Chapter 4 - THE CHILD AS A KEY
The video had been recorded six months earlier.
My father was alive.
His hair had turned white.
A scar crossed his forehead.
But I recognized his eyes.
He sat beneath a single overhead light with his hands secured to a metal table.
“The child is the final storage device,” he repeated.
A man behind the camera asked, “Where is the encryption sequence?”
My father looked toward someone outside the frame.
“You’ll never access it without Emily.”
The video ended.
I gripped the desk.
“Where is he?”
Ross copied the file onto an evidence drive.
“We don’t know.”
“Jason knows.”
The encrypted phone remained connected.
Jason laughed softly.
“You finally sound like your mother.”
I grabbed the phone.
“Tell me where he is.”
“Bring me the monitor.”
I looked at the evidence bag.
“What’s on it?”
“Your mother’s complete message.”
“You already had access to this room.”
“But not the monitor.”
He had recorded over its original system.
The device must have belonged to my parents.
Maybe it had been hidden inside the house long before Jason moved in.
Ross gestured for me to keep him talking.
“Why do you need my baby?”
“I need what your father placed in the embryo.”
My skin went cold.
“That is not possible.”
“Your father developed biological encryption.”
Ross’s face changed.
He had heard of it.
Jason continued.
“Genetic sequences can store data. Your baby carries a code that unlocks defense files worth billions.”
I pressed one hand against my stomach.
“You planned this pregnancy.”
“Yes.”
The word came without hesitation.
The room seemed to contract around me.
For two years, Jason had blamed me for not conceiving.
He scheduled tests.
Controlled my medication.
Tracked my cycles.
He held me while I cried after every negative result.
All of it had been calculated.
“How?”
“Dr. Leonard.”
Ross wrote the name down.
Jason continued.
“You were given an embryo created before your parents disappeared.”
I stopped breathing.
“This baby isn’t mine?”
“It is genetically yours.”
“Then how—”
“Your parents created it using stored reproductive tissue.”
The lie sounded impossible.
But so did everything else that had become true that night.
“What do you want from the files?”
Jason’s voice hardened.
“Freedom.”
“You tortured me for freedom?”
“I kept you alive.”
“You put a drill against my leg.”
“You refused to tell me where the monitor was.”
The red light blinked inside the evidence bag.
He had seen it recording earlier.
That was why he panicked.
It did not only capture sound.
It contained older files.
Ross muted the phone.
“We need to evacuate you.”
“No.”
“Jason will return.”
“That is why I’m staying.”
Ross looked at my bruises.
“You are injured and pregnant.”
“And he thinks I’m helpless.”
I looked around the hidden room.
Jason had watched me for years.
He knew my habits.
My fears.
My weaknesses.
But he did not know I had found one thing he had missed.
A small paper beneath the ultrasound photograph.
An address.
St. Matthew’s Women’s Clinic.
Sublevel 3.
I showed Ross.
He looked at his team.
“Call a tactical unit.”
Jason’s voice returned through the phone.
“Do not go to the clinic.”
I froze.
He was watching us.
Ross scanned the room for cameras.
Jason whispered,
“If you enter that building, your father dies.”
Then one monitor switched to a live feed.
May you like
My father was bound to a chair.
Behind him stood Dr. Leonard holding a syringe.
