Chapter 20 - THE FATHER BENEATH THE CHURCH
Daniel Mercer’s grave stood behind St. Matthew’s Church.
I had visited it every year on the anniversary of his death.
He had raised me, taught me how to repair engines, attended every science fair, and sat awake through nights when my mother disappeared without explanation.
Cancer took him slowly.
I had watched him lose weight.
I had held his hand when the monitors went silent.
“You’re lying,” I told Adrian.
“I said your adoptive father could help us. I did not say Daniel survived.”
Adrian drove toward the church while I studied the facility plans on the laptop.
“Then what are we doing?”
“Daniel prepared for this.”
The church had closed years ago. Its stained-glass windows were boarded, and weeds split the parking lot.
Adrian led me through a side entrance and down a narrow staircase beneath the sacristy.
At the bottom stood a steel door with no handle.
He entered a six-digit code.
My birthday.
The door opened.
Inside was a workshop preserved exactly as Daniel had left it.
Tools lined the walls in perfect order. Shelves held radio equipment, surveillance devices, forged identification, and sealed ammunition cases.
At the center rested his old leather jacket.
I touched the cracked sleeve.
“What was he?”
“An intelligence officer assigned to monitor Teresa and me.”
I turned.
“My father worked for the government?”
“Not officially by the time he met you.”
“Did he adopt me because he was ordered to?”
“At first.”
The answer hurt more than it should have.
Adrian saw it.
“He stayed because he loved you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I watched him destroy his career to keep you away from the program.”
On the workbench was a small tape recorder.
A label bore my name.
CONNOR — WHEN ADRIAN RETURNS.
I pressed play.
Daniel’s voice filled the underground room.
“If you’re hearing this, son, then Adrian has either become desperate or honest. With him, those conditions sometimes overlap.”
My knees nearly gave way.
Daniel continued.
“You were never an experiment to me. I need you to know that first.”
I closed my eyes.
“I was assigned to observe Teresa after Subject One was born. When I understood what they planned for you, I took you and made the disappearance look authorized. Adrian helped. Teresa never forgave either of us.”
I looked at Adrian.
“You helped him?”
“I forged the medical transfer.”
Daniel’s recording went on.
“The facility has a weakness. Its central systems rely on a thermal reservoir beneath the western laboratory. Shut the reservoir valves in the wrong sequence and the failsafe will destroy every sample. Shut them in the correct sequence and the network will enter emergency isolation.”
A metallic click sounded behind us.
A woman stood in the doorway holding a pistol.
She looked about forty, with cropped red hair and a scar beneath her jaw.
“I’ve waited six years for someone to play that tape,” she said.
She aimed at Adrian.
May you like
“And I still haven’t decided whether to shoot him.”
📖 Daniel’s hidden ally knows the facility’s weakness, but her hatred for Adrian may destroy the rescue before it begins. 👇
