Chapter 23 - THE ROAD THROUGH THE RESERVOIR
We abandoned the main highway twenty miles from the mountain.
Evelyn drove along an old logging road until trees closed around us.
The facility lay beyond the ridge, invisible from the road.
I checked the countdown on the recovered feed.
Three hours and forty-two minutes.
Amy remained strapped to the chair.
Teresa had left the room.
“She looks conscious,” I said.
Adrian studied her vital signs.
“She hasn’t received Helix yet.”
“How can you tell?”
“Her neural pattern is stable.”
The phrase made my stomach turn.
Amy was not a patient.
She was data.
We reached a concrete water intake half-buried beneath moss and fallen branches.
Evelyn removed the grate.
Black water moved through the tunnel.
“The temperature is forty-one degrees,” she said. “You have approximately twelve minutes before motor control begins deteriorating.”
Adrian tightened his waterproof harness.
“You’re staying here,” I told him.
“I know the valve sequence.”
“Then tell me.”
“It changes according to reservoir pressure.”
“Of course it does.”
Evelyn touched my shoulder.
“I’ll go with you.”
“No. Someone needs to maintain extraction.”
“I can send Adrian.”
“He can barely climb the embankment.”
Adrian looked offended but did not argue.
I entered the water first.
The cold struck like electricity.
Evelyn followed.
We moved through the pipe using overhead maintenance bars. Several sections had collapsed, forcing us underwater beneath twisted metal.
At the end, we climbed into a chamber beneath the facility.
Pipes surrounded a cylindrical reservoir glowing with amber status lights.
Evelyn connected a diagnostic tablet.
“Pressure sequence is seven, three, eleven, two.”
I turned the valves.
The floor vibrated.
Red lights changed to blue.
SYSTEM ISOLATION READY appeared on the tablet.
“Don’t activate yet,” she said. “It will alert Teresa.”
A maintenance ladder led upward.
We reached a service corridor beneath the laboratory.
Through a narrow observation window, I saw rows of medical beds.
People lay beneath white sheets, connected to monitoring systems.
Not dozens.
Hundreds.
Some were children.
My breath caught.
“This isn’t only about Amy and me.”
“It never was,” Evelyn said.
A door opened at the far end of the lab.
A young man entered.
He appeared to be in his late twenties, wearing simple gray clothing.
Every technician in the room stopped working.
They turned toward him simultaneously.
He looked directly at the observation window.
Directly at me.
Then he smiled.
Over the intercom, his voice said, “Hello, Connor.”
Evelyn raised her weapon.
The young man continued.
May you like
“I’ve been waiting for my brother.”
📖 Subject Three has called Connor his brother, revealing that Teresa’s greatest secret may be another son engineered before Connor was born. 👇
