CHAPTER 20 DECLAN
The red route opened into a corridor built for men who did ugly work and wanted clean walls afterward.
Heat rolled out first. Beneath it came the sting of bleach, burned dust, and the sweet cologne Rina had named before the door fully unlocked. Vale wanted us to smell him before we saw him. Men like that mistook theater for control right up until someone put them on the floor.
Nora moved at my shoulder, too pale, bleeding through her bandage, and still trying to step beside me instead of behind me.
I kept one hand low on my gun and the other near her waist where I could catch her if the floor dropped.
Every instinct in my body wanted to put her against the wall and cover her until this level was dead.
She glanced at me once, eyes bright with fear and fury. "Don't shove me back."
"Then keep your left side to me," I said.
"That sounds a lot like shoving with manners."
"I'm Irish. We dress things up."
Her mouth almost moved. The almost hurt more than panic. I wanted the full smile from her in a place with windows, not in a Mercy tunnel with a dead man's architecture crawling over our names.
Aidan's voice cracked through my earpiece. "Bell is still tied. Rina is conscious. Barely. The blue hold is stable."
"Keep pressure on Rina's wrist," Siobhan said over the command thread. "Do not let her sleep. Aidan, if her lips turn blue, tell me at once."
"Copy," Aidan said.
Gabriel came on next. "Declan. Status."
"Entering Vale's route. Nora is on her feet. Marian hold active. Bell contained. One dead gunman. Rina injured and with Aidan."
A pause followed. Short. Heavy. Gabriel knew what I was leaving unsaid. We had opened a door that knew my name, and we had no idea who taught it to speak.
"Bring Nora back breathing," he said.
"That's the job."
Nora's fingers brushed my sleeve, below the fresh cut from the blade arm. The touch was small and fast, like she had meant to stop herself and failed. Blood had soaked through the torn fabric, warm against my skin.
"You're bleeding too much," she said.
"It'll keep."
"Declan."
There it was again, my name in her mouth, made human instead of useful. The route lights pulsed red around us, and the system embedded in the wall answered with a low mechanical click.
RED ACCESS ACTIVE
BIRD ROUTE PRESENT
PROCEED TO PATERNAL GATE
Nora stared at the words. "Paternal gate?"
"Vale's trying to pull me into the center of this."
"He already did."
That landed under my ribs. She was right, and she hated it as much as I did.
The corridor sloped downward beneath Saint Brigid.
Old hospital tile gave way to sealed concrete, then to metal plates bolted over floor drains.
On the left, narrow windows showed dark rooms filled with transport frames.
Infant carriers, folded restraints, white sheets under plastic.
Tags hung from hooks in neat rows, each one browned at the edges.
Nora's breath caught.
I stepped between her and the windows, because I was a selfish bastard even in a room full of ghosts. "Eyes forward."
"Those are baby carriers."
"I know."
"They moved them through here."
"Nora."
She pushed past my arm by a few inches, making her point. Her hand went to the photo tucked inside her jacket, then to the empty place where Thomas's ringer had been before she set it in the Transfer Room cradle. "I need to see what they did."
"You need to live through seeing it."
Her chin lifted. "Then help me. Don't blind me."
The red lights slid over her face. She looked young for one breath, gutted and furious, then she looked like Isabella's sister again.
Worse, she looked like Marian's daughter.
The system had named her a bird route. I looked at her and saw a woman who kept opening doors built by men who had counted on women breaking.
"Beside me," I said. "One step. Only one."
"Bossy compromise accepted again."
"You're repeating yourself."
"You're bleeding on the floor. We both have flaws."
The speaker above us crackled with a soft laugh.
"That's what I like about you, Miss Brooks," Vale said. "Even now, you think humor is defiance."
My gun came up. Nora froze, but she did not grab me. Good girl. She knew a voice in the wall was bait.
"Patrick Vale," I said. "You sound closer than you are."
"Declan Reeve. You sound exactly where your blood was always meant to be."
The corridor door behind us sealed with a heavy thud.
Aidan cursed through comms. "Red route closed behind you. I can't open it from Transfer."
"Leave it," I said.
"Declan," Gabriel warned.
"We keep moving forward or Vale chooses the ground."
Nora's eyes flicked to mine. She had gone still in the way civilians went still before they decided whether to trust the violent man in front of them. I hated that she had to make that choice with me. I hated more that she made it.
"Forward," she said.
Vale clucked softly. "Marian would be so proud. She always had that same tone before she ruined a perfectly workable protocol."
Nora's face lost color. My arm went across her before I thought about it.
"Say her name again," I said, "and you'll swallow teeth before the night ends."
"Old Reeve temper. There it is. I wondered how much of your father reached you."
My hand tightened on the gun. The pain in my cut forearm sharpened and steadied me.
"My father is dead."
"Many useful men are. Mercy had a talent for getting one last service out of them."
The next door unlocked with a hiss.
Paternal Gate sat beyond it.
It looked nothing like the mother rooms. Those had been cold, blue, preserved like grief in a jar.
This room was hot and red, built around an old transport bay with black tire marks on the floor and rusted rails sunk into concrete.
A wide metal table stood in the center, not medical, not quite mechanical.
Its surface was scratched by years of buckles and straps.
Above it, a hanging sign read FATHER INTERFERENCE, though someone had scraped half the letters away long ago.
Along the far wall, a board of names waited behind glass.
Brooks. Vale. Mercer. Reeve.
My last name sat there in faded black letters, beside dates, route numbers, and red stamps.
Nora made a small sound. It went straight through me.
"Declan," Cormac said through comms. His voice had lost its usual polish. "Read what you can. Slowly."
"You have eyes in here?"
"The camera feed is poor. Red interference. I can see the board but not the small print."
Maeve came on, quiet and sharp. "Do not touch anything until we understand the hierarchy."
"Too late for hierarchy," Vale said through the speakers. "Your enforcer is standing where his father stood."
The central table lit.
RED ACCESS REQUIRED
REEVE LINE CONFIRMED
PRESENT HAND TO GATE
Nora shook her head at once. "No."
"It didn't ask you," I said.
"I'm answering anyway."
The words hit too hot for the room. She had no weapon in her hand, one arm bleeding, fear running over every inch of her, and still she put her body between me and the table.
The red light touched her hair, her cheek, the split bandage at her arm.
I wanted my hands on her. I wanted her behind me.
I wanted her alive more than I had wanted anything that had ever been mine.
I lowered my mouth near her ear. "I need you away from the reader."
"And I need you away from it."
"Nora."
"Don't use that voice unless you're about to tell me the truth."
A laugh slipped from somewhere in my chest, rough and wrong. "This is the worst place you've chosen to be difficult."
"You keep saying that like I choose easy rooms."
She was shaking now. The courage did not erase that. It made it worse. Her fear came through her hands, her breath, the way she held her shoulders high and refused to fold.
On the wall board, a small drawer opened with a metallic pop.
Inside lay a file packet wrapped in cracked plastic. A red label curled at the edge.
REEVE, MARTIN
TRANSPORT ASSISTANT
SAINT brIGID AUXILIARY NIGHT ROUTE
My father's name went through me like a round fired too close to bone.
Martin Reeve had been a drunk, a brawler, a man with bruised hands and a laugh that turned bad without warning.
He had worked odd security jobs when I was a boy, hospital nights, warehouse mornings, anything that paid cash and asked few questions.
He disappeared for days, came back smelling of cigarette smoke and winter roads, and taught me that doors were for kicking open when men with money thought they were safe behind them.
He died under a bridge before I had grown into the hatred properly.
The file in the drawer said Saint Brigid had owned more of him than I knew.
"Declan," Gabriel said. "Stay with me."
His voice cut through the heat. Old command. Older friendship. I swallowed once and kept my gun up.
"I'm here."
Vale's voice softened. "He never told you? Of course he didn't. Men who carry mothers in the dark rarely come home proud."
Nora turned toward the speaker. "What did he carry?"
"Samples. Sedated women. Unregistered infants. Evidence before it learned to cry." Vale paused, pleased with himself. "Sometimes he carried the men who tried to stop it. Thomas Brooks made that mistake."
Nora flinched so hard I felt it against my arm.
"Careful," I said to Vale.
"Careful is for men without history. Your father transported Mercer property from Saint Brigid to private buyers, then later helped move the protection threats when Mercer began losing control. The Reeve line handled red problems. Break doors, break men, keep mothers quiet. Very useful family."
The gun stayed steady in my hand because rage had learned discipline in me a long time ago. Inside my chest, something old and ugly woke up swinging.
"Declan," Nora whispered.
I couldn't look at her yet. My father had dragged blood behind him. Maybe he had dragged some of hers. Maybe the same hands that taught me how to throw a punch had closed a van door on Marian Brooks.
A new prompt lit on the table.
RED ACCESS HAND REQUIRED
FAILURE WILL RELEASE MATERNAL RETURN TO ACTIVE PARTY