CHAPTER 27: FACILITY TWELVE
The floodwater reached Ethan’s waist.
Claire searched the suitcase.
“There must be another way out.”
Ava pointed toward the passports.
One belonged to her.
The photograph had been taken recently.
“Why does she have my picture?”
Ethan examined the document.
The name was not Ava Mercer.
It read:
ANNA HART.
Beside it was a passport for Claire under another name.
“They planned to move you,” Ethan said.
Claire shook her head.
“Not they. Samuel.”
Everyone looked at him.
Samuel could barely stand.
“I prepared an escape route after Claire found Ava’s file.”
“You planned to take my wife and daughter without telling me?”
“I planned to take all of you.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Eleanor moved first.”
Ethan’s anger rose.
“You keep deciding what is best for my family.”
Samuel’s eyes hardened.
“I was trying to keep Ava away from Facility Twelve.”
“What is there?”
Evelyn answered.
“The original Northstar laboratory.”
“I thought Halcyon Field was the laboratory.”
“It was an observation site. Facility Twelve is where the first children were created.”
Bianca stared at her.
“Created?”
“Some children were patients. Others were born from selected genetic matches.”
Conrad released Samuel.
“You and Eleanor bred children?”
Evelyn slapped him.
“You funded a program you never bothered to understand.”
Ava began trembling.
The lights pulsed around her.
Ethan held her closer.
“She is overwhelmed.”
Evelyn looked toward the rising water.
“And the electrical current is responding to her nervous system.”
A section of the vault wall slid open.
Behind it was an old drainage tunnel.
They hurried inside.
As Ethan crossed the threshold, he noticed writing carved into the wall.
Seventeen small handprints surrounded a single sentence:
WE WERE HERE.
Bianca placed her hand over one of the prints.
It matched perfectly.
The tunnel led them beyond the stadium and into the forest beside the river.
Behind them, Halcyon Field collapsed.
Concrete, steel, and decades of secrets disappeared beneath dark water.
Sirens approached in the distance.
Ethan opened the map from the suitcase.
Facility Twelve had been marked in the mountains.
Beside the location, Claire had written a warning years earlier:
DO NOT LET AVA MEET SUBJECT N-18.
Ava looked over his shoulder.
“Who is N-18?”
May you like
Samuel stared into the trees.
“Your brother.”
