Chapter 7 - The Child Chosen Before Birth
Daniel grabbed Richard by the collar.
“What did you do?”
Richard did not resist.
“Emma was selected.”
“For what?”
“To inherit resistance.”
I could barely understand the words.
Richard explained that some Winter Glass subjects developed natural resistance to the memory-suppression compounds.
I had been one of them.
My memories returned in fragments despite repeated exposure.
Rebecca wanted to reproduce that resistance genetically.
She obtained my stored embryos from a fertility clinic Daniel and I used after two miscarriages.
Emma was conceived from one of those embryos.
But the clinic altered the fertilization records.
Daniel might not be her biological father.
Rebecca may have selected another donor.
“Who?” I asked.
Richard looked toward the monitor.
“Her own brother.”
Daniel released him.
Rebecca’s brother, Adrian Lane, had died years earlier.
According to Daniel, he was a brilliant neurologist.
He had also worked on Winter Glass.
Emma was designed from two resistant bloodlines.
Mine and Adrian’s.
The room felt too small.
Daniel looked at Emma.
She stared back at him.
“Are you still my daddy?”
His face broke.
He crossed the room and knelt beside her.
“Yes.”
“But he said—”
“I don’t care what he said.”
“You’re my daddy?”
“Always.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck.
Richard watched without expression.
Cole looked at me.
“We need to move.”
The countdown showed six minutes.
Daniel took Emma.
I grabbed the ledger and neutralizing gel.
Cole insisted on coming despite the blood loss.
Richard remained seated.
“Aren’t you coming?” I asked.
He looked toward the door.
“Rebecca will not kill me.”
“She poisoned your granddaughter.”
“She does not see Emma as family.”
Neither did he.
We entered the ventilation corridor.
The passage climbed toward the security wing.
Halfway up, childhood images flashed through my mind.
White walls.
A Christmas tree behind glass.
My mother pressing something into my hand.
A brass key shaped like a snowflake.
I stopped.
“The archive.”
Daniel turned.
“What?”
“I remember a key.”
“Where?”
“My mother hid it inside a Christmas ornament.”
Richard’s tree.
The decorated tree in the living room contained hundreds of antique ornaments.
One of them might open the master archive.
Rebecca had attacked the house because she believed my memories would lead her to it.
The fire countdown reached three minutes.
Cole pointed toward a junction.
“Security office that way. Living room this way.”
Daniel looked at me.
We could rescue the relatives and stop Rebecca.
Or retrieve the key before she did.
Emma touched my cheek.
“Mom, the angel.”
“What angel?”
“Grandpa wouldn’t let me touch the silver angel on the tree.”
The memory struck.
A silver angel with a snowflake carved into its base.
The ornament my mother had placed in my hand twenty-three years earlier.
Rebecca’s voice came through the tunnel speaker.
“Thank you, Emma.”
She had been listening.
May you like
Footsteps thundered above us.
Her men were heading toward the Christmas tree.
