CHAPTER 20 DECLAN #2
The blue hold sat back in the Transfer Room, outside our sight, and Nora's panic closed around my throat.
"He's using Marian," she said.
"Yes."
"If you touch that thing, it may take you. If you don't, it may take her."
Vale sighed. "There, Miss Brooks. You do understand systems when they are honest."
I moved toward the table.
Nora grabbed my wrist. Her fingers landed on blood and torn fabric. Pain flashed white up my arm, and she released me at once.
"Sorry," she said.
"Don't be."
"Look at me."
I did.
She looked wrecked. Her lashes were wet, her mouth set so hard it hid the tremor.
But her gaze held mine and stayed. She had seen the board.
She had heard what Vale said about my father.
Some part of me waited for her to pull away, because blood had a long memory in families like ours, and mine had just crawled out of the wall.
She stepped closer.
"You are not Martin Reeve," she said.
My breath caught before I could stop it.
"You don't know what he did."
"I know what you're doing."
The room pressed in. Red light, old rails, Vale breathing through hidden speakers, Gabriel silent on command because there were some things even he could not order me through. Nora's hand rose, slow this time, giving me room to refuse. Her fingers touched the side of my jaw.
I bent into it before pride could save me.
"You are not his route," she said. "You are mine."
Something in me nearly broke at that.
Vale's voice cut through the room. "Touching. Wasteful. The gate still needs his hand."
I turned my face to press my mouth once to Nora's palm. Her breath hitched, and the sound went into my blood. Then I stepped past her.
"Tell me the words," I said.
"Declan."
"I can put my hand down as his son, or I can put it down as yours. Pick the one the machine hears."
Her eyes searched mine. "As guardian red access. Active witness. Transfer authority denied. Release authority denied."
Cormac answered at once. "Good. Add protective interference. Mercer systems may accept interference as red category."
Maeve said, "Deny inheritance of route function. Make the line present without continuing the old role."
Nora nodded, breathing hard. "Your name first. Full name."
I looked at the table.
The reader waited in the center, a red glass plate ringed with old scratches. Men had bled there. Maybe my father. Maybe other fathers who had been useful until Mercy finished with them.
I placed my palm on the plate.
The pain was immediate. Heat bit into the cuts on my forearm and dragged fire through my hand. My shoulders locked. Nora made a sound and caught my elbow with both hands, holding me steady instead of pulling me free.
"Say it," she said.
"Declan Reeve," I said through my teeth. "Red access present. Guardian witness for Nora Marian Brooks. Protective interference only. I deny transfer authority. I deny release authority. I deny inheritance of Martin Reeve's route function."
The plate flared.
PATRILINEAL ROUTE DETECTED
MARTIN REEVE FUNCTION ARCHIVED
OVERRIDE CONFLICT
Vale's voice sharpened. "That function is not yours to deny."
Nora leaned in beside me. "It is if he is the living access."
"Children always think living makes them owners. Mercy learned otherwise."
The table clamps snapped up around my wrist.
Nora shouted my name.
I slammed my free hand down on the edge before the mechanism could drag me forward. The gun skidded across the metal, out of reach. Heat burned under the cuff locked around my wrist. Behind the glass board, the Reeve drawer opened wider, spilling photographs onto the floor.
Martin Reeve in a Saint Brigid jacket.
Martin Reeve beside a van with Mercy Medical Transport painted over the side.
Martin Reeve, younger and sober-faced, standing behind Thomas Brooks outside a service entrance.
Nora saw it too.
Her hand flew to her mouth.
The photograph lay upside down, but Thomas's face was clear even from where I stood pinned to the table. Older than in Nora's cracked picture, thinner, alive, wearing the look of a man trying to decide whether to run or fight.
"Dad," Isabella breathed through comms.
The single word gutted the room.
"He came for Marian," Vale said. "Brave man. Poor timing. Martin was supposed to move him out of the way. He changed his mind too late. Reeve men have a sentimental defect when women cry."
My arm strained against the clamp. "What did my father do?"
"Opened the wrong door. Let Thomas Brooks see the wrong mother. Then spent the rest of his short life running from men who do not forgive procedural failure."
Nora's eyes snapped up to the speaker. "Where is Marian?"
Vale hummed. "Closer than you deserve."
The table flashed.
OVERRIDE ACCEPTED
PROTECTIVE INTERFERENCE ACTIVE
RED ACCESS RESTRAINED FOR FINAL WITNESS
The clamp released. I jerked my hand back and nearly went to one knee. Nora caught me around the waist, all soft body and stubborn strength, and for one brutal second I let my weight lean into her.
"You're okay," she said, though her voice shook.
"Liar."
"Alive, then."
"Better."
I picked up the gun with my burned hand and forced my fingers around it. The skin across my palm throbbed. The table had branded a red ring into me, thin and ugly, like a cuff under the skin.
Gabriel spoke, low and controlled. "Declan. Can you move?"
"Yes."
"Can you shoot?"
I looked at my hand, then at the door opening behind the paternal gate. "Yes."
Nora's grip tightened. "Are you lying to your boss?"
"A little."
"Idiot."
"My woman called me her route. I'm taking one foolish allowance."
Color hit her face through the fear. She looked away first, which saved neither of us.
Aidan broke in. "Movement behind Bell. She is laughing. I hate when captives laugh."
Bell's voice rose faintly through his open mic. "He opened red. He opened red. The old father wanted a daughter back. The son brings one down."
"Gag her," Gabriel said.
"With pleasure," Aidan muttered.
The next doorway opened onto a control gallery.
There was glass on three sides, thick and reinforced, overlooking a lower chamber filled with soft white light.
After the red heat, the room below looked almost clean.
That made it worse. Clean rooms hid the deepest sins.
I had learned that from Gabriel's world, and from Hale's men before they ever admitted what they were.
Nora stepped to the glass before I could stop her.
"Marian," she whispered.
Below us, a woman lay inside a warmed medical cradle with clear tubing running under her collarbone and a white restraint around one wrist. Dark hair spread against the pillow, threaded with gray.
Her face was thinner than Nora's, older than Isabella's, but the shape of them lived there.
The mouth. The cheek. The stubborn line between the brows.
A monitor above her bed glowed blue.
MARIAN brOOKS
MATERNAL HEARTBEAT PRESENT
RETURN HOLD: ACTIVE
DO NOT WAKE WITHOUT DAUGHTER ROUTE AND RED WITNESS
Nora hit the glass with her bloody hand. "Mom."
The woman below did not move.
A shadow shifted on the far side of the lower chamber.
Patrick Vale stepped into view wearing a dark suit, gloves, and a pleasant smile that made my burned hand tighten around the gun.
He looked up at us through the glass. "There she is," he said through the speakers. "Nora, tell your red man to lower his weapon. If he shoots the glass, your mother wakes screaming. If he comes down properly, we can discuss what his father owed mine."
Nora's hand stayed flat to the glass. Her blood smeared over Marian's name on our side.
I moved behind her, gun raised, body close enough to shield her if the gallery opened beneath our feet.
Vale smiled wider.
"Come down, Declan Reeve. Bring the bird. Your fathers began this together. We can finish it with witnesses."