CHAPTER 22 DECLAN #2
Vale stepped toward me. His mouth twisted. "You think pain makes you special? Every man in this building thought suffering gave him authority. It only made him easier to use."
"You talk too much for a man standing near my gun."
His gaze dropped to the weapon on the floor. Mistake.
My left ankle was clamped, my right wrist locked, but my right boot still had half an inch of give. I slammed my heel into the rail post. Metal rang. The gun skidded a finger's width across the floor. Vale looked back up, and I smiled at him with blood in my teeth.
"Again," Gabriel said in my ear. Breathing rough. Command intact.
The second strike sent a shock through my bound leg. The rail post jerked. The gun slid closer to the downed guard's outstretched hand.
"Aidan," I said.
Static answered. Then Aidan's voice came thin and urgent. "Bit occupied. Bell's awake and trying to chew through her own gag. Rina's got my knife and a bad attitude. We are holding."
"Hold harder."
"Love your advice. Hate your timing."
Nora's cage brightened. Vale snapped his attention back to her and hit the console with the heel of his hand.
"Enough. Accept archive inheritance, Nora Marian Brooks. Speak: I accept control of maternal and infant holdings under daughter right."
Nora's face changed. The fear stayed, but it sank under something hotter. She looked at Marian, at my trapped hand, at the names glowing above the cradle, and then lifted her chin.
"I accept protective duty for living mothers and stolen children under Brooks guardian testimony," she said. "I reject ownership. I reject sale. I reject transfer. I reject release to Patrick Vale, Elias Mercer, Mercy, Saint Brigid, or any man using blood access."
The cage flashed white.
Vale lunged for the console.
I drove my burned palm flat to the reader and roared the words before the machine could take his command. "Red witness confirms obstruction. Protective interference supports daughter duty. Reeve line refuses removal. Reeve line returns stolen mothers to guardian protection."
The restraint snapped my wrist down so hard I thought bone had gone. A sound tore out of me. Nora shouted my name. Marian's monitor screamed again.
Then the red line under my boots changed direction.
It ran away from Nora's cage and into the rail around my body. The metal cuffs flared hot. The reader under my palm cracked from the center outward, thin bright lines spreading like broken glass.
"Command conflict," the ceiling voice said. "Red witness obstructing inheritance transfer. Daughter route refusing ownership. Guardian testimony active. Maternal preservation priority rising."
"No," Vale said.
Nora did not look at him. "Mom, listen to me. You are not a file. You are not a hold. You are Marian Brooks. Thomas Brooks came for you. Isabella and I came after him. We are taking you home."
Marian's eyes opened wider. They were clouded from drugs and time, but they found Nora. Her mouth shaped one word.
"Home."
The blue light around the cradle surged.
Panels along the wall began to open. One after another. Drawers, screens, small data slots, cabinets with paper sealed behind yellowing glass. Names poured across the wall faster than any person could read. The room filled with soft mechanical clicks, every one a lock giving way.
"Maternal archive unsealed under protective duty," the ceiling said. "Guardian names releasing. Infant routes cross-indexing. Emergency external copy pending."
Cormac's voice sharpened. "External copy to where?"
A small screen beside the ringer lit.
brOOKS TOKEN REMOTE RECIPIENTS DETECTED:
ISABELLA brOOKS STONE
NORA MARIAN brOOKS
GAbrIEL STONE COMMAND NODE
"Thomas," Isabella whispered. "Dad, what did you do?"
Vale's face went bloodless. He shoved past Marian's cradle toward the ringer port.
I threw my weight against the rail. The cracked reader sparked under my palm. The cuff on my wrist split half an inch, giving me room to move and hurt worse. I reached for him and missed his jacket by the length of two fingers.
Nora moved first.
She let go of Marian with one hand, grabbed the metal tray beside the cradle, and swung it into Vale's forearm. The strike cracked loud. Vale cursed and stumbled back from the ringer port.
"Touch my father's ring again," she said, "and I will break the other one."
God help me, I wanted her so badly in that second that the pain almost lost its teeth.
"Nora," I said. "Gun."
Her eyes cut to the floor. The guard groaned and reached for the weapon.
Nora kicked it hard. The gun spun across the tile toward me. I dropped my free shoulder, twisted until the cuff tore skin, and caught the grip with two fingers. The angle was wrong. My wrist was trapped. My burned hand shook.
Vale saw it too. He backed toward the console with one arm hanging badly.
"You won't shoot," he said. "The chamber is wired through her cradle. A bullet in the wrong panel and Marian Brooks dies while her daughters listen."
"Then stand still and give me a clean line through your knee."
"Declan," Siobhan warned. "He's close to oxygen feed controls."
My finger settled outside the trigger. I could hit a knee. I could hit a shoulder. I could hit his throat and end him. The room had Marian's breath in its wires, Nora's blood on the floor, and my father's name burned into every command I hated.
Nora looked at me, and I saw the plea before she spoke. She wanted him stopped. She wanted her mother alive more.
I lowered the gun by one inch.
Vale smiled again, and I knew I had given him exactly the inch he wanted.
He slammed his good hand onto the console.
A red shutter dropped between the cradle and the wall of names. The ringer port stayed lit, but the lower half of the archive vanished behind steel. The lights above Marian flickered from blue to amber.
"Emergency route split," the ceiling said. "Maternal body preservation holding. Archive extraction partial. Daughter route attached. Red witness damaged."
The cuff around my wrist released with a violent snap.
I hit the floor on one knee, gun in hand, blood spilling from my palm. My ankle restraint held, but the rail no longer pinned my upper body. Nora was still inside the cage, one hand on Marian, one hand gripping the dented tray like she was ready to bash Vale's skull in.
Vale staggered backward toward a service door that had not been there before, clutching his broken arm against his chest. Behind him, a thin case rose from the console, black, sealed, marked with Mercer's old red symbol.
"You preserved feelings," he said to Nora, voice shaking with rage. "I preserved the way out."
The service door opened behind him.
"Shoot him," Maeve said.
"Can't," I said. The word tasted like blood.
Vale picked up the black case with his good hand. "Tell Gabriel Stone he has one surgical window and one wife with proof moving through a dead man's token. Tell Isabella her father was more useful after death. Tell Nora I will see what she becomes when every stolen mother starts calling her name."
I fired.
The bullet hit the door frame beside his head and sent sparks across his cheek. He flinched, dropped low, and vanished through the service door as it slammed down. The lock went red.
Nora screamed his name. The cage around her answered instead.
DAUGHTER ROUTE ATTACHED TO MATERNAL BODY
EMERGENCY RETURN REQUIRES RED WITNESS MOBILITY
MATERNAL HEARTBEAT UNSTABLE
Marian convulsed under the blanket.
The sound ripped every thought out of the room. Nora dropped the tray and caught her mother's shoulders, crying out for Siobhan. I slammed the butt of the gun against my ankle restraint once, twice, three times. The metal held.
"Declan," Gabriel said, rough and close in my ear. "Status."
"Vale escaped with a case. Nora trapped. Marian crashing. My ankle's locked."
"Can you move?"
I looked at Nora inside the blue cage, blood on her face, one hand pressed to her mother's chest while the machine screamed around her. My burned palm throbbed around the gun. My forearm was slick. My father had come too late. Thomas Brooks had not.
"I can break," I said.
"Then break," Gabriel ordered.
Nora looked up from Marian, and the fear in her eyes went straight through me.
I put the gun down, wrapped both hands around the ankle cuff, and pulled until the first bolt screamed.