Vanessa’s palm had been cut by broken metal near the vent.
Claire climbed.
Below, Holt shouted that they were wasting time.
The screen continued demanding a selection.
Holt grabbed Margaret and pressed the gun to her neck.
“Choose her.”
Jonathan aimed at him.
“If you fire, she dies.”
“If we don’t act, everyone dies.”
Holt looked at the panel.
A row of names had appeared.
Claire Bennett.
Vanessa Bennett.
Jonathan Vale.
Margaret Vale.
Evelyn Shaw.
Adrian Holt.
Holt touched Margaret’s name.
The timer paused.
SELECTION REQUIRES MAJORITY CONSENT.
Buttons rose from the armrests throughout the theater.
The system expected them to vote.
Margaret laughed bitterly.
“Lydia always loved moral simplicity.”
Claire reached the control booth level and kicked through a maintenance panel.
Lydia was waiting inside.
She held no weapon.
Claire lunged toward the controls, but Lydia activated a clear barrier between them.
“You climbed faster as a child,” Lydia said.
“Turn off the gas.”
“Make the selection.”
“No.”
“Then all subjects fail.”
“This is not a study.”
“To you, perhaps.”
Evelyn climbed into the booth behind Claire.
She stared at the woman who had supposedly died thirty years ago.
“Are you really Lydia Shaw?”
The woman studied her.
“You have your father’s posture.”
“You abandoned me.”
“I protected you from my work.”
“By continuing it on other children?”
Lydia did not answer.
Below, the timer resumed.
Two minutes.
Holt pressed Margaret’s name again.
One vote appeared.
Jonathan selected Holt.
A second vote appeared under Holt’s name.
The remaining buttons waited.
Vanessa coughed harder.
“Claire, do something!”
Claire examined the control panel. Most labels were faded, but one symbol matched the circular mark on Jonathan’s ring.
She pressed it.
A password field opened.
Celia.
Claire entered the name.
ACCESS DENIED.
She tried Subject V.
Denied.
Evelyn looked at her mother.
“What is the password?”
Lydia said nothing.
Claire remembered Margaret’s letter.
Names can be exchanged. Choices cannot.
She typed BOTH.
The barrier dropped.
Lydia’s calm expression vanished.
Claire reached the emergency controls.
Lydia caught her wrist.
“You still do not understand. One of you was created to open the archive. The other was created to destroy it.”
“Which one?”
“That is what Diane was supposed to discover.”
Evelyn pulled Lydia away.
Claire shut down the ventilation.
Fresh air began circulating.
The timer stopped with forty-one seconds remaining.
The shutters rose.
Holt pushed Margaret aside and ran for the exit.
Officer Marquez blocked him.
Holt fired.
Jonathan shoved Marquez out of the way and took the bullet in his abdomen.
Claire heard Margaret scream.
Holt escaped through the corridor while his remaining agent covered him.
By the time federal reinforcements arrived, Holt had disappeared.
Jonathan was rushed to a hospital in critical condition.
Lydia was taken into custody.
Margaret refused to travel with the agents. She remained in the hospital corridor beside Claire and Vanessa while surgeons operated on Jonathan.
For the first time, the three women were alone.
Vanessa held the two photographs.
“Tell us which one of us is Celia.”
Margaret looked exhausted.
“I cannot.”
“You said Lydia knew.”
“She knew which child returned first. That may not be the same as knowing which child was born Celia.”
Claire sat beside her.
“Why did Diane need to discover which one of us would open or destroy the archive?”
Margaret closed her eyes.
“Because I altered the chamber after Jonathan changed the accounts. I assigned one identity authority over the money. I assigned the other authority over the evidence.”
Vanessa understood first.
“One of us can take the fortune.”
“And the other can release every unencrypted record,” Margaret said.
“What happens if we choose differently?”
“The archive destroys itself.”
Claire looked at Vanessa.
For years, their parents had trained them to compete.
Now the final system required them to decide who controlled wealth and who controlled truth.
Margaret took Claire’s hand, then Vanessa’s.
“Diane wanted you to hate each other because she knew cooperation would make you impossible to control.”
A surgeon entered.
Jonathan had survived the operation but remained unconscious.
As they prepared to move him to intensive care, a nurse discovered a folded note inside his jacket.
May you like
It contained an address, an account number, and four words:
DO NOT TRUST MARGARET’S VOICE.
