CHAPTER 18 DECLAN
Rina's voice came up from the cold like it had climbed through a grave with its hands bleeding.
"Rina," Nora called.
Her voice cracked on the name, and it hit me in the teeth.
The speaker under the stair gave a soft hiss. Rina breathed into it once, thin and ragged. "Don't let her open them, Nora. Please. She needs you for the blood door. She needs Marian for the mothers. Don't let her put you together."
"Where are you?" I asked.
A laugh came through, small and ruined. "Below the cold room. She tied me to the old nursery switch. Tell the red man the nurse lies. She always says she is saving what Mercer broke."
The line snapped into static.
Nora twisted in my hold. "We go down."
"Aidan goes first. You stay behind me."
"She sounded hurt."
"That is why you stay behind me."
Her elbow pressed into my ribs when she tried to turn. The bandage at her arm had bled through at the edge, a small red crescent against white. The sight made my hand tighten around her before I could make it gentle.
"Declan."
"Look at me."
The order came out low. She went still, but fury stayed in her eyes. Good. Terror I could guard. Fury kept her standing.
I shifted enough to see her face without moving my weapon from the stairs. "I will get Rina. I will get whatever truth is sitting in Marian's drawer. I will put the gray nurse through the nearest wall if she comes close. You do not outrun my gun to prove you care."
"I wasn't trying to prove anything."
"Then listen when I keep you alive."
Gabriel's voice cut into my earpiece. "Report."
"Lower Mercy is open. Rina is alive below the cold room. Gray nurse has her on something she called an old nursery switch. Drawer marked Marian Brooks has fresh blood on the handle. We are moving down."
A hard silence moved through command. Isabella's voice broke across it. "Declan, is Nora hurt?"
Nora reached for my comm line. I caught her wrist, turned my head, and gave her the smallest nod. She leaned close enough that her breath touched my jaw.
"I'm here, Bella," she said. "I'm okay."
"Your voice doesn't sound okay."
"Yours doesn't either."
Pain moved across Nora's face, but she held herself together. She had Thomas Brooks in her spine.
"Declan," Gabriel said. "Keep her breathing."
"That's still the job."
"It is the only job."
Gabriel had ordered men killed in that tone. He had saved me in that tone. Tonight he put the whole Stone weight behind one woman at my side, and I felt the promise like wire around my ribs.
"Aidan," I said. "Left rail. Slow."
Aidan went down first, pistol raised, flashlight held away from his body.
I followed with Nora behind my shoulder.
The stairs were narrow and metal, each step rimed with frost. Air moved up from below in measured breaths, machine-cold and sour with antiseptic, old water, and blood too fresh for the room.
The first level opened into a corridor lined with drawers.
Names sat behind cloudy plastic plates. Some had dates.
Some had only numbers. Faded ribbons clung beside a few plates, their colors drained by age.
Mercy had built a morgue that wanted to look like storage.
Mercer had always liked clean labels over dirty work.
Nora stopped at Marian's drawer.
I put my body between her and the handle. "Aidan, scan the corridor."
"Moving."
His light ran over the floor. Blood drops led away from drawer 3B, across the tile, then down a second corridor through swinging doors marked MATERNAL HOLD. One drop had a half print beside it. Small shoe. Woman's.
"Rina's?" Nora whispered.
"Could be."
Her hand came up toward Marian's name. She stopped before touching it. The restraint cost her. I saw it in the tremor at her fingers, in the way she pressed her lips together until the color faded.
"If my mother is in there..."
"We do it with Siobhan on the line and guns up."
"If she's alive?"
My throat tightened. Men like me were built for simple answers. Door. Threat. Bullet. Blood. Nora kept dragging me into rooms where a gun was only one tool and sometimes the wrong one.
"Then we get her out," I said.
"And if she's dead?"
The cold clicked through the drawers around us. Somewhere deeper, a compressor kicked on with a groan that traveled through the floor.
"Then Vale doesn't get to use her again."
Nora looked at me then. The blue light cut her face pale and made her eyes too bright. She reached with her good hand and caught the front of my coat, just a fistful of wool and blood-stiff fabric.
"Don't make me leave her here."
The words went straight under bone.
I covered her hand with mine. "I won't."
Cormac came through the comm. "Declan, I have a partial schematic. The corridor beyond Maternal Hold connects to a service nursery, an old incineration chute, and a lift that should be sealed."
"Stop using should."
"Gladly, when buildings stop lying to me. Siobhan says do not open a drawer unless absolutely necessary."
Siobhan took over, voice tight. "If those units hold biological evidence or sedated patients, a temperature shock could kill them or destroy proof. Blood on the handle may mean someone tried manual access."
Maeve's voice followed. All polish, fear scraping underneath. "Mercy funded preservation upgrades. Clean power, redundant cold, quarantine locks. I signed for equipment storage. I did not sign for women in drawers."
"You signed enough papers for Vale to hide behind them," Nora said.
Maeve did not answer at once. When she did, the cut had gone out of her voice. "Yes."
Nora's grip on my coat loosened.
Aidan whistled once from the double doors. "Blood trail goes through. Door has a keypad and a reader. I can't see a camera, so there are three I can't."
"Hold."
I stepped close to the keypad. The reader blinked amber, then red. Before I touched it, the speaker above us crackled.
"Red men break doors," the young female voice said. "Red men don't open mothers. Bring the bird."
Nora went rigid behind me.
My pistol rose to the speaker. "Keep talking. I can find you by sound."
Soft laughter came through. Young. Bright. Wrong in this cold. "He thinks sound is where I live."
Aidan's mouth flattened. "Hate that."
"Open the door," I said to Cormac.
"I can't from here. That panel isn't on the building net."
"Maeve."
"My donor code failed upstairs. It will fail below."
The reader blinked again.
NORA MARIAN brOOKS
MATERNAL HOLD ACCESS WAITING
Nora exhaled behind me. The sound hit the back of my neck.
My hands wanted to tear the keypad from the wall. My body wanted to carry her out through every Stone man above. But the door wanted her, Rina was behind it, and Marian Brooks's name glowed on a drawer with fresh blood on the handle.
A weapon could not answer a blood lock.
Nora was already looking at me like she knew the war in my chest.
"I can do it," she said.
"I know. I hate it. I still know."
Her mouth trembled once. She swallowed it down. "Then don't let go."
I pulled a glove from my pocket and cut the tip off with my knife. "Bare finger only if it asks. Palm stays off. Blood waits unless I say. If the panel grabs you, I pull you clear, and Siobhan can yell at me later."
"I heard that," Siobhan said.
"Good. Be ready."
Nora slid her hand into the glove. Her fingers were cold when I took them. Too cold. I set my palm under hers at the reader, close enough to move her, loose enough that the choice stayed hers.
The panel warmed before she touched it.
The lock clicked.
MATERNAL HOLD OPEN
I yanked Nora back behind me as the double doors sighed inward.
The room beyond was larger than the corridor and colder by several degrees.
Empty hospital bassinets stood against one wall.
Cabinets lined the other side, their glass fronts taped in crosses.
At the center, Rina sat strapped to a metal chair, one wrist bound to a copper plate and the other wrapped in gauze gone red.
The gray nurse stood behind her. She was younger than Harkin made her sound, brown hair pinned under a pale cap, gray uniform clean from collar to cuff. Her hands ruined the illusion, too steady and careful around pain.
Marian's bracelet glinted around her gloved fingers.
"Declan Reeve," she said. "Elias Mercer marked you red. I expected more noise."
"You will get some."
Aidan spread left. I felt him take the angle without needing to look. Nora stayed behind me, one hand gripping my coat again, breath fast but quiet.
Rina lifted her head. Blood had dried at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes found Nora and filled. "I'm sorry."
Nora tried to move. My arm barred her path.
"Untie her," I said.
The nurse smiled like I had asked for coffee. "She tied herself the moment she stole from Mr. Vale."
"Vale isn't here."
"Vale is always where the door goes next."
"Then I'll send him pieces of you to help him find it."
Her smile thinned. "Violence is such a lonely language. Mercer thought so too. Mothers teach systems to obey. Babies teach systems to remember. Red men only teach systems where to bleed."
"Aidan."
His pistol settled on her temple.
The nurse lifted Marian's bracelet. "Shoot me and the maternal array opens. All drawers. All names. All cold seals. Some are only evidence. Some are more delicate. Dr. Quinn can tell you what happens if a preservation unit vents too fast."
Siobhan cursed in my ear. "She's telling the truth or close to it. If the drawers are networked to a kill-open failsafe, do not let her trigger it."
The nurse tilted her head toward the ceiling. "Hello, Dr. Quinn. Still trying to save bodies after men buy them?"
Siobhan's voice went flat. "Who are you?"
"Mercer called me Bell. Children preferred Nurse Bell. Mothers preferred nothing after the first winter."
Nora made a sound behind me. It was small, wounded, and full of teeth.
Bell's gaze moved to her. "Nora Marian. You came without the mother band. Sweet girl. Your father made such a mess saving you."
My finger tightened on the trigger.
Nora spoke before I fired. "Thomas Brooks made me a daughter. What did Mercer make you?"
Bell's eyes changed.