Chapter 8: Cell Zero
Mercer was still breathing.
The bullet had passed through his side, missing his spine.
Maya and Rafe dragged him through the underground tunnel until they reached the old execution wing.
Blackridge had stopped carrying out executions decades earlier, but the chamber remained intact.
A cracked observation window faced an empty room containing a single steel chair.
Mercer collapsed against the wall.
“Leave me,” he said.
“No,” Maya replied.
Rafe tore fabric from an abandoned curtain and pressed it against the wound.
“This will slow the bleeding.”
Mercer handed Maya a key card.
“Cell Zero is beneath the yard. The entrance is inside the execution chamber.”
Maya entered the chamber.
The steel chair was bolted to the floor.
She inserted Elias’s key into a narrow opening beneath one armrest.
The chair rotated.
A circular staircase appeared below it.
Maya descended.
Cold white light illuminated a hidden laboratory.
Twelve glass cells lined the walls.
Some were empty.
Others contained people wearing plain gray clothing.
They did not react when Maya entered.
A middle-aged man sat on the floor repeatedly writing the same name on the glass with his finger.
A woman stood facing a blank wall, whispering numbers.
“These are prisoners?” Rafe asked.
Mercer shook his head.
“Not all of them.”
Maya approached the first cell.
The identification screen read:
SUBJECT 042 — CIVILIAN JOURNALIST
The second:
SUBJECT 086 — ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY
The third:
SUBJECT 109 — FEDERAL AUDITOR
Helix had been imprisoning anyone who discovered the program.
At the end of the laboratory stood a smaller cell.
Its door was open.
Inside, children’s drawings covered the walls.
Maya recognized herself in several pictures.
A little girl beside a lake.
A black bird flying over a burning car.
Two boys standing beside a man without a face.
One drawing showed Lucas holding hands with Anna Mercer.
Behind them stood Elias.
The date written in the corner was from six months earlier.
“Lucas drew this,” Maya said.
Rafe examined the image.
“He knew Elias was alive.”
Mercer entered the cell, holding his injured side.
He stared at the drawing of Anna.
“My daughter was here.”
Maya found a small audio recorder hidden beneath the bed.
She pressed play.
Anna’s voice filled the cell.
“If my father finds this, tell him I’m sorry.”
Mercer closed his eyes.
Anna continued.
“Lucas and I discovered why Lazarus was created. It wasn’t designed to erase memories. It was designed to transfer them.”
Rafe frowned.
“Transfer them where?”
The recording crackled.
“Dr. Price believes memory is electrical information. She has been copying skills, secrets, and personal histories from one subject into another.”
Maya looked at the silent patients behind the glass.
Anna’s voice became frightened.
“The first successful transfer involved a child named Maya Cross.”
Maya nearly dropped the recorder.
“That’s impossible.”
“The program began after Redwater. Maya survived, but Adrian said she remembered things she had never experienced.”
The recording paused.
A door opened somewhere behind Anna.
Her voice became a whisper.
“Someone is coming.”
A man spoke faintly in the background.
Maya replayed the final seconds.
The voice belonged to her brother.
“Anna, hide the necklace.”
Then came a second voice.
Maya recognized it immediately.
Her own voice.
“Don’t bother. I already found it.”
The recording ended.
Maya stared at the device.
She had never been inside Blackridge before that week.
Yet Anna had recorded her voice three years earlier.
A light activated inside the final glass cell.
Someone stood behind the frosted surface.
The door slowly opened.
May you like
A woman stepped out.
She had Maya’s face.
