Chapter 16 - NINE MINUTES OF AIR
Ward smiled while poison filled the room.
“Your father designed a beautiful lock,” she said on the screen. “Biometric key, physical token, memory phrase. Elegant. Annoying. Very David.”
I grabbed the keyboard.
“Stop the gas.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“Same result.”
Noah pulled open a floor panel.
“Ventilation line!”
Eli joined him.
The timer hit 8:12.
I kept Ward talking.
“Why me?”
“Because your father made you the final authorization.”
“For what?”
“The master archive.”
“I’m looking at it.”
Ward laughed softly.
“No, dear. You’re looking at the bait.”
A new directory appeared.
CORE.
Encrypted.
“Open it,” Ward said.
“Go to hell.”
“People always say that when they finally understand leverage.”
The feed behind her changed.
Mom sat tied to a chair.
Tessa and Pike were gone.
Sloane stood beside Mom with a gun.
I felt the room shrink.
Ward said, “Open CORE, or Daniel shoots her.”
Noah looked up.
“Don’t.”
“That’s our mother.”
“And CORE could destroy thousands of lives.”
“She is one life!”
“She is our life,” he said. “That’s why Ward chose her.”
I hated him for being right.
The timer hit 6:47.
Eli ripped out a ventilation grate.
“Maintenance shaft. Too narrow.”
“For who?” I asked.
“For me.”
Noah pointed at me.
“You go.”
“I’m not leaving either of you.”
“You can fit.”
“So can you.”
“Not with my shoulder.”
I looked down.
Blood soaked Noah’s sleeve.
He had been hit during the highway chase and never told me.
“Idiot.”
“Family trait.”
4:55.
On screen, Sloane raised the gun to Mom’s head.
Ward said, “Last chance.”
I typed the phrase.
MERCY WITHOUT TRUTH IS CONTROL.
Noah grabbed my wrist.
“No!”
The CORE directory opened.
And every light in the room went white.
Files poured across the screen.
Judges.
Senators.
CEOs.
Foreign accounts.
Murders.
Witnesses.
Then a folder labeled REED FAMILY.
I opened it.
The gas timer showed 3:39.
Inside was a video from twenty-four years ago.
My father under the temple.
Ward beside him.
A little girl hidden behind a pillar.
Me.
Dad shouted, “Run, Maya!”
A young Eli appeared.
But he wasn’t carrying me toward the treatment room.
He was carrying me away from it.
Ward had lied to my mother.
Or Mom had remembered wrong.
Then another figure stepped into the old video.
A teenage boy.
Noah.
I stared.
“That’s impossible.”
Noah was fourteen at the time.
He looked at the screen and went completely still.
The timer hit 2:58.
I turned to him.
“You were there too.”
Noah whispered, “I don’t remember.”
Then Ward’s voice came through the speaker.
“Oh, Noah remembers.”
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