Chapter 10 - THE DONOR ARCHIVE
I entered Holloway headquarters wearing a hospital monitor beneath my clothes and a protective vest over my maternity shirt.
Agent Sloan objected.
Dr. Cole objected.
Maya objected.
I went anyway.
The building had been evacuated after Claire’s arrest.
Emergency lights glowed across empty corridors.
Daniel led us to the underground level using maintenance plans.
Katherine walked beside me.
Ashley remained in the command center.
Lena and tactical officers surrounded the archive.
The door required three biometric keys.
Claire Holloway.
Jonathan Carter.
Emily Hayes.
My father had designed the trust to prevent unilateral access.
Claire and Jonathan changed the system after his death but could never remove my biometric requirement.
That was why they needed control of me.
Not only the money.
The archive itself.
I placed my hand on the scanner.
The door opened.
Rows of cold-storage units extended beneath white lights.
Each drawer held donor records, embryos, DNA, and adoption identities.
A digital wall displayed family trees rewritten through Holloway.
My daughter’s file waited near the center.
H-17.
I opened it.
Egg donor: Emily Hayes.
Sperm donor: Thomas Hayes.
My father.
I stared at the words.
Impossible.
The stored sample came from fertility material my father banked before cancer treatment years before I was born.
Claire used his genetic material to create an embryo with my egg.
My unborn daughter was genetically both my child and my half-sister.
The horror of it made language fail.
Katherine leaned against the cabinet.
“They wanted a direct Hayes heir.”
The trust charter privileged descendants of Thomas Hayes.
A child created from his genetic material would strengthen Holloway’s claim if I were declared incompetent.
They engineered a legal weapon inside my body.
Michael had known enough to control me.
Maybe not enough to understand the genetics.
Jonathan knew everything.
He stepped from behind the storage units holding a gun.
“Close the file.”
Agents aimed at him.
He pressed a remote.
Cold-storage alarms activated.
“If I release the coolant, every sample is destroyed.”
Agent Sloan told him to drop the weapon.
He looked at me.
“You should be grateful.”
“For what?”
“You’re carrying the strongest legal heir in the trust.”
“She is not an heir. She is a child.”
“Children become whatever documents make them.”
That sentence was the heart of Holloway.
He believed paperwork created reality.
My mother stepped forward.
“You killed Thomas.”
Jonathan smiled.
“Richard lit the fire. Sarah handled the hospital. I corrected the report.”
Every crime divided among them.
No one felt fully guilty.
He admitted my father discovered the nursery network.
He admitted Katherine was kept alive because she knew account codes.
He admitted Michael was instructed to marry me.
Then he said Michael failed because he developed attachment.
“Attachment?”
“He wanted to keep you after the transfer.”
As if wanting his abused wife alive counted as love.
Jonathan called it weakness.
He planned to eliminate Michael after the baby’s birth.
Sarah knew.
She still obeyed.
Katherine asked where the remaining missing children were.
Jonathan pointed toward the archive.
“Every answer is here.”
“Then surrender.”
“No.”
He raised the gun toward the coolant control.
Daniel stepped from a side aisle.
“Dad.”
Jonathan’s face changed.
Daniel Price was not only the camera installer.
He was Jonathan’s first son.
Born to Patricia Gray.
Removed from her at birth.
Raised through a Holloway adoption.
He discovered the truth while installing clinic systems.
That was why he risked everything.
Jonathan stared at him.
“You were not supposed to know.”
Daniel’s voice shook.
“You took me from my mother.”
“She was unfit.”
“You made her unfit.”
Jonathan aimed at him.
Michael rushed from behind the opposite storage row.
Handcuffed to an agent.
He had agreed to lead police through a second entrance.
“Don’t.”
Jonathan looked between his sons.
One raised inside the Carter family.
One stolen and placed elsewhere.
Both used.
Neither loved.
He laughed softly.
“This is what sentiment produces.”
Then he fired.
Michael shoved Daniel aside.
The bullet struck Michael’s abdomen.
Agents returned fire.
Jonathan fell against the coolant controls.
His hand hit the release switch.
Warning lights flashed.
Temperature rose.
The archive began automatic destruction.
Daniel rushed to the master terminal.
It required the trust holder’s authorization.
Mine.
I pressed my palm to the scanner.
A transfer began.
All records copying to federal servers.
Five percent.
The coolant pipes burst.
White vapor filled the room.
Agents carried Michael toward the exit.
Jonathan remained alive, bleeding near the console.
He reached for his gun.
Katherine kicked it away.
“You don’t get another family.”
The transfer reached thirty percent.
The room temperature dropped dangerously.
My fingers numbed against the scanner.
If I moved, the copy stopped.
Daniel shouted instructions.
Lena covered the entrance.
Agent Sloan dragged storage drives free manually.
Fifty percent.
A contraction tightened across my abdomen.
Then another.
Too soon.
I cried out.
Katherine held me upright.
“Stay with me.”
Seventy percent.
The vapor thickened.
Jonathan laughed from the floor.
“The child will come here after all.”
I looked at him.
“No.”
Ninety percent.
My knees weakened.
Daniel reached toward the scanner.
“It only reads you.”
Ninety-eight.
The screen froze.
System error.
Final verbal authorization required.
I said my name.
Nothing.
Jonathan smiled.
“It requires the trust phrase.”
“What phrase?”
He looked toward Katherine.
She did not know.
Then I remembered my father carrying me from the fire.
The yellow blanket around us.
His voice near my ear.
Truth belongs to the one who survives it.
I spoke the sentence.
Transfer complete.
The archive copied.
The doors released.
Agents carried us out as the cold-storage system destroyed itself.
Michael survived surgery.
Jonathan survived arrest.
The records survived too.
But before the emergency hearing, Claire Holloway gave the court one final document.
A signed agreement from my father.
May you like
It authorized posthumous use of his genetic material.
And named Claire Holloway guardian of any resulting child.
